July 4, 1952: Snoopy and Schroeder

The two wordless wonders, together for the first time.

One thing about Peanuts that is right there in the open but is mentioned surprisingly rarely is how some characters never seem to interact with other ones. Schroeder and Linus don't have a lot of interactions. Neither do Lucy and Peppermint Patty (who calls her "Lucille"). Schroeder and Snoopy do have some interactions, but not as many as Schroeder and Lucy, who interact so often in the strip's heyday you could be forgiven for thinking Schroeder must be an imaginary friend of Lucy's.

Hey, is this the first "sigh?"

June 28, 1952: All is vanity

Schroeder has said a word in English before, but it's rare for him. Notice that Schulz considered that Schroeder's musical talent was well-known enough by now that he didn't have to establish it.

Sunday, May 11, 1952: Schroeder in concert (with backup)

The entire joke here rests in Violet saying "let him play by himself" instead of "let Schroeder."

There are some nice touches in this one. In addition to the musical staffs that Schulz spent so much effort on, and he put a G-clef instead of an S in his name in the first panel. But best of all we have Snoopy in this strip for no story-related reason other than just being cute and funny there on his end of the couch. His reaction in panel 6 is best here, he's just rendered so winningly in that pose, exactly halfway between a dog-like and a human reaction. It's great.

May 2, 1952: When Schroeder Met Snoopy

I believe Snoopy and Schroeder have been in the same strip before (a Sunday baseball one), but this seems to be the first one in which the two interact.

I suppose we should be thankful that Snoopy isn't a musical prodigy too.

April 14, 1952: Schroeder's Adventures in the White Void

Wait, is he inside or outside? The lack of any background makes it difficult to tell.

There's another musical staff in this picture, I notice. No, I have no idea what song it is, although I have no doubt that it must be some song.

EXTRA: From Metafilter Music, it's Linus and Lucifer!

Metafilter user doubtfulpalace contributed this excellent version of the classic Peanuts cartoon tune Linus and Lucy last year for a Christmas music competition. It is quite an awesome little remix! Despite the name, the song really doesn't have anything to do with Satan... unless you consider Lucy herself to be allied with the forces of darkness, which doesn't seem too implausible really.

Linus and Lucifer

April 3, 1952: How does Schroeder whistle chords?

This strip is really well-done from a storytelling standpoint. It sets up the premise, provides a comparison between CB's and Schroeder's abilities, shows Patty and Violet's opinion of those abilities, illustrates Schroeder's charisma and Charlie Brown's feelings of inadequacy, all in four panels.

Scribble of shame!

February 8, 1952: Beware the Wrath of the Prodigy

Can't really blame Schroeder for getting angry over this one!

Two things. First, Peanuts characters seemed to mellow out a lot over time. Even the mighty Lucy rarely seemed to wear an expression of this ferocity. Second, the rules concerning the depictions of adults and their communications was much less in force here. In many later strips, you wouldn't have seen a word balloon over the radio, and the joke probably would have had to be reworked into a conversation between two of the kids.

February 1, 1952: And I'll Rock You Away To That Sugar-Plum Tree

Isn't it just a tiny bit hard to believe that songs like this were ever popular? I think this joke is actually a little bit funnier now because of that.

January 24, 1952: Hammer-Klavier

German is a funny language when you think about it. I guess it is somewhat less funny when you try to spell something in it.

Schroeder gets annoyed with the other kids fairly often. ‘tis the curse of the misunderstood genius, I guess.

January 23, 1952: Schroeder’s first multiword utterance is in German

Schroeder gets way into his playing in this one. His holding out his arms in the last panel is hilarious.

Also, I laughed out loud when I noticed how Schulz signed this one.

January 17, 1952: More wavy lines

Although he still barely speaks, Schroeder is out and about! An important step towards his becoming a full character. Notice his bed in the corner in the third and fourth frames; it is a weird quasi-crib with low rails.

The post title comes from the aura around his head in the third frame, which we also saw used yesterday to denote embarrassment.

january 16, 1952: But he CAN read music?!

The wavy line around Schroeder’s head is an interesting idea for showing embarrassment. Imagine what the frame would look like without it. The joke seems like it would be just a little flatter with just his blush, hands and expression illustrating his reaction.

December 3, 1951: Beware the Wrath of the Irate Prodigy

This is just a funny cartoon. Go, Schroeder!

The marks in the last panel used to show dazedness are interesting. A question mark, two stars, a dizzy spiral and motion lines. It actually seems a little overstated, now that I look closely at it.

