March 14-19, 1955: ALL RIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH

March 14

Lucy sticks with this fussbudget thing for a good while.  I don't think she ever gets it into her head that her mother wasn't complimenting her.

March 15

Back in the first fussbudget strip, Charlie Brown seemed like he understood that Lucy's mother was complaining when she called her daughter a fussbudget.  It's not as obvious here if Charlie Brown is in on the joke.  He's either forgotten, or he's exceptionally straight-faced in his sarcasm.  It could really be either -- there are other strips in which Peanuts characters say sarcastic things without breaking expression even slightly.  When I saw the fussbudget strips as a kid, I didn't get that the joke was on Lucy.  (And to this day, I'm not sure on the origins of the word, or even how it's said.  Is it really "fuss-bud-jet"?)

March 16

Snoopy seems awfully pleased about his pink collar.  I dunno, it doesn't seem really like a Snoopy sort of color.  

March 17

Schroeder's mania continues.  His Beethoven fixation is slowing being made an object of fun, which culminates, I think, in his carring around signs informing people as to how many shopping days it is until Beethover's birthday.

March 18

Why is Charlie Brown sighing here?  Should that be coming from Schroeder instead?

March 19

I think this is the first time Lucy really, really rags on Charlie Brown, which of course becomes a common event in the strip.  It's a chase strip, but going by the rather silly and idiosyncratic rules I've made up, not really a turnabout strip.

Week of August 23-28, 1954: Charlie Brown still has an ego

August 23

Only the second bit of negativity we've heard from Pig-Pen, the first being in his introduction.

August 24

That's not Snoopy, someone switched his bust of Beethoven for a figurine of the RCA dog!

August 25

Is this sarcasm from Schroeder, or condescension?

August 26

Charlie Brown still has some of the old ego in him, I see. I wonder when is the moment when that's finally pounded out of him, and when it happens, if ultimately it's Lucy, or Patty and Violet who are the cause

August 27

Her beleaguered mother has resorted to trying to play her and Linus against each other. Lucy takes the long view here. Lucy is forward-thinking in the next Sunday strip too, although she doesn't look quite so far ahead.

August 28

This is a fairly standard comic inversion. Not really terribly noteworthy, but I've commented on all the other strips this week, so why not?

(If I do leave strips out, I will still link to the gocomics page for the absent strips. I don't think it's proper to present strips I don't have much to say about, since I'm hosting these copies to avoid hot linking gocomics, and not to provide an alternate archive of strips. As I said before, they are presented here for commentary purposes only.)

Week of June 28-July 3: Chin scratching, angle worms and treads

June 28

Which is weirder: that there is a source that catalogues the tongues of different animals, or that Charlie Brown is referring to it? If Peanuts were being drawn today, CB would probably be editing a Wikipedia page.

This strip reminds me of a favorite Sunday entry from later in the run, the "Linus is aware of his tongue" strip, that injects just a tiny bit of Lovecraftian biological horror into the cartoon world.

June 29

Imperfect circles? This strip is really about defining terms: mathematically, there are only perfect circles, but practically we call all kinds of things circles that aren't precisely obedient to the rules of geometry.

June 30

Continuing from last week, more of the "Snoopy gets scratched on the chin" sequence. Charlie Brown's amused smile in the last panel makes this one for me. No one can have a character pass judgment with a simple smile like Charles Schulz can.

July 1

Charlie Brown must have rather some serious self-esteem issues here, but really, what kind of insult is "angle worm" anyway. It's got to be a real insult, of that I have no doubt because the joke of the strip relies on the reader having prior knowledge of the term, but it still seems silly, which is probably why it's no longer, to my knowledge, in currency.

July 2

Third of the chin-scratching strips. It's okay when Lucy does it, but not when Charlie Brown does? This suggests either that CB has a harsh scratching technique (perhaps clued by the fact that Lucy's "tickles" are in word balloons while Charlie Brown's are without), or that Snoopy gets something out of having his chin scratched by girls.

July 3

Oh no, Charlie Brown's been run over by a truck!

Week of May 24-29, 1954: Lucy's soul darkens

It's another full week post. What do you guys think about this format? I don't think I'm going to do all posts like this, but it's nice for making faster time through Peanuts' run. But there are a couple of interesting strips this time out though that might more deserve their own posts.
May 24:

Sir Edmund Lucy! A key moment in her development. It's unwarranted violence against her brother, and it's willful as it is arbitrary.
May 25:

By way of contrast, this is an aspect of Lucy's character that holds over from her original personality, her ignorance about the world expressed in humorous ways. It's when that ignorance becomes willful that we get the Lucy we know from later.
May 26:

Another Snoopy power: uncanny reaction time. Similar to the "great experiment" strip from a few months back, Snoopy's affinity for candy has the ability to brush aside such petty concerns as Newtonian physics.
May 27:

Another of Lucy's evolving attempts at cruelty. Another thing this strip foreshadows is, of all the characters, Snoopy is the one that her malice has the least power over.
One can accept Charlie Brown's statement, about considering being called a "dog" an insult, in one of two ways: either that it is an insult but Snoopy is ignorant of it, or that Snoopy is secure in his place. Later strips reveal that Schulz probably intended it the second way, which is the better meaning, but I consider the fact that he leaves it open for interpretation interesting.
May 28:

For the record, Easter Sunday fell on April 18 that year. We are left to decide for ourselves if Lucy is really late or extremely early in her decision.
May 29:

Aah. Yesterday when I talked about remembering another jack-in-the-box strip I was remembering this one. It's another example of Schulz's gag-writing strategy of taking some thing and permuting it through its possibilities.
It is worth noting here that the last strip in Schulz's Sunday-only experiment with continuity and adult figures is the one after this.

February 24, 1954: In sync, no less

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Do they mean to be insulting?  They said it at exactly the same time, and with wide smiles.  I'm guessing they rehearsed this.

August 31, 1953: Teaming up

Violet can be something of a copycat, can't she?

Complaining that CB is crazy or talks too much I guess I could possibly understand, but how could the kid do anything about his face?

August 10, 1953: You're a flop, Charlie Brown

In the past I've said that Violet and Patty often double-team against Charlie Brown, and we have seen a little of that. But as of yet (and in the near future) Violet tends to be rather more harsh than Patty. So it's a little surprising here to see Patty give the kid such a through dressing-down.

At least, at this point, Charlie Brown still has some bounce-back in him.