December 10, 1953: Limits to Lucy's fussiness

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Here Schulz subverts the pattern he's used several times, where Lucy finds fault with some kindness of Charlie Brown's and he upends something on Lucy's head in response.  Thing is this time Lucy has a point, but puts up with it anyway if there's no alternative.

August 17, 1953: Potato chips, oh boy!

Walking over the potato chips that she's dumped onto the floor is a nice touch.

March 16, 1953: Lucy's sense of propriety

More of Lucy's fussiness. What is interesting I think is that later on Lucy's fussy behavior is actually mostly taken for granted, it's more told than shown in later strips. (Her actual behavior is mostly Selfish-Evil.) So it's nice to see some genuine fussy behavior from her.

March 3, 1953: Lucy and the sandwiches

This strip makes no sense if you don't remember Lucy's prior fussiness over cutting sandwiches. This indicates that Schulz feels confident enough in her personality that he can use the character as a symbol of it, just like Schroeder is a symbol of both the artist and musicians in general.

This is different from Snoopy being a symbol of, say, dogs, or Linus of babies, because that's obvious from immediate reading.

The only other example of what I'm talking about that springs to mind are Charlie Brown's tantrums when faced with another character's quirks. Violet's mud pies don't count because Schulz only uses that in a context where the reader is reminded of her mud pies.

February 25, 1953: Charlie Brown takes an oath

I love this strip. The joke is actually kind of subtle, that Lucy's fussiness (slowly being established through showing, instead of just telling) might actually have a rational basis, and that Charlie Brown could be convinced of it. (Or, alternatively, Charlie Brown has a very dry sense of humor.)

I can't imagine any other comic strip choosing to make this kind of joke in exactly this way. Maybe Bloom County, but no it'd have made it a little sillier. Maybe Mutts (with Mooch in Lucy's role?), but no, Earl wouldn't take Charlie Brown's line at the end. This style of humor, in comics, is unique to Peanuts.

I can imagine Lucy's making this explanation on Ask Metafilter or something. (Her username would be "fussbudget," of course.)

January 5, 1953: Bread an budder, bread an budder...

This strip serves two purposes. It sets up the premise that Lucy absolutely must, for whatever reason, have her sandwiches with the crusts cut off. And it continues to establish her fussiness, which has been alluded to before when her mother called her a "fussbudget" but hasn't yet been seen far beyond the ordinary. Both will be referred to in future strips.

November 7, 1952: Fussbudget

This is the first time the word "fussbudget" has been used in the strip. Now this word is almost impossible to separate from Peanuts. It is always, or nearly always at least, connected with Lucy.

Lucy hasn't been extremely fussy up to this point, but in Peanuts, when another character makes explicit reference to some trait supposedly possessed by another character, that tends to be the point where that other character begins exhibiting that trait as a defining characteristic. In other words, when someone is labeled, the label becomes indelibly part of them.

This is how most Peanuts characters evolved over time, and especially how they gained the traits for which they became memorable.