Sunday, July 17, 1955: The Eternal Battle

Who is better: Christian Slater or the Earl of Sandwich?


Who is better: R. Crumb or George Foreman?

Who is better: Alfred E. Neuman or a cardboard cutout of Darth Vader?

What I'm asking in my roundabout way is, what criteria are they using? Apparently they're going by the personal flaws of their opponents, which I guess is as objective a measure or anything.

Peanuts would eventually earn a long history of abstract first panels, but I have to admit I don't quite get this one. Is that supposed to be an olive branch? It wouldn't fit in with the theme of the strip, which is that neither side is willing to give an inch.

June 27-July 2, 1955: More from Davy Crockett

Sunday, June 26 is missing from gocomics' archive.

 

June 27:

From the Wikipedia entry on "Coonskin Cap" (accessed 7/23/2012):

"In the 20th century, the iconic association was in large part due to Disney's television program Disneyland and the first three "Davy Crockett" episodes starring Fess Parker. In the episodes, which once again made Crockett into one of the most popular men in the country, the frontier hero was portrayed wearing a coonskin cap. The show spawned several Disneyland Davy Crockett sequels as well as other similar shows and movies, with many of them featuring Parker as the lead actor. Parker went on to star in a Daniel Boone television series (1964-1970), again wearing a coonskin cap.

"Crockett's new popularity initiated a fad among boys all over the United States as well as a Davy Crockett craze in the United Kingdom. The look of the cap that was marketed to young boys was typically simplified; it was usually a faux fur lined skull cap with a raccoon tail attached. A variation was marketed to young girls as the Polly Crockett hat. It was similar in style to the boys' cap, including the long tail, but was made of all-white fur (faux or possibly rabbit). At the peak of the fad, coonskin caps sold at a rate of 5,000 caps a day.[4] By the end of the 1950s, Crockett's popularity waned and the fad slowly died out. The fad is recalled by numerous cultural references, such as the wearing of coonskin caps as part of The Junior Woodchucks uniform in Disney's Donald Duck comics."

Peanuts was never above making, and making fun of, pop cultural references. The caps feature in this and the next four strips, making for one of Peanuts' earliest sequences.

June 28:

Another version of the previously-described "everybody or everything" style of joke, where the humor comes from watching an animal doing something in a human style. These jokes would lose their impact as Snoopy became humanized.

June 29:

I like Schulz's approach to drawing these caps, which is just different enough from Peanuts' normal art style to add punch to the joke.

June 30:

Good use of motion lines here, it is easy to picture Snoopy's motion in your head. This strip would probably be funnier it it cale before the June 28 strip, which already used the dog-wearing-cap sight gag.

And so Davy Crockett caps leave the strip. But probably not for long.

July 1:

Well, the Davy Crockett fad lasted a good while but it did eventually peter out. Those Davy Crockett shows were kind of like the Star Wars of the age. I don't know myself where that will end, but I hope it comes along soon.

July 2:

I recognize the name Willie Mays, but I guess Duke Snider's name didn't echo across the cultural landscape in the same way.

June 6-11, 1955: Great Composers of the American West

June 6, 1955

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.

May 29-June 4, 1955: Ol' Aerial Ears

On gocomics.com's archive, this sequence begins here.

Sunday, May 29

I should certainly say Lucy drives Charlie Brown crazy. She has caused him to hallucinate his kite string turning into a heavy anchor chain! It's not like we can believe that was one of the "few things" Lucy had. The question remains how Charlie Brown was able to run that chain up high enough into the air so that it could ground the kite with such a resounding CLANK, not to mention how Lucy brought it to him in the-- you know what, skip it.

May 30

Pinky Lee was the star of a children's TV show in 1954 and 1955. His catchphrase was "You make me so mad!" The Wikipedia page on him notes that he collapsed on-air later in 1955, which the audience of children had assumed was part of his goofy act. This basically ended Pinky's role on the show, although contrary to rumors at the time he didn't die until 1993.

June 1

By my reckoning, this is the first time Linus has ever had an attack due to the absense of his blanket. Lucy's attitude towards her brother's flannel dependence varies from warmly supportive to fierce antagonism.

June 2

At least he didn't say Beethoven!

June 3

I spoke too soon. Good grief!

June 4

He still COULD have licket Crockett, he just had something else to do.

June 5

Snoopy powers demonstrated: prehensile ears & improved auditory reception.