August 1-6,1955: Boring days in Peanuts-ville

Not a lot to say about most of these strips.

August 1:

Patty and Violet have taunted Charlie Brown with party exclusion before, but now it's starting to look particularly malicious.

August 2:

Not really a lot of joke here, I guess. It does look a little more like Snoops is Charlie Brown's dog, however. I wonder, in the future post-apocalyptic culture-to-come that treats comics as holy texts, if the mystery of Snoopy's early ownership will become fiercely-contested dogma and the subject of vicious crusades?

August 3:

That's a lot of effort Charles Schulz put into that big star on the left. Remember: these panels are blacked-out, so those stars are all made out of negative space.

August 4:

It just occurred to me, we don't see an awful lot of the Peanuts kids hanging out around water throughout the strip. I remember seeing C.B. at the seashore some time back (Patty and Violet mistook his head for a beachball), and there have been several wading pools.

August 5:

I wonder... is that tree back there the same tree, earlier in life, that we would frequently see the kids laying beneath later on?



August 6:

Charlie Brown's attitude in panel 2 is largely my own opinion on riddles. Neither of us would do very well if tasked to win magic rings from slimy cave-dwellers.

 

 

August 30, September 1-4, 1954: Not short from choice

August 30

More consequences of Pig-Pen's extreme dirtiness. Nearly every Pig-Pen strip is a variation of this theme, in case you haven't figured it out by now.

August 31

This strip is missing from gocomics.com's archives. Hooray. Can anyone with the Fantagraphics collection fill us in?

EDIT: Myron found a scan of the missing strip! There are no words in it, just a sight gag of Patty jumping rope in eight panels with her hair up. Thanks, Myron!

September 1

This is an uncharacteristically energetic response from Charlie Brown. Even ignoring the fact that bombing and strafing is unlikely to be in his power, this seems somehow un-Charlie-Brown-like. He's looking very self-satisfied in the last panel.

One thing about the art from this age is that it's found a pleasing middle-ground between the extreme stylization of the first couple of years and the slightly more realistic proportions of later and modern Peanuts. The wide smiles, the shorter bodies, the looser art style, I think this is about as good as Peanuts has looked right here.

Yet I can't think that Schulz wasn't conscious that the art moved away to less cute figures over time. Is it possible that he purposely moved away from cute kid appeal to encourage readers to not trivialize these kids and their concerns?

September 2

You can tell everyone who's sent you that pass around email about using buttered toast strapped to the backs of cats as a source of infinite energy, or as the basis of a levitating train, that the toast part of the joke has been around for almost 57 years now.

The joke itself is another one about science, as usual in Peanuts from a layman's view. Schulz tends to view artists more empathically, maybe, than scientists, although I don't think he's really antagonistic towards them. One can certainly read the strip as just a joke about Lucy's misperception, anyway.

September 3

I don't think Peanuts' male characters ever went through a girl-hating phase like Calvin. In that way, they seem fairly emotionally mature (or immature, if you consider CB's question to show him to be clingy).

September 4

Snoopy vs. the Yard: Football edition.

February 6, 1954: You know the thing I like best in the world? CAUSTIC SODA

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

There is spite, and there is this.  There's something almost affectionate about holding an entire party specifically to focus on something a particular, pointedly-uninvited person likes, although it's rather a lot of trouble to go through.  I can't help but think that the result would be rather a slapdash affair.  Why would you do otherwise, when the "guest of honor" won't even be there?

January 29, 1954:

 

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Charlie Brown is still something more of a smart aleck than a whipping boy here, but it is an early example of Patty and Violet teaming up against the kid.  Later on he loses this ability to reflect feelings of inadequacy back upon assailants.

Look at Patty's satisfied arms-crossing in the first panel.  Man, that's some serious smug.  Also in the first panel, that's quite a lot of detail on the background there.

October 15, 1953: There is such a thing as being too self-effacing

At least Charlie Brown isn't claiming to be perfect anymore.

This is more like the CB we know, and it also points to what we might call a later personality problem with him. His sense of self-consciousness about his failure kind of sabotages him sometimes. Remember the sequence where he's at camp with a paper bag over his head, and becomes successful and popular? My guess would be it's because, under the shield of anonymousness, it means he can focus more on what he's doing, rather than what he's observing about what he's doing.

Chagrimace!

(Sorry for the lack of updates over the past two days, internet is intermittent right now.)

January 23, 1953: The chagrimace

Thanks to Sarah Loyd for this name for the diagonal, straight-lined expression Charlie Brown wears in the last panel here, and he and other characters frequently use around this time. Aditya came up with the other good name, a "dashed" expression, which, while also a pun, doesn't seem to be quite as good. Sorry Aditya. :\

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.

October 14 and 15, 1952: Patty and Violet's Party

I mostly remember Patty and Violet for the times they double-teamed Charlie Brown in the classic age of the strip. If one interprets Charlie Brown as a stand-in for Charles Schulz himself, a view that may have some merit, that may indicate problems with female figures. I think it is possible to read too much into this, however; mostly it just serves to develop Charlie Brown's pessimistic personality a little more.

Also: rats!

November 21, 1951: Snoopy likes parties

Does this mean Charlie Brown now definitely owns Snoopy? I'm not sure, because he seems to be treating Snoopy as more of a colleague, an equal, than a pet. He says Snoopy has the biggest appetite of "anyone I know."

Check out Charlie Brown's jacket. It's like a suit version of Patty's dress! That pattern of lines, that continues through the fabric of clothing regardless of body contours or perspective, is not uncommon in comics and probably deserves a post off its own. This one isn't it, though.

Also, look at Patty's cross-legged pose while at the phone. It seems like an ungirlish pose, sure, but it's especially weird because Schulz doesn't cheat on the size of her foot there, and so it comes up to the length of her lower leg. It's a pose that's pretty much impossible in real life.

July 31, 1951: Party to Insecurity

Back in the day, Charlie Brown's later insecurity was spread more evenly across the cast (except, oddly, for Shermy). I wouldn't doubt that some socialites use this same reasoning when planning their soirées. The expression on Patty's face in panel four is adorable.

Check out the size of the telephone in the last panel compared to Patty. It's huge! It's easy to forget how small the characters are relative to their surroundings until they interact with objects from the adult world.

For any kids reading this: that thing Patty is using is called a telephone. It's like a cell phone, only it's plugged into the wall. Also, it doesn't have push buttons on the front, but a dial that must be spun in order to connect to someone. If it doesn't connect directly to a human operator. Oh, and it's probably owned by the phone company.