October 2, 1952: Two years

This brings to a close the second year of the strip.

In the second year were introduced both Lucy and Linus. Schroeder learned to talk. Charlie Brown's psychological problems began to become more evident. Shermy, already on his way towards irrelevance, only appeared a small number of times. Schulz's art style, fired in the crucible of a daily comic strip, has evolved considerably. Most of the characters have gradually eased into their classic looks, all except for Charlie Brown (who's oval remains as a vestige of the original style), Snoopy (who has so far changed fairly little) and Linus (who is currently the strip's baby).

In the next year there aren't any major character introductions, but Schulz's art style evolves a bit more. Snoopy and Charlie Brown both draw closer to their later forms. The very next month has the first of the strips where Charlie Brown fails to kick Lucy's football. But most importantly this is the year in which Peanuts' writing really matures into something recognizable and wonderful.

For comparison's sake, here is the strip from one year before:


And here is the strip one year to come:

August 1, 1951: Charlie Brown and his Dad

This is not the first strip in which CB's empathic relationship with his father comes out. It only rarely comes up in the strip, but Charlie Brown greatly loves his father, and it's rather heartwarming, and I don't think in a saccharine way since it's often used as a subtext for a joke, when his expressions of affection come up.

Charles Schulz's father was a barber, like Charlie Brown's, who struggled to support his family through the Great Depression. After Charles Schulz's mother died shortly before he entered military service, he had to rely on his father for a period after he returned home. The two would pore over the comics pages of the newspapers each Sunday; they subscribed to two St. Paul papers, and Sparky would also pick up two Minneapolis papers from a drug store so they had four comics sections to go through.

The death of Schulz's father was possibly the reason Charlie Brown's father stopped figuring in the strips. Schulz seemed to take things from his life and give them a place in the strip. This theory would also explain those characters who would be introduced and even hang around for a long while, even becoming major players, before vanishing never to be seen again. These characters may have been based upon people Schulz knew, and when they left his circle of experience, the inspiration for writing them would dry up.