May 8, 1953: Mania, meet mania

For those of you too young to remember those strange things called "ree-cords," they were fragile platters of vinyl on which were engraved grooves which, when used in the proper player, could reproduce sound.

The shockwave coming off of Schroeder's head in the last panel, is one of those comic conventions, here as a depiction of surprise or dismay, that is mostly just accepted. But what is it supposed to represent? What is it a visual metaphor for? What's to stop us from creating our own such visual metaphors? (I think it'd be fun to do this but make them crazy and nonsensical.) How do these things get invented and agreed upon?

May 1, 1953: This is why I like Schroeder

It's odd, isn't it? Here Schroeder decries commercialism, and in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" CB spends a lot of the time complaining about the crassness of marketing culture. And yet no strip has been merchandised and exploited even close to the extent that Peanuts has. Income from Peanuts made Charles Schulz a billionaire.

April 23, 1953: Schroeder scoffs

One thing Schulz does, it seems to me, in the early days is repeat information unnecessarily. Schroeder's words in the last two panels are practically the same.

Here at Roasted Peanuts, we don't rest until we've dissected and bean-plated* each strip until all humor has been annihilated.

So, is there a way to have written this strip that could eliminate duplicating most of the text in the third panel? The obvious change, I suppose, would be to change Schroeder's words in either the third or last panel to something like "That's ridiculous!" Since the comedic point of the strip is Schroeder's lack of realization that (to spoil the joke completely) his playing Beethoven on his toy piano is just as ludicrous, it doesn't seem to me like anything is lost through this change.

This isn't meant to denigrate Charles Schulz's abilities as a writer. He was still developing at this point, but the comic itself is great. The fact that it does leave unstated the disconnect between Schroeder's statement and his actions, refusing to point to it outright and trusting the reader to make the observation himself, is a sign that he's already an excellent gag man. Most other comics would explicitly state the point of the joke and wreck the comedy almost as badly as I have, here, in explaining it.

* HI IM ON ROASTED PEANUTS AND I CAN OVERTHINK A PLATE OF BEANS

April 9, 1953: The Mystery of Schroeder's Piano

One thing about Peanuts is how it plays sometimes with the line between cartoonishness and reality. Between the two, it usually sticks pretty close to reality, at least in its physics, which makes the occasional launches into surreal logic, such as here, more effective. That's important. If crazy things happen all the time, the reader comes to expect them, and they have much less of an impact. Lots of webcomics get this wrong.

March 1, 1953: Obsolete furniture

The funny thing about this strip is that most of us today are probably more familiar with rocking chairs than many of the examples of modern furniture seen here, or the record player.

This strip is pretty rich in detail. Schulz wasn't afraid of putting in some quality draftsmanship in the early days.

February 5, 1953: Schroeder the Alliterative Musician

Sometimes I think Schulz uses Schroeder as a way of subtly revealing his own artistic ambitions. It would have been funny to see Schroeder's opinion of American Idol.

January 27, 1953: The beginning of the courtship

Two days later, here's another important Schroeder strip; the first one between the familiar combatants, him and Lucy, on the familiar battlefield, at the piano, and with the familiar tone, Lucy's infatuation. The main thing missing is Schroeder's annoyance.

Schroeder could get very angry at Lucy later on, but so far no character has really gotten very angry at another. The worse we've seen is Violet throwing Charlie Brown out of her house, and so far, more times than not, they forget why she was angry before the end of the strip and invites him back in.

It's the calm before the storm.

Sunday, January 25, 1953: Schroeder at his zenith

This is a good example of a kind of Schroeder strip that never gets seen later on. It does a fine job of illustrating his personality. Schulz here presents the true Schroeder, not some dilettante doodler at the keyboard but a determined artist. In the classic age of the strip Schroeder is by far most often seen as a supporting character, setting off Lucy's monomania or Snoopy's whimsy. Here he trains alone, building himself up to be capable of performing the music he hears in his mind, determined to live up to his vision.

While we might can sympathize with the spurned Lucy's pleas for affection, and his maniacal worship of Beethoven is often played for laughs, Schroeder is generally an admirable character.

January 20, 1953: Snoopy and Schroeder

I think this is the first strip with just the two of them. Later on there are some memorable strips that pair the two that I, um, don't remember at this minute. Heh.

How large is Snoopy in the last panel? The more I look at it, the more he seems to be huge! We know the kids have to reach up to reach the door handle, and as this strip shows Snoopy is still pretty small relative to them. But sitting down in the last panel, his head come up most of the way to the door! Am I just seeing things?

January 13, 1953: Schroeder has standards

This is a rather funny strip; the turnabout in the last panel is pretty sharp. Again, for this one to work you have to know about Schroeder's music snobbery, which isn't information you can glean from this strip by itself. Of course now we all know about Schroeder and his peccadilloes, but Peanuts wasn't in a huge number of papers in those days.

December 18-19, 1952: Now that's a sad kid

Schroeder in the third panel is rather sadder than the average. His expression is maybe a little overdone? Anyway the kid is probably four or five right now, that's rather young to be obsessed with playing the big room.



He's not sad at all here.

December 9, 1952: It's the classics for Schroeder

It is worth reminding the reader that light piano jazz would become inseparable from the animated adaptations of Peanuts, so we must assume that Schroeder's not speaking on behalf of Charles Schulz in this strip.

October 13, 1952: Snoopy the Musician

This is one of the first strips in which a character actually shouts at another one, in larger letters. We've yet to see our first AUGH, though.

October 1, 1952: HA HA METAHUMOR

Peanuts has sometimes been taken seriously by folks, including Schulz himself, but there are moments like this every once in a while. There isn't really any connection, other than motive, between Schroeder's discovery and his remarkably knowledgeable comment. I can picture Schulz laughing at the idea of a character annoyed at being in a comic strip and looking for any excuse to work it in.

September 16, 1952: Schroeder's dad is awesome

Watch Violet's arms in this one. Posing them in a way that looks natural and relevant to the scene is harder than it looks. There is an exaggeration to them here, but it's not too exaggerated.

August 28, 1952: Ol' Pal Ol' Sock

It's only the second strip Schroeder has had a full line, and disappointment rules the day.

"Ol' sock?"

August 9, 1952: HE SPEAKS

The most interesting thing about this strip is that, finally, Schroeder says something more than a word or two, and in English.

August 7, 1952: Music humor

You know, I get the feeling that real musicians probably crack bad composer puns all the time.

July 23, 1952: Schroeder vs. Accordions

In case you didn't notice it before, Schroeder hates accordions. We'll see before long that, by extension, this means accordion players.

It is easy to place this opinion as part of Schroeder's character, but is it just me or does this strip also imply that Schulz himself doesn't care for the instrument? Might he be subtly letting us know about his opinion of popular art? What does that say about his own burgeoning career in cartooning? Please write your opinions down in the form of an eight-page essay and bring it to class next week.

July 8, 1952: HE SPEAKS

Schroeder utters complete sentences!

Also, he can somehow whistle chords!