Week of August 2-7: Linus is very good at building card houses

This week, there is no sign of Patty, Shermy or Violet.

August 2:

The existence of fingerprints is a little convenient, don't you think?

August 3:

In 1954 Linus would be called a prodigy. Now, he'd probably get labeled autistic, or diagnosed with ADD. Although his ability to build things like card houses so quickly, or gravity-defying stacks of blocks, borders on the magical.

The first baby in the strip was Schroeder, who developed into a musical genius. Here we kind of see Schulz taking the same steps with Linus, although his personality became rather different.

August 4:

Do they have little flourishes at the edges of the ridges? Do the whorls form a delightful swooping pattern?

August 5:

Be careful what you beg for, Snoopy. I hope Linus didn't go back to sucking on that thing afterward. Notably, we don't actually see Snoopy link the thumb; we infer it from his reaction.

August 6:

Charlie Brown seeks to branch out into adventure comics. Adventure comic strips are a sad and moribund category any more so some of you might not be familiar with them. The real money now, such as it is, is in comic magazines*, with their X-people and their Superfolk and their Batguys and their....

* I've decided: I'm reviving this usage. Who's with me?

August 7:

Silly Lucy, everyone knows only the index finger contains a gun barrel.

February 26, 1954: Charlie Brown Cartoons Again

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Another "Charlie Brown, Cartoonist" strip.  Schulz used these a lot both to poke fun at himself and, perhaps, at other cartoonists.  At the time, I think he was still working at Art Instruction, Inc.

This strip is interesting for other reasons though.  The look on Schroeder's face the whole time is fascinating.  He isn't upset in the last panels; it's more like he thinks Charlie Brown has rejected him.  Or maybe he's just sad that his criticism didn't find reception in CB's round head.

January 2, 1954: Charlie Brown is not a good cartoonist

Read this comic at gocomics.com.

Have we seen enough about Charlie Brown's failings as a cartoonist yet?  They're entertainingly meta, but still, we've seen the joke before.

November 16, 1953: You'll like it because it mentions Shubert!

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Another of the "Charlie Brown: Budding Cartoonist" series.  In these strips Schulz pokes fun at his own pretensions, but they also show how engaged he was with his craft.

One thing I really like about all these is that, for all of C.B.'s faults as a cartoonist, he at least knows enough to work large.  Held edgeways, that sheet of paper is as tall as he is, sans head.

May 14-16, 1953: Comics, and the foundation of "Happiness Is"

This is mostly notable because it's Schulz engaging in more metacommentary about comics.



One of the more insipid trends in Peanuts is those cloying "Happiness Is..." pictures. I actually don't think they were ever that prevalent in the comics; I think they were used more in books and merchandising. Still, this is a step in that direction. It is also the first instance, to my eyes, of Charlie Brown bemoaning his fate in the recognized Charlie Brown manner.



I think that would actually be a funny strip, in a New Yorker kind of way. (Which means other people probably wouldn't think it'd be a funny strip.)