November 1-6, 1954: Leaves can be surprisingly vindictive

November 1

This strip reminds me of later strips in which characters try to figure out what to do with jack-o-lanterns after Halloween. I seem to remember "Peppermint" Patty trying to make a pie.
November 2

Oh they look harmless, but don't make them mad!
November 3

More of Lucy's off-kilter way of looking at the world. She's old enough now that she knows a bit of the world, but isn't old enough that she has all the concepts right in her head, which I expect made her a fun character to write for. Which might explain why we've had a lot of her lately.
November 4

Why is Pig-Pen so happy in the third panel? The rest of it is easily understandable, but why is he so amused there? Is it because he knows Snoopy standing there and he sees the hole Charlie Brown is digging for himself? Is it just that he doesn't care how he is perceived?
November 5

Oh, to be delivered unto Lucy's tender mercies! Linus is right to be afraid. "AAGH" doesn't seem to be nearly frightened enough by my reckoning.
November 6

Well, getting a picture is a lot easier than taking a whole bath.

Week of May 17-22, 1954: Dirges and Disappointments

May 17:

Snoopy used to do more dog-like things, like howl at the moon. Most dogs don't bother pro-rating the volume of their howling according to the amount of moon visible, though, because they don't comprehend fractions.

May 18:

The story of this strip seems at first, pretty much, to be "character does something foolish, which is rapidly undone due to its foolishness, so there."

Here's a thought experiment. If this strip involved Lucy stacking a vertical column of blocks, which eventually went too high and toppled over, causing her to say "Rats!", would it be a strip-worthy scene? What if it involved another character, like leaving out a bag of candy which Charlie Brown or Snoopy then came along and ate?

For some reason I'm very interested in this idea, to an extent that surprises me. It is my view that this strip works more for the "Rats!" at the end than the situation itself; it's about Lucy's learning that the world doesn't work the way she expects, and the disappointment she feels. This is a frequent theme of Peanuts.

May 19:

The universe never supplies just the right amount of water, Snoopy.

May 20:

This joke is deceptively complex. Lucy confuses the mood of a piece of music as being a value judgement on its quality.

You know you can tell where a dirge is on a vinyl record by looking closely at the grooves with a magnifying glass? The plastic is grayer at that point.

May 21:

Didn't we see this one before, or something like it? I can't find it in the archives though, despite my at-times-obsessive tagging.

May 22:

What kind of gas is in that balloon to be able to hold up that thick rope? What kind of strength must Lucy have to be able to hold it so casually?

February 18, 1954: Lucy's quest

Read this strip over at gocomics.com.

Charlie Brown's patience with Lucy over her misguided project begins to wear down here.

February 8-12, 14, 1954: The missing strips are back

The strips I mentioned yesterday as having been missing are back, so let's have a look at them.

February 9, 1954:

A nice inversion of the usual way these Schroeder vs. Charlie Brown strips go, with Schroeder proving to be the one who annoys Charlie Brown.  One of Schulz's particular observational gifts appears to be being able to see all sides of a situation.  No character is wholly admirable or horrible.

Scribble of ire!

February 10, 1954:

Snoopy vs., not the yard, but the living room.  Panel two is weird; it seems obvious that Snoopy is trying to pick the top up, but it's not something we often see Snoopy do.  Panel three isn't immediately readable, but thinking about it I think Snoopy is being pushed away by the top's rotational force.

 February 11, 1954:

Charlie Brown returns to the idea of perfection.  At first he thought he was perfect.  Now he aspires to perfection.  Soon he'll realize his faults (and those he doesn't see Lucy will be happy to point out) and despair of ever overcoming them.  Isn't this how it goes in real life?  There is no truth more clearly and bitterly seen than that which comes from disappointing disillusionment.

February 12, 1954:

Fence gags aren't common in Peanuts, but for some reason Schulz decided now was a good time for one.  There's another coming soon, with Patty and Lucy.

Sunday, February 14, 1954:

Lucy counting the stars.  This is the first one where she seems to be serious about it.  Interestingly here, the sky is not represented as solid black; instead the grass in the background is solid.  You can only really tell it's night from the characters' words and the moon hanging in the sky.

November 24, 1953: Charlie Brown *still* has a big, round head

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Maybe I should start categorizing these.  This is a type of joke we've seen several times before, beginning with the beach ball strip.  That began as a kind of comment Schulz made about his art style.  This is Lucy's second time making a joke at the expense of Charlie Brown's head.  The "WHEE!" is new however.

This is a chase strip, but it's not a "turnabout" strip because Charlie Brown has a reaction shot in the penultimate panel.

February 13, 1952: Charlie Brown Must Be Oblivious

We've been going through nearly every strip lately, but there's been a lot to talk about!

The reason I bring up this one is that I think I see in it an early version of the Charlie Brown Messes Up strips of the years to come. The payoff of this strip is unusual. The main comedic punch is in the third panel. If all Schulz cared about was that joke, he really only needed that panel. The others may be dispensed with wholly.

But I don't think Schulz was just concerned with the main joke here. The joke isn't about a clueless kid, it is about the kid's well-meaning observation being shown to be mistaken, and his embarrassment about this. About his realizing that he really should have noticed that he was standing on Snoopy's tail. In other words, this strip is about inadequacy.

Even now, most comic strips would just point and laugh and say, in essence, "That stupid kid! He is stupid! Isn't that funny? Ha! Ha!" By pointing at the stupid person doing something stupid and laughing, it helps to reassure ourselves that we are smart. Peanuts empathizes with the stupid kid, and in the process reminds us that we are all stupid, sometimes.

This is why Peanuts is a great comic strip.

August 15, 1951: Silhouette

It's the first time the characters have appeared in silhouette.

One measure of the quality of a comic character's design is how recognizable is its outline. It's easy to tell Charlie Brown apart from Patty here in panel three. (John Kricfalusi had a blog post about this a little while back, but I can't find it at the moment.)