Sunday, December 26, 1954: Schroeder's Mania

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

"You'll never believe this, but I was hoping you'd come over.." Gee thanks, kid.

This strip neatly encapsulates much of Schroeder's character. I remember seeing it in a compilation when I was maybe eight or so. Even then I had trouble believing in the existence of 12-volume biographies of Ludwig van Beethoven in comic book form, Beethoven ballpoint pens and Beethoven bubble-gum, but maybe there's some Beethoven subculture out there I've had no contact with. Is that Beethoven brand bubblegum, or is it bubblegum with Beethoven trading cards? Anyway, "Very scowly."

I imagine one of Schroeder's parents getting him the train in a desperate attempt to broaden the kid's interests outside his overpowering obsession. Because idolization is one thing, but this is bizarre.

December 20-25, 1954: Square Balloons and Christmas Day

December 20

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?

December 21

At least you can stack them neatly this way.

December 22

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.

December 23

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.

December 24

What would happen if you gave Linus an innertube to blow up?

Christmas Day

"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....

December 13-18, 1954: Obsessing over Santa

December 13

I think this is second time a character has written things that are depicted as hanging over his head. (I forgot exactly when the first was, unfortunately -- it's possible I'm getting confused and this is the first, this post has been a few days in coming.)

The convention is odd, and I think originates with Peanuts. It is hard to come up with new conventions that are still at-a-glance comprehensible to the reader. This one is helped by the fact that Charlie Brown is obvious writing, and the words hanging in the air are hand-written. Thought balloons had to have been a harder sell.

December 14

A hint that Charlie Brown doesn't get much for Christmas. This could be taken as another hint that his family is working-class; the first such hints were from Violet snobbishly lording it over him, and Shermy's huge train set contrasted with CB's tiny loop.

December 15

Once again, an early Peanuts strip presents a scene that wouldn't have been out of place in Calvin and Hobbes.

December 16

If you ever find a discarded calendar with December 17 circled in red, you'll have a pretty good idea who owned it. Schroeder's affection for the composer is alternatingly touching and worrying. I am reminded, for some reason, of that guy who left roses and cognac on Edgar Allen Poe's grave all those years.

December 17

To reveal that Santa travels around the world on a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer would be a let down.

December 18

That's a pretty harsh response, heh. I wonder if we can consider that it's Charlie Brown's parents who sent him that rejection slip, in order to manage their son's expectations for Christmas presents?

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The blog has been updating sporadically lately because the blogging client I usually use, Blogsy (basically the only worthwhile iOS blogging client I've seen), was broken first by Apple and iOS 5, second by Google and WebAUTH 2.0, which hangs if you try to upload more than three images within a limited time. I hadn't noticed how slow the Blogger web interface workflow was until I was forced to go back to it for a while. Blogsy still isn't completely fixed yet, but at least it's useable again.

In more relevant news, the writer of Sally Forth (rather an underrated strip if you ask me) keeps a webcomic called Medium Large that referenced the Great Pumpkin yesterday. (Warning: language, NSFW)

Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, 1953

December 25, 1953:

December 31, 1953:

The Christmas strip is another message to the reader, which I don't think generally work for Peanuts, but at least there's a joke to it this time. It's funny that, if you give him enough space, Charlie Brown draws his letters with serifs.

The New Year's Eve strip isn't holiday-specific, but is funny. It's something of a follow-up. I love Schulz's giant serif Zs, which we can take to indicate the sound, and loudness, of Snoopy's snoring. Schulz returns to this particular gag later.

The motion lines make it look like Snoopy is being thrown out of a basement.

December 24 & Christmas Day, 1952

It's the canonical summer holiday, in the U.S. at least, so let's look at a couple of Christmas strips!



A brief touching upon the theme of the commercialization of Christmas, which of course provided the dramatic thrust of the Peanuts Christmas Special.



Schulz is moving away from bland celebrations of a holiday and towards more sophisticated jokes about it. The usual "YAY ITS CHRISTMAS" panel here is undercut by Schroeder's displeasure at being obscured. Note: no Shermy, Lucy or Linus in the last panel.

It is worth noticing that Patty and Violet are already starting to become a bit rarer. Lucy has usurped their roles, a little, as the strip's girl character.

Christmas Day, 1951: Singing In Type

Sure it's mostly sentimental instead of funny, but imagine how long it must have taken Charles Schulz to render the typeface in the fourth panel.

Note: Snoopy runs with Shermy in the first panel. The mystery of his ownership continues!

December 19, 1951: Words of Flattery

This strip seems to me to be more like the "classic" Peanuts era, as opposed to the "early" era we've seen so far. It seems to me to be more about examining Charlie Brown's personality than something that kids do. The characters have been mostly placeholders up to this point, but this seems to say something about a specific little boy, instead of a Platonic archetype.

October 19, 1951: Christmas Tree Prototype

I've been trying to skip over a few strips here and there, since if I keep posting every Peanuts strip we'll never be done, but it's hard when things like this keep cropping up. It's one of the rare Shermy strips with no sign of Charlie Brown, it's the first mention of Christmas in Peanuts, the characters are outside of their usual attire, and most of all, we have a Christmas tree that seems like a prototype (without decorations and considerably more needles) of the one from the famous Christmas special.

It's enough to make you want to gorge yourself on Dolly Madison cakes, isn't it?