April 25-30, 1955: I'm Well Read

April 25

At least it wouldn't all melt before she could eat it. The word "Boy" in the third panel is both serif'd and contains lowercase letters.

April 26

Once in a while Schroeder says something that indicates there's a slight change he could end up reciprocating Lucy's crush someday. It's quite rare, but it happens once in a while.

April 27

As has been remarked in the comments before, there really aren't a lot of Pig-Pen strips when measured as a percentage of all the Peanuts strips Schulz draw. He's fairly common in this period though.

April 28

Somewhat uncharacteristically, Pig-Pen gets angry at the way people refer to him here. It's a bit difficult, through all the grime, to read his expressions of ire. I'm not quite sure I get this strip though -- I sense there's something about it, maybe some context from the time, that I'm missing. I'm not actually sure the girls are judging his appearance, although if they're not then why would Schulz use Pig-Pen here?

April 29

I think Schulz spelled it "SKWEEK" in the third panel just to mix things up a bit. We get another funny drawing of Snoopy here, who is already the most plastic of the Peanuts characters.

April 30

My favorite thing about this strip is the slight irregularity in Snoopy's jaw in the third panel, indicating Snoopy chewing. Lucy's mouth seems to be missing in the first panel.

 

March 21-26, 1955: What did you expect?

March 21

This is an early version of a later strip in which Lucy complains that she didn't get what she wanted for Christmas, which was "REAL ESTATE."

March 22 

A callback to Charlie Brown's pretending to be a martian earlier.  It's interesting how television aerials were considered to be futuristic back then.  It's very much Jetson-chic.

March 23

This one's mostly an excuse to draw more funny pictures of Snoopy.  And I am not complaining at all.

March 24

Another serif'd word, the "Hey" in Lucy's speech in the first pane.  I wonder what it was that inspired Schulz to use serifs for emphasis.

March 25

This strip is the beginning of the long war between Snoopy and Linus -- to the victor goes the blanket.  Snoopy may hate cats, but he's definitely picked up this maneuver off of one of them.

March 26

But... then what prompted this exchange?  Does Charlie Brown really have that short an attention span?  TV is still young yet, so we can't blame that.

Sunday, August 15, 1954: And cheap at that price

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Another chapter in the unfolding story of Lucy's mother's desperate search for peace and quiet.

This is a particular favorite strip for me. It has several funny drawings that suit the story perfectly, it reveals something about Lucy's personality, and along the way it paints a vivid picture of the dynamic between Lucy's mother (who needs Lucy to be out of the house sometimes) and father (who foots the bill).

October 10, 1953: The costs of having a kid

Lucy examines the question of her existence in terms of economic transactions.

Panel two shows Lucy with a non-typical "making a point" post, and panel three has Violet sitting on a sloped surface, both kind of unusual poses. That second panel, her pose more resembles later Lucy, say, behind her Psychiatrist booth.

February 28, 1951: Shermy named again

Shermy's name is mentioned again.  I'm obsessing a bit on this because learning character names is fairly difficult in many comic strips.  Most individual strips of many comics are intended to stand alone, but even so, characters are only named once in a great while. You'd be forgiven for not knowing Wally, from Dilbert's, name, or... hey, I just realized I still don't know what the triangle-haired woman is called.