Showing posts with label grin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grin. Show all posts

Sunday, February 12, 2012

April 18-23, 1955: Watson come here, I need groceries

April 18 

More of Pig-Pen's philosophy, which could be regarded either as kind of profund or as indicative of the lengths he'll go through to excuse his willful messiness.

April 19

Fun with halftone!  It definitely is possible to get mad at someone who's really neat, if they're still marking up the wall, although I suppose the Van Pelt folks could just tell people it's wallpaper.  Really freaky wallpaper.

April 20

Lucy believe, if you're losing on one front, just open up another.

April 21

Snoopy has the advantage of having a flatter head.  It'd be a lot harder for Charlie Brown to balance like that.  By the way, this strip demonstrates well how much Snoopy's body shape has changed.  He still has a little ways to go before he starts to balloon out.

April 22

You can't please all the people all the time.  There's kind of a Betty-and-Veronica thing going on between Patty and Violet here.

Charlie Brown's rather pleased with himself in the second panel.

April 23

I never got much use out of tin can telephones as a kid, beans or not.  I figured out much later that they really depend on the string between cans to be pulled tight, which it obviously isn't here.  Anyway the matter is moot, as the first panel makes it clear that whoever it is Charlie Brown is talking to is standing right off panel, well within earshot.

Tin can telephones have passed into the lore of kid life, as something that children make to amuse themselves, even though I imagine in this age of cell phones and casual texting that this type of playground technology is hardly ever put into practice anymore.  This hasn't stopped the things from soaking into our culture -- an episode of the My Little Pony cartoon (don't laugh) used one in a scene, and that "Kids Next Door" cartoon from some years back used them as an essential communications tool for its weird kind of tree fort tech.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

February 21-26, 1955: Beware the Rhinoceros

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.

February 23
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?

February 24
WHOOPS!  I think this is the first time Snoopy has actually attacked anyone on-panel.

February 25
Some rhinoceroses are self-conscious about their appearance.  Anyway, a real rhino bump would be nothing to joke about.

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.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

December 14, 1951: She throws like a...

Peanuts

Setting aside the question of whether Violet's throwing range is realistic, this is a good example of the kind of strip that fueled Peanut's early popularity. It's just funny. Everything about it. The surprised pose from Charlie Brown in the first frame, the determined look on Violet's face throughout, the wide smile on Charlie Brown's face in the end, and the frustrated reaction from Violet.

There are a lot of funny strips coming up....