A running theme in Peanuts in the early days is Charlie Brown being dismayed at some obviously false notion one of his friends has come up with, and their refusal to see sense regardless of all other matters. Up until now it's been Lucy who's been Chuck's opponent in this, but sometimes Schroeder sneaks in there as well in his uncritical idolization of Ludwig Van Beethoven. Later on a variety of other characters fill this role, and their notions take on differing levels of actuality. The most-remembered example of this, of course, is Linus' fixation on the Great Pumpkin, which became one of the trademarks of the strip.
June 7
The humor in this sequence comes not just from Charlie Brown's reaction, but the incongruity of seeing a fur hat on the head of Schroeder's bust.
June 8
Sometimes Peanuts' comedy is kind of like a mathematical formula that could be solved for a number of different variables. Character personalities, and cultural signifiers like Beethoven and Davy Crockett, are what realize the jokes.
Schroeder is singing the refrain from the famous song "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," written by George Bruns and Thomas W. Blackburn, written to publicize the Disney movie Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier. The song made the Billboard charts on March 26, 1955 and the strip was published June 6, so it was floating around the cultural mindspace at the time. Come to think of it, this explains some of the other Davy Crockett references in the strip. Here you go:
Incidentally, there is another, more recent, alternate-reality version of that song, written by They Might Be Giants:
June 9
Charles Schulz was from Minnesota, and although he moved around a bit (to Colorado and later to California), it typically expresses a midwestern kind of humor, self-deprecating and wry. For more, turn on A Prairie Home Companion on your local NPR station, or alternatively go get some Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVDs. Go on, I'll wait. (No I won't.)
June 10
Lucy's brand of evil is currently directly only towards her brother. It takes some time to fester and flower into the true breadth of its malevolence.
June 11
At the time Schulz's first son Monte would have been about four. I don't know if this is the title of a real book or one that Schulz made up for the strip.
This is one of my favorite Peanuts strips of all time. I actually didn't know that it showed up so early in Peanuts' run; I thought it was an early 60s strip.
Lucy is rapidly developing into her full horrific powers. She just smashed up Schroeder's bust with a <i>baseball bat</i> in his <i>own house</i>. And yet, Schroeder was fully prepared for it. Wow. And Lucy still hasn't really had many strips in which she's been infatuated with Schroeder -- in fact, I think this strip does a lot to solidify that crush as strip "canon."
It's interesting to note the contrast between Lucy's anger, violence and triumph to Schroeder's plain-faced endurance. The kid doesn't break expression the whole strip, except in panel 8, which is quite a weird look for the kid indeed. It's not quite anger and it's not quite sadness. There is almost something <i>pacifistic</i> about the way Schroeder handles Lucy here. It's really something.
Here's another early sequence, in which Linus confounds Charlie Brown by blowing balloons into cubes. I've joked about Linus having uncanny powers, but how else can you explain this?
Look at Lucy's look of horror in the second panel. This strip makes it a little more clear what Schulz is getting at with this sequence. Although blowing up balloons into squares is a marvelous skill, Charlie Brown seems to think it's something wrong somehow, and Lucy thinks it'll bring dishonor to her house. I guess people put more importance into balloon-inflating style back in 1954.
Even if he tries to blow it up into a rough sphere, it comes out square. This could be taken as a metaphor for something I suppose. Actually, multiple somethings.
"Hey! Come back with my pagan idol of music!" "Take it easy, I'm just replacing it with a good, honest Christian symbol! Er, that used to be an element of nature-worship. Merry Christmas!"
We'll have more of Charlie Brown and Schroeder and Christmas next time....
Lucy seems to have the ability to exclaim, not just in serif lettering, but with lowercase letters too! This isn't even the fanciest writing we'll see this week.
Charlie Brown's spirit hasn't been beaten down quite so much yet.
How do the girls hear those fancy signals? Does Charlie Brown adapt a different tone of voice? Those typefaces are very well-rendered. Schulz was a true artist, but he was a great craftsman too. All of this done for a throwaway joke one Friday in 1954. I wonder if he worked from reference typefaces when he drew this one.
Those are some great backgrounds in panels one and three. They must have taken Charles Schulz a long time to do! The juxtaposition of the deceptively simple characters and the elaborate, realistic backgrounds is one of the many little joys of classic Peanuts.
I'm rather fond of this one. It's a good example of an idea you simply don't see in other comic strips. What is it about it that makes it possible for Peanuts, but not other comics?
This expression is similar to a chagrimace, but it's subtly different. Charlie Brown's emotion is of amusement, not dismay.
I like it whenever Schulz draws that bust of Beethoven, for how it breaks the art style, but more interestingly than that....
Take a look at that smile the statuette is sporting in its panel. Rather mysterious!
The bust of Beethoven works great as a punchline because it only has to be drawn once. For someone on a comic strip's deadline, reproducing it in detail, and consistently, would be difficult across a whole strip.
That doesn't mean he doesn't do it later on though, and in a Sunday at that....
The second appearance of Schroeder's bust of Beethoven. While we remember that Charlie Brown introduced Schroeder to the pianopianoforte, this strip implies that he also introduced him to Beethoven.
I kind of wish I lived in a world in which little kids were up on major classical composers, although it'd be a little intimidating.
It's the first appearance of Schroeder's famous bust of Beethoven! Also, the first time he's said "Beethoven." It's fun to say Beethoven. Beethoven!
Technically that bust breaks the rules about depicting adult figures, but it is just a knickknack, and it's nice to see that Charles Schulz could render realistic faces too. There's so much character in that face. I think half the humor in this one comes from the different art style used to render that bust.
It seems to me that, over time, the characters get bigger. I think it comes from the slightly more mature proportions and the decreasing thickness of the lines. There's usually nothing to compare scale with other than the other characters, but Schroeder's piano and Beethoven bust give us something to judge scale by. Here the bust is bigger than the piano, and juts out over the top. Lucy wouldn't have any room to lean here. Later on the bust fits entirely on the piano, implying that either the bust is smaller or the piano is bigger.
