January 17-22, 1955: It Snow Trouble

Another snow pun for a title! Get used to them, it's far from the last....

January 17

We had another strip like this not long ago, where Charlie Brown didn't seem to come out of it too badly, but poor Snoopy was overwhelmed. Like in that strip, the funniest thing to me is how effortlessly Charlotte Braun belts out her words. There's a good set of lungs on the girl.

January 18

Oh no. Oh, no no no no no. What character in comicdom can get something as willfully wrong as can Lucy Van Pelt? Other than Mallard Fillmore, of course. Lucy actually knows she's wrong unconsciously, I think, which is why she sets herself against Charlie Brown's disagreement before she even hears his opinion. She's so happy with her discovery.

January 19

Notice... both here and in the previous strip, Schulz draws forward-facing characters with neutral expressions without a mouth, possibly for parity with the way he draws his characters when they face the side. He experimented with this a time or two before. He abandons it eventually.

January 20

I've had conversations with people that have gone exactly like this, right down to my depressed skulking away at the end.

January 21

Another mouthless face. And Lucy called Charlie Brown's face funny-looking.

Charlie Brown has some standard ways of expressing displeasure, which are already beginning to get set in. 1. "Good grief." 2. "I can't stand it." 3. "My stomach hurts."

January 22

Schroeder is practicing his scowl for the role.

May 18, 1953: On the mound: The baseball changes hands

In an earlier strip the baseball was Schroeder's, and Charlie Brown told him to take it and run home when his team was in the lead.

I think this is the first use of the term "good grief."

August 4, 1952: He still can't stand it

Charlie Brown's joy getting stomped on by another, unthinking character is becoming a common theme for strips. Just three days ago Snoopy "fetched" CB's golf ball in play, and Charlie Brown couldn't stand that either.

Could it be that Snoopy's disdain for the candy here results from Charlie Brown's harping and hawing over the idea that Snoopy will beg for it? The dog has some pride after all.