July 5, 1951: Snoopy victorious

It's an honest-to-goodness fight cloud in Peanuts.

I love the look on Snoopy's face. Also, who'd have thought Patty could be so bloodthirsty?

February 3, 1951: Fight my slaves, I command it

Patty is probably the most girlish girl Charles M. Schulz ever put into Peanuts.  Look at her body language in the first, second and fourth panels.  Here she pines that Shermy and Charlie Brown don't love her, and they stage a mock fight over her to cheer her up.  It works, too.

The fight in the third panel is interesting because the characters speak in order to make the fight seem more severe than it would without the text.  I put this down to insecurity on the part of CMS that his abstract characters could depict motion well.  I notice here that they say "What a battle" and "What a struggle" both in the same panel, which is a little awkward from a writing standpoint.

January 4, 1951: Dad's not a boxer

Another example of the problem of what to do with the characters as they tell a verbal joke.  The joke itself, by the way, is a rather good one, turning on its end the "My dad can lick your dad" schoolyard argument.  At the end though, Schulz makes sure we know they don't hate their fathers.  For all the hostility these kids can display towards each other, Schulz's basic humanism somehow shines forth.  What a complicated man.