These strips might be slightly out of order or not match up with their dates due to a problem with my blogging client.
July 18:
Another strip that shows off Linus' genius. Lucy still seems mostly proud of her little brother at this point.
July 19 (?):
Snoopy vs. The Yard: Horseshoes. Not a lot to say. The last panel seems to exist mostly as a way to explain to people what's going on in panel 3, in case they couldn't piece together that a game of horseshoes was being played from the stake.
July 20:
Not an awfully kind for a kid to do to her little brother!
July 21:
This isn't that much better either, but I like Linus' reaction, and how it catches Lucy off-guard. Don't put up with it Linus! Fight the Man! Er, Girl!
Lucy pines away for Schroeder a lot, but you see very few strips, that I remember at least, that hint that Lucy might have a crush on Charlie Brown. Other than all the abuse she's heaped on him over the years, I guess. That might actually be considered a pretty solid hint, now that I think of it.
We barely recognize Pig-Pen either. He kind of looks a bit like Shermy like this.
Lucy's loud voice is again reinforced as a character trait. But we also get some of the playful and energetic Snoopy of the classic era of the strip, which became less visible later when his proportions ballooned out. He's very dog-like here.
This might be the first somersault experienced by a character solely due to a very loud voice or sound.
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.
Lucy continues her develop into the strip's primary villain.
We haven't had a huge amount of Snoopy/Linus interaction so far. In coming strips, a major point of contention with them is Linus' blanket, so this strip kind of foreshadows that.
We get that weird look from Linus again in the second panel. It looks a lot like he's pining for a pacifier.
In the third panel, Linus and Snoopy share a single 'Z' balloon. I may be wrong, but when two characters are asleep near each other I believe they tend to get separate Zs. I'm unsure whether I should look for deep meaning in their commonality of snoring, however.
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.
Schroeder gets out of the house some. Playing ice hockey on a frozen pond is sort of a winter analogue for vacant lot baseball. I wonder how much this happens anymore.
The second time Snoopy uses his imagination leads off a week-long sequence, and I think this is the bit that really causes it to "take." They're a good opportunity to expand the character into something unique, and they have the additional virtue of making possible a lot of really fun drawings. Snoopy's open smile upon finding his victim is my favorite part of this one.
In these early strips Snoopy usually restricts himself to being some kind of animal. A rhinoceros is an interesting choice -- not a lion or a bear an elephant or something more usually recognized as a strong, powerful animal. Not that rhinos are slouches of course -- just that I'd think they would be thought of iconically by their horn, not their strength and size.
Charlie Brown seems worried that Snoopy actually thinks he's a rhinoceros. But how would he have been able to figure out what Snoopy was pretending to be?
Up until now Lucy's crabby personality has manifested in three primary ways: by reputation (her mother calling her a fussbudget), her dealings with Linus, and in defending her strange opinions against Charlie Brown. Here is a fourth: the bucket of cold water on Snoopy's head. It's also the first instance of her physically standing up to another character, here in the second panel.
I really love the goofy grin on Snoopy's face in the first panel.
When Lucy gives you rubber, Linus makes rubber-ade. And this is full-bore Lucy here, in full Hate Mode. The funniest thing about it I think is Linus' annoyed scribble of ire as Lucy addresses him with a serif'd "Hey!" He knows what's coming.
That's a weird look on Linus' face in the last panel.
This is a momentous strip: it marks the first appearance of imposing, wrathful Lucy. While all the Peanuts characters are complex, I think it's safe to say that this aspect of Lucy's personality will grow and become the most prevalent. It's certainly the most memorable.
It is interesting, I think, that so many of Lucy's most memorable attributes have arisen so rapidly, and over consecutive Sunday strips. Last week we saw a particularly extreme example of her fussiness. The week before saw the first really empathic treatment of her affection for Schroeder. Schulz and Peanuts puts forth the theory that Lucy's character (other than some early bits inspired by their young daughter) was adapted from Charles Schulz's wife Joyce. If we accepted that, then these strips might suggest some marital strife at the time.
It is my own theory that, when forced to create a lot of material over a long period, that it's impossible to avoid revealing and using aspects of your inner self, that eventually it comes out onto the page one way or another. However, I don't think it's necessarily the case that we can draw a direct line from Joyce to Lucy. I think a canny creator will obfuscate matters, and end up combining aspects from different people to write his characters. Still, the rapidity with which Lucy is approaching her mature form suggests (but certainly doesn't prove) Schulz had some kind of breakthrough or epiphany as he was drawing these strips.
Some meta stuff: Sorry the blog has been slow lately. I've been trying to catch up with old projects (especially In Profundis), and it's left me a little bereft of energy. Am plugging away at them though.
Charlie Brown is becoming more of a straightman, someone who reacts in funny ways to the foibles and antics of the other characters. Given Schroeder's past reactions to more modern forms of music, his willingness to (I think we're supposed to assume) adapt Beethoven into a mambo seems kind of sacrilegious of him.
You can tell what people are eating by how many decibels their chewing noises rate, although in Charlie Brown's case we might have to move up to the Richter scale.
