Week of August 16-21, 1954: Airplanes must fly around clouds or else crash

August 16

It is odd to think of Pig-Pen as going to kids and bumming sand off of them. I can understand if he's unnaturally attuned to the stuff, but it can't be that expensive can it?
August 17

Lucy is kinder here than she was back on February 15 16, but it's still a mean trick.
August 18

At this point Pig-Pen is rolling along as if he's going to become a major character. It won't be for too much longer I think.
August 19

One problem with the week-at-a-time format is, often there's just not much to say about a strip. I'll probably start leaving some out before long -- I didn't mean this to become a repost of every strip....
August 20

If Peanuts were still being printed er, I meant written today, Lucy would be denying climate change. Charlie Brown's reaction is priceless. I find this kind of reaction funnier than the headaches and stomaches the poor kid's afflicted with later.
In the last panel, Lucy's laughing expression, with the slanted eyebrows, is atypical for Peanuts.
August 21

Charlie Brown brings his hand to mouth in wonder in the third panel is nice. Peanuts kid arms are usually drawn as simple tubes, so I find the shape of his arm there interesting. Not hugely interesting, but still.

March 22-24, 1954: Three don't you see

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

More badly-framed strips from that odd place in the internet Peanuts archives, probably caused by an oversight when these were scanned in from print compilations.

March 22, 1954:
At this point in the strip, examples like yesterday notwithstanding, Patty is kind of like the female Charlie Brown.  Not in the sense of being defeated by the world, but in the sense of being an every-person suitable for use in general.  She is rather more competent than Charlie Brown though, and clearer-headed.

Again, the difference between Peanuts and other strips?  Poorer strips would probably end with a sarcastic comment from Patty and make that the punchline.  Competent strips would end with Charlie Brown pointing at Snoopy, and letting the reader laugh at that dumb kid himself.  Peanuts gives us that last panel, which sympathizes with Charlie Brown.  It recognizes that, hey, we're all stupid like this sometime, and when we realize that we are we should be embarrassed about it.  But we should also get out of the weather.

March 23, 1954:
MUDPIEZZZZZ

Violet's fixation on the preparation of mud pies is one of the earliest recognizable traits exhibited by a specific Peanuts character.  We haven't seen it for a while though.  As I've said previously, when you're sentenced to come up with a joke a day for the rest of your life, you use what you think of.  Schulz attacked this somewhat dismal craft without complaint, and frequently with genius.

March 24, 1954:
Charlie Brown's insecure personality is developing clearly now, but Schulz still gives him an out sometimes, with the kids calling for him. 

April 29, 1952: The birth of Charlie Brown's insecurity

We've seen hints of it before, but this is the first one in which Charlie Brown seems actually delighted just to be included with the others', like by default he is some kind of pariah, shunned by all.

This is also the first strip in which Lucy is used as a background character. It might also be the first strip in which Schroeder is used as such. That's an important step towards promoting them to full kid-hood.

July 31, 1951: Party to Insecurity

Back in the day, Charlie Brown's later insecurity was spread more evenly across the cast (except, oddly, for Shermy). I wouldn't doubt that some socialites use this same reasoning when planning their soirées. The expression on Patty's face in panel four is adorable.

Check out the size of the telephone in the last panel compared to Patty. It's huge! It's easy to forget how small the characters are relative to their surroundings until they interact with objects from the adult world.

For any kids reading this: that thing Patty is using is called a telephone. It's like a cell phone, only it's plugged into the wall. Also, it doesn't have push buttons on the front, but a dial that must be spun in order to connect to someone. If it doesn't connect directly to a human operator. Oh, and it's probably owned by the phone company.

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.