November 25, 1951: Let Play the Fanfare

It's the first appearance of Schroeder's famous bust of Beethoven! Also, the first time he's said "Beethoven." It's fun to say Beethoven. Beethoven!

Technically that bust breaks the rules about depicting adult figures, but it is just a knickknack, and it's nice to see that Charles Schulz could render realistic faces too. There's so much character in that face. I think half the humor in this one comes from the different art style used to render that bust.

It seems to me that, over time, the characters get bigger. I think it comes from the slightly more mature proportions and the decreasing thickness of the lines. There's usually nothing to compare scale with other than the other characters, but Schroeder's piano and Beethoven bust give us something to judge scale by. Here the bust is bigger than the piano, and juts out over the top. Lucy wouldn't have any room to lean here. Later on the bust fits entirely on the piano, implying that either the bust is smaller or the piano is bigger.

November 20, 1951: And They Disapprove of Baby Bottles In The Orchestra Pit

Speaking of Schroeder....

Many strips these days aspire to just the crazy stuff from Peanuts, without copying the normal strips in-between. Those strips reset the norm, regrounding the strip's world in reality, which makes it more effective when the strip takes another flight of fancy a few weeks later.

November 8, 1951: Schroeder Learns the Score

Maybe the kid is annoyed with his status as Peanuts Resident Musician. I love his annoyed expression in panel 2, his patronizing "plink plink" in panel 3, and his focused, furious look and how he's thrown in the air with the effort of his playing in panel 4. I think Schroeder's fury here must somewhat mirror the effort Schulz himself put into the strip.

Let's talk a little about how the characters changed over time.

I really can't believe how much the Peanuts guys (in my opinion people who are serious should not use the word "Peanuts gang" to describe them) change in the first few years of the strip. They've already began edging towards their later appearances here. What's odd about them is that the characters move towards becoming less cute and more iconic.

Compare how the Peanuts characters evolve to the evolution of Garfield. Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, used to be an assistant artist on the bizarre-looking strip Tumbleweeds, and maybe a little of that comes out in the very earliest Garfield strips, which have markedly different-looking characters. Arguably the characters became cuter over time, and that helped the strip to gain traction with readers. But going the other direction, becoming less cute, giving his characters less-over, more circular heads, pushing their stylization beyond the point of maximum attraction and making them still more stylized, that is a strange choice to make.

Right here is, to me, about as cute as Peanuts characters would ever get. The attribute of this style that fixes it in my mind is the expressions on the characters' faces, especially Schroeder here. Eyes wide apart, and with long eyebrows almost mirroring the mouth line. I think this general style continues on later, especially on characters like Lucy, but it's not as balanced, compositionally, as it is in these strips.

Why did Schulz abandon this look? It might have to do with how much time it took to produce. Line thickness, and even the precise thickness of the eyes, is very important to the look.
The more modern versions of the characters tend to have lines that are the same width. The eyes are not just dots but little ovals, and become thick commas when the character is looking around.

And just look at how rounded the character's heads are; there's not a tremor anywhere, it's perfectly smooth every time, the same curve no matter how the characters are facing or posed. That takes skill, and probably at least a little time. (One must wonder how Schulz must have felt about it later in life when hand tremors forced wavering into the perfectly round head of Charlie Brown; even now after Schulz's death, all official depictions of the characters continue to include those tremors.) Also, the characters look very fifties in these strips. If the strip continued on in this style, the characters probably would have turned into something like Calvin and associates.

In terms of the long-term health of the strip it's probably a good thing that it changed. There is still a lingering perception that Peanuts was about cute, and trite "Happiness is a Warm Puppy" sentiment. The move towards less cute, more abstract figures would help the strip as it picked up intellectual depth as the years passed.

October 10, 1951: Humph!

Schulz had been heard to say that Beethoven was Schroeder's idol primarily because it was a funny word, but it cannot be denied that the idea of a young child fixating upon the notoriously stern composer adds a certain complexity to his character, which this and later strips take advantage of.

October 9, 1951: Gag

Some people complain about cloying sentiment in Peanuts, and it is true that there is some of that at times. This strip is proof.

However, I find that most of the people who complain about it haven't really been exposed to much of the strip. For every saccharine "Happiness Is A Warm Puppy" there are a hundred "Lucy Demolishes Charlie Brown Utterly, Destroying His Soul Like Some Demon Girl." For giving us all of those, I think I can excuse the occasional spoonful of sugar.

October 6, 1951: See how they run

With this one, I think it's time to stop posting Schroeder-as-musician strips solely on that basis. This one's still interesting for presenting a straight-forward look from Violet, which is rather uncommon.