Lucy's power to impress with a quiet word is matched only by her ability to do so by shouting, although this hasn't really been established much yet. Notice that Schulz has drawn her words a little differently than usual; they're wider and the strokes are thicker, almost like block letters. She is obvious using some of her infernal power here.
It's another full week post. What do you guys think about this format? I don't think I'm going to do all posts like this, but it's nice for making faster time through Peanuts' run. But there are a couple of interesting strips this time out though that might more deserve their own posts. May 24:
Sir Edmund Lucy! A key moment in her development. It's unwarranted violence against her brother, and it's willful as it is arbitrary. May 25:
By way of contrast, this is an aspect of Lucy's character that holds over from her original personality, her ignorance about the world expressed in humorous ways. It's when that ignorance becomes willful that we get the Lucy we know from later. May 26:
Another Snoopy power: uncanny reaction time. Similar to the "great experiment" strip from a few months back, Snoopy's affinity for candy has the ability to brush aside such petty concerns as Newtonian physics. May 27:
Another of Lucy's evolving attempts at cruelty. Another thing this strip foreshadows is, of all the characters, Snoopy is the one that her malice has the least power over.
One can accept Charlie Brown's statement, about considering being called a "dog" an insult, in one of two ways: either that it is an insult but Snoopy is ignorant of it, or that Snoopy is secure in his place. Later strips reveal that Schulz probably intended it the second way, which is the better meaning, but I consider the fact that he leaves it open for interpretation interesting. May 28:
For the record, Easter Sunday fell on April 18 that year. We are left to decide for ourselves if Lucy is really late or extremely early in her decision. May 29:
Aah. Yesterday when I talked about remembering another jack-in-the-box strip I was remembering this one. It's another example of Schulz's gag-writing strategy of taking some thing and permuting it through its possibilities.
It is worth noting here that the last strip in Schulz's Sunday-only experiment with continuity and adult figures is the one after this.
The second panel here is a particular favorite of mine. Lucy is weighing her options.
This may be the first direct instance of direct violence in Peanuts. There have been chases before, and chases of being hit by projectiles (like one where Lucy hits Charlie Brown with a snowball at very cose range) but I don't think anyone has actually hit another kid before now, with hand or weapon. I'm sure one of you will correct me if I've remembered wrong. (In fact, I'm looking forward to it.)
Now that another character has directly remarked on Charlie Brown's lack of playing skill, it has become a bit more solidified as an attribute of the character himself.
Lucy goes on a glorious campaign of destruction here. It's the closest she's yet gotten to her malevolent destiny.
I think maybe part of the reason Schulz drew this one is just so he could draw lots of tiny little things flying around the room. Anyway, I didn't know Violet had a stamp collection.
The lead panels, as usual, aren't needed to get the joke, although they do explain why Schroeder is involved in the mob. (Linus is too young for such things.) Of all the offended chasers, everyone seems to be yelling at Lucy except for Charlie Brown, who is uncharacteristically grim-faced.
This strip is a reprise of the joke from Sunday, 2/15/53. In that earlier strip, Lucy doesn't seem quite so vicious, because in that one Linus is trying to play with her stuff, while here, Lucy is outright taking Linus's cookie unprovoked.
This might mark the first moment where Lucy seems to be truly evil, in a way it's impossible to explain with another motive.
If you wonder where the point was that Lucy went from being an innocent little girl to Cthulhu in a dress, well, there is no exact point. It's not even a sliding scale between the two; they exist in quantum superposition, sometimes she's one and sometimes she's the other. This one does seem to be partway between the two though. At least she's not saying "Poor Lucy" anymore!
(I've been known to deliver pizza sometimes, and want to say that Lucy's attitude and power to change things exactly mirrors my own when stiffed for a tip.)
Blogger sometimes takes posts I've set to publish and makes them drafts instead, which once in a while results in strips getting overlooked. Sometimes it doesn't matter much, but this strip is incredibly important, so I'm using it even though it's a couple months old by this point:
This seems to be the first act of full-on spite Lucy commits that cannot be explained by familial antipathy or mere childishness. It is an act of pure evil by her, and it's glorious. Look at that little smile on her face in panel six. It's against her favorite punching dummy, too. And Charlie Brown was so happy in the throwaway panels!
We even get that "down on his luck" slanted mouth in the last panel.
Schulz had many, many positive attributes as a cartoonist, but there are a couple of things in these early days he could have used some improvement on. One of them was in varying his phrasing; here, Lucy uses the "slaughter" line twice, which is a bit awkward. This isn't the only strip in which this defect can be seen. As Schulz gains experience writing dialogue I believe these errors eventually go away.
A rather different context for the chase/turnabout formula. This is a solid step along the way to Lucy's later personality. Her expression in panel two is like a shadow spreading over the strip. Lucy's on her way and she's not bring flowers and candy canes!
Aww, isn't she cute? Little did anyone, least of all Schulz himself, know that with the introduction of that (literally) wide-eyed little girl jumping rope, there was created perhaps the most concentrated entity of wrath ever to grace the comics page.
The Fuss-Budget. The Mistress Crabby. The Atom Bomb. She that doth provide the football, and she that taketh it hence.
So faint not dear reader, but yet be warned! It has awakened!
