March 11-13, 1954: Three again, again

Read these strips at gocomics.com.

Some more glued-together strips. I'm going to have to go in and fix these when/if they correct these images.

March 11, 1954:
More head-patting from Snoopy, with another word-bubble depiction of his thoughts. The big punchline in A Charlie Brown Christmas when the kid puts his ornament on the Christmas Shrub, is kind of a callback to this.

March 12, 1954:
Taken with the last three strips, Schulz has alternated between Linus block strips and Snoopy head-pat strips this whole week. When he on a whim (it seems to me) made Schroeder into a musical prodigy it became a permanent part of his character, but Linus' block-building skills don't seem to have survived into the later years of the strip.

March 13, 1954:
Snoopy's versatile ears come to the rescue of his sensitive head.

February 2, 1954: Grape is the lightest of the flavors

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

We've returned to the subject of Snoopy's amazing ears.  Lucy's reaction is interesting.  Increasingly we're getting a sense that the Van Pelt kids, for whatever reason, have their own ways of seeing the world that is different from the other kids.  Linus is able to stack blocks in strange and physics-defying ways, and Lucy seems to have secret knowledge about the gravity-defying properties of grape (or, more likely, artificial grape flavoring).

One could attribute this to their youth.  And indeed the other young member of the cast, Schroeder, also exhibits a unique psychological property -- he's a musical prodigy.  Youth, in Peanuts, seems like it may be a quality tied with genius.  This doesn't last forever however; to my memory, Sally doesn't really seem to ever exhibit these kinds of abilities.

Snoopy seems to be really pleased with himself concerning his trick now.

January 13-15, 1954: Snoopy's ears creep me out

January 13, 1954:

January 14, 1954:

January 15, 1954:

Snoopy's ears demonstrate once more how they can be held rigid in place in weird poses at will.  They're almost like additional limbs.  Of course they have their limits: they don't seem capable of supporting much weight, and they don't seem capable of supporting Violet's ire, that killjoy.

The third strip gives us a lot more Snoopy drawings than the standard daily strip.  I love the one at the top-left of the third panel, where you only see his feet peeking into the frame.  But there's a three-quarter "puppet head" view of Snoopy smiling in that one too, which we haven't seen for quite a while.

Charlie Brown is the one giving Snoopy his walk, which points the "owner" needle more firmly towards him again.  But we've still gotten no concrete indication of whose dog Snoopy is.  This may be the first time, however, that Snoopy's relentless enthusiasm has gotten on the kid's nerves, which is an oft-used gag over Peanuts' run.

December 24, 27 (Sunday) and 28, 1953: Three with Snoopy

December 24, 1953

December 27, 1953

December 28, 1953

Three good no-thought-bubble Snoopy strips, presenting the dog as annoyance, victim and helpful friend.

December 4, 1953: Winter in Peanutsland

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

This strip has some very nice backgrounds in it.  Later on Schulz, for whatever reason, would largely abandon tying to depict his characters' world in such detail, so let's enjoy it while it lasts.

November 7, 1953: More on the mobile ears

Read this strip on gocomics.com.

Snoopy's powers:
1. Human thought.
2. Ability to say "Boo!"
3. Ability to blush through fur.
4. Ability to move his ears around like limbs.
5. Ability to understand English.
6. Bizarre "true form." (Also, ability to say a scribble of ire.)

Well-known powers not yet displayed:
Surreal imagination.
Surreal imagination that sometimes leaks out into reality. (Demonstrated by his ability to get Marcie to play along with him.)
Ability to stand on hind legs.
Ability to operate human machinery like typewriters.
Ability to play sports.
Ability to communicate with birds.
Transcendentally-spacious doghouse.

November 4, 1953: He went that way

See this strip on gocomics.com!

Snoopy's versatile ears again prove their agility. Also, I like to speculate as to why Patty and Charlie Brown are so happy here. I assume they're playing Hide & Seek.

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So, we're going to try just uploading the strips and hoping for the best, which at least seems to be the usual case out in webland. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when the archive images break, as this seems to be something beyond the power of a simple Python hack to fix.

Hey Universal! If you're seeing this, know that I'm not trying to exploit the strip. We love Peanuts! We're presenting them here as an aid to discussion. We don't link to every strip, just the most interesting ones. He're hoping you won't mind.