May 22-28, 1955: Scenes from an Illustrated Childhood

Sunday, May 22

These old Sunday strips show off just what Schulz was capable of when his drawing hand was at its best. Just look at all that. In panel 6 Charlie Brown is leaping a barbed wire fence, and those cans in panel 9 can't exactly be safe to wade through either.

These strips show us a kind of iconic, idealized version of the world of kids that largely doesn't exist anymore, one made up of unfenced backyards, vacant lots, junkyards, back alleys and broken fences.

May 23

Lucy doesn't have many weaknesses, or at least ones that she'll admit to, but rollerskates are one of them.

May 24

The Peanuts characters are accident-prone.

May 25

Shades of Calvin and his bicycle here. And a scribble of ire!

A character displaying affection, love, tolerance, pleasure, joy? These things are not funny. Conan! What is funny in life?

May 26

Lucy turns into quite the feminist later on, this attitude turns out to be fairly atypical of her.

May 27

It's possible to miss it if you just glance at the strip, but the joke here is that Lucy is missing one skate, which is the one that Snoopy's riding.

May 28

Violet and her mud pies again. Old habits die hard. Y'know, I don't remember if we've ever seen any of the Peanuts kids eat one of those mud pies. I'd assume that they're just playing, but that look of distaste on Charlie Brown's face implies that he at least has considered eating one of the things. I guess kids had stronger immune systems back then.

April 12-17 1954: A week at once

Let's do a batch of six this time.

April 12, 1954:

This is the first strip of a new running gag, where Charlie Brown reads something about Beethoven aloud to Schroeder from a book, and he reacts loudly to it.  Like Snoopy vs. the Yard or Linus' surreal block-building skills, or indeed Charlie Brown drawing cartoons, this goes on for a bit.  Schulz must have found the idea interesting.

April 13, 1954:

More development of Charlie Brown's defeatist personality.  There is no hard dividing line between what I call "early" Peanuts and "classic" Peanuts, the strip's evolution isn't actually reducible to those terms, but if we accept them anyway I'd call this definitely a "classic" strip.

April 14, 1954:

This is the first time Snoopy has been shown digging.  It's a good pose for him.  The first panel shows Schulz's new, loosened style for drawing him.   Snoopy has already evolved quite far from the cute little puppy that walked beneath Patty's window.

The throwing of the golf clubs is slightly shocking, because they are presumably the result of an action performed by (gasp!) adults.  We should be coming up soon on that weird section soon with Lucy in the golf tournament, which actually has adult figures in it, although never their faces in detail.

April 15, 1954:

Next on his reading list: "Who's On First," by B. Abbot and L. Costello.

April 16, 1954:

This shows, a bit, how Peanuts kids differ from real kids.  What child in the world has ever said "Well!  What an insult!" in response to anything?  I assume from this that the fussing in question is a kind of unspoken, whiny kind of thing, which Schulz didn't attempt to depict visually like he did with the white noise from a few days ago.  He could have depicted the singing with a musical note, but it would have spoiled the joke.

April 17, 1954:

Oh I am so not making a "two girls one dish" joke.  I'm only mentioning it here to prevent any of you from bringing it up in comments.

April 3, 1954: Issues in Mud Baking

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Her problem is she didn't bake them long enough so that they formed a crust.  Violet should look into getting a kiln.

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. 

Sunday, July 26, 1953: Guess what's for dinner

Another mud pie strip. I don't think girls largely bother with mud pies anymore, but I can't bring myself to mourn this development. The only reason eating one of these would not cause food poisoning, I would think, is because it's not even food in the first place.

The word "de-luxe," meaning luxurious or opulent and nowadays usually represented as "deluxe," is one of those terms that the world of advertising has brought us. I'm not quite sure of its origins however, and a minute spent in Google doesn't clear the matter up much.

May 22, 1953: The Betty Crocker of dirt

She might be drawn differently now, but Violet still seems fascinated with mud pies.

We watched it happen, but I'm still amazed by how differently the characters look now from how they looked three short years ago. It affects how we feel about them I think; this version of Violet doesn't look to be as sweet-natured as the little girl Schulz introduced originally. That's an important step towards her developing antagonist role.

August 6, 1952: Charles Brown

Almost as if Schulz himself noticed what it looked like when CB preemptively complained about Snoopy's begging for candy a couple days ago, here he does it with a human character who can audibly express her displeasure.

And Violet now, firmly, finally seems to be done with mudpies.

Sunday, March 2, 1952: This should satisfy the health inspector

"You've come to the right place... more or less."

It's another joke collage, and another chapter in Violet's obsession with mud food. Muud.

February 23, 1954: Hey, guess what it's made of!

IT'S MUD MUD MUD I TELL YOU MMUUUDD HEAP IT ON MY LAST PLATE DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH WORM

At least now she sees that it's not edible.

October 26, 1951: Could someone PLEASE help this poor girl out?

She's labored under this delusion for almost a year now. You're not supposed to EAT them, Violet!

June 20, 1951: Nooooooo (#1)

Violet falls off the wagon.

May 14, 1951: No more mud

Ah! Could this be the end of the mud pie jokes? (Hint: no.)

April 20, 1951: Team sponsorship

The mud pie strips have been leading up to this, which wouldn't have been as funny without them. It's not the last one, though.

But this strip is notable because it's the first in which Charlie Brown plays baseball!

April 13, 1951: She's right

Welcome back to Violet's mud pie corner. When life hands you dirt, you make dirt-ade.

April 6, 1951: Why does he EAT them?

The day after one of Schulz's most recognizable early formulas, we get another one, Violet and her mud pies again.  The challenge here each time is to present a variation upon the theme, some aspect of the situation that has yet to be mined.  When a situation is mined out, it must be discarded.  You might not believe this, but it's not even finished yet.

March 31, 1951: The sugar and buttermilk won't help

More of Violet's mud pies here.  This is another strip with what amounts to two jokes, the one about eating "de luxe" mudpies and Charlie Brown not being able to taste them anyway.

Again on the poses, Violet's post in the third panel is appealingly and cartoony. It's funny, but as Peanuts progresses, character poses become much less cartoony and more understated. I like the direction it goes, but will miss this earlier style.

March 10, 1951: Good riddance

More matters of mud.

March 3, 1951: From the earth they came, and so shall they return

More of Violet's mud pies.

Take note, here, of Violet's hair. She's the only character at this point with hair that doesn't cling completely to the head; it hangs down a bit. This doesn't last forever actually, later on Violet's hair is changed to be more like the other characters.

February 24, 1951: Does this qualify as gross-out humor?

This strip marks the beginning of a strange theme, Violet's fascination with making mud pies.  The "pardon my fingers" comment is a nice touch.

By the way, I just noticed that none of the other characters, besides Snoopy, have met Violet yet.  Patty and Shermy have yet to see her.

The book Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis observes that most of the characters in Peanuts had analogues in people from Schulz's life.  While this is an appealing explanation to me, I wonder how accurate it is.  While I think an artist ultimately takes everything he creates from his life in some fashion, I'd say that sources are often heavily obfuscated.

The book notes that the name "Van Pelt," the last name of Lucy and Linus, was taken from some real-life friends of Charles and Joyce Schulz.  The name of the two Patties, both vanilla and "Peppermint" varieties, come from the same person, a cousin of Charles Schulz, with the later character being closer to the actual person.

Schulz often picked unusual names for characters: Linus. Marcie. 5. Eudora. Woodstock.

December 16, 1950: Hope you like dirt!

Mud pies, yum.  I was actually never under the impression that kids actually ate mud pies.  Note that Patty's mania for this dubious treat will in no way approach Violet's in coming months.