gocomic's archive is missing strips for the 7th through the 9th of April, 1955. Can anyone tell us what the Fantagraphics collections have for those days?
Sunday, February 5, 2012
April 4-6 & Sunday April 10, 1955
Sunday, January 29, 2012
March 27-April 2, 1955: The Martian Chronicles
A fairly intriguing sequence this week, continuing the prior spaceman strips. Schulz gets some good mileage out of halftone shading, a system which I don't think I recall him using much outside of these strips. Maybe he got given a free sample of halftone transfer sheets or something and figured, in a thrifty midwestern sort of way, that he should at least get some use out of them.
More halftone language gags. What sound is Charlie Brown actually producing in these strips? I like to think it's like radio static, but that's difficult to shout like in the third panel here.
Whatever sounds C.B. is actually making, Lucy seems to be learning to understand it.
And to translate it! But this all is simply a throwaway joke for CMS, something to use one week then never refer to ever again.
This strip proves that the halftone speech effect is not a representation of distortion provided by the helmet but some sound Charlie Brown was actually making. Lucy takes the opportunity to rag on C.B.'s round head again.
Hey kids, don't try this with a cat! I love how Schulz leaves the actual rubbing undepicted -- you can tell what happened just from context, Snoopy's fur, and the look on Snoopy's face.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
March 21-26, 1955: What did you expect?
March 23
March 24Another serif'd word, the "Hey" in Lucy's speech in the first pane. I wonder what it was that inspired Schulz to use serifs for emphasis.
March 25This strip is the beginning of the long war between Snoopy and Linus -- to the victor goes the blanket. Snoopy may hate cats, but he's definitely picked up this maneuver off of one of them.
March 26
Sunday, December 25, 2011
March 14-19, 1955: ALL RIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH
March 15
March 16
March 17
March 18
March 19
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
March 7-12, 1955: Candy and bugs
Friday, December 2, 2011
February 28-March 5, 1955: Everybody look down, it's all in your mind
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
January 31-February 5, 1955: Charlotte Braun terrorizes the neighborhood
Charlotte meets Linus. This may actually be the only strip that features the two of them. Unlike Pig-Pen, who has a similar kind of gimmick attribute, Charlotte doesn't stick around for that long. This may be her last hurrah in fact.
The problem with Charlotte Braun is that she doesn't have much of a personality beyond loudness. Pig-Pen is so comfortable in his own skin that he kind of transcends his gimmick. Charlotte's gimmick lends itself to obnoxiousness though, so as Lucy becomes bossier she kind of steals Charlotte's niche.
Thinking about how Charlotte Braun disappears from the strip leads me to brainstorm completely made-up Peanuts characters who have similar one-note gimmicks. Maybe a girl who has really big hair? One who walks loudly wherever he goes?
I've noticed that this mistake, of assuming the range of one's experience matches that of the breadth of the world, is one that lots of people fall prey to, including myself from time to time.
This is far from the last time Lucy stomps something inches away from Snoopy's nose. There's a memorable bit later where she cures the common cold by having people cough on the ground, then she smashes the cold germs flat with her feet.
I think that counts as a chagrimace, but it's wider than usual, which I think is more from Schulz's developing art style than intent. It might be argued that Charlie Brown, after some earlier strips, is due to have a couple inches knocked off of him, but of course the characters eventually take it slightly too far.
I don't think this is the first time Patty and Violet have teamed up on Charlie Brown, but it's the most egregious example to date, and it only intensifies from here. But: "Charlie Brown lives in a purple house?" That's kind of reaching isn't it?
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 1933: Tum De Tum Te Da Te Dum ♫
Read this strip at gocomics.com.
Put a crayon in Lucy's hand and the world is her kitty. Comic characters are susceptible to manias that would get real people committed. Can't you just imagine a Batman villain whose schtick was drawing lines between dots? "The Connector." It can't be any less silly than the Riddler, whose gimmick is providing clues by which he can be caught.
Every once in a while Schulz allows himself a metajoke. The strips in which people make fun of the size and shape of Charlie Brown's head are among these ("Is that a beach ball?"), as are the ones where Charlie Brown can't hide behind a tree because his head is too wide. One strip Schroeder even threatened to put in a transfer to a different comic strip. The last panel here is another such joke.
Some time later, Lucy will ask Charlie Brown if he thinks she has beautiful eyes, and, perhaps risking a pounding, Charlie Brown says they look just like little dots of india ink.
The first frame here is one of Schulz's more abstract lead panel designs.
January 24-29, 1955: Snoopy unmoors from reality
Another early Linus/Snoopy interaction. That's a rather overstated frown in the last panel there.
A simple gag about a kid not understanding an idiom. Yeah yeah, let's get to the real reason we're here:
THIS. One of the most important strips in Peanuts' entire run. The first strip in which Snoopy fantasizes about being something else. In these four panels we see the origin of the World War I Flying Ace, Joe Cool, and a hundred World Famous things. They are cute strips of course, but there are strange depths buried there.
This strip is a bit problematic mechanically though. Schulz uses a thought balloon for Snoopy's thoughts in the first panel, but in the second the balloon does double-duty as a thought and speech balloon, which makes it seem like Snoopy is speaking in English.
Charlie Brown's wide, amused smile is, in its way, as funny as Snoopy's snarl.
Lucy is willfully wrong about something else. Some notes here:
1. The subplot about Charlie Brown's paddleball is a nice touch.
2. The letters asked about and responded with are written with serifs and with little single-quotes around them.
3. Charlie Brown's annoyance that Lucy refuses to believe 'F' follows 'E' in the alphabet is interesting. He seems to care that Lucy get her facts straight, and takes it personally when she refuses to see reality. That's admirable in a way, but will probably cause him problems later in life, for there is no shortage of Lucys in the world.
When I was a kid, I would read these strips where Lucy is referred to calmly as a fussbudget, and the sarcasm flew roughly two miles over my head. It didn't help that Lucy would then respond without a trace of irony. The humor of Peanuts could be really dry sometimes.
Violet's smile throughout this strip is vaguely infuriating.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 1955: Charlie Brown's deep attachment to an ephemeral thing
Read this strip at gocomics.com.
This is one of those strip concepts Schulz returns to later. I remember there being a similar strip involving Snoopy, who befriends a snowman, and is heartbroken when it melts away. Cut to Charlie Brown and Linus, who have been watching. Linus: "Poor Snoopy, he's too sensitive." CB: "I notice he's not too sensitive to eat the carrot." I'm paraphrasing, but it happened more or less like that. Even the carrot eating is here, which makes me wonder if that later strip weren't a conscious callback on the part of Schulz.
Anyway, this strip provides a good example of Charlie Brown's developing depression. He really takes this too seriously. I mean, going so far as to beg the sun to stop shining? Wow. A futile statement of man protesting against the universe! I smell a thesis coming on....
As the first panel indicates, snowman building is an artistic statement with Charlie Brown. He's a sculptor who works in the medium of snow, and he's at least got Schroeder's admiration for it.
I wonder if this isn't some kind of statement, conscious or not, by Charles Schulz about the ephemeralness of his own medium? Peanuts will probably be around much longer than other concluded strips, mind you. There are a lot of forgotten newspaper comics out there.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
January 17-22, 1955: It Snow Trouble
Another snow pun for a title! Get used to them, it's far from the last....
We had another strip like this not long ago, where Charlie Brown didn't seem to come out of it too badly, but poor Snoopy was overwhelmed. Like in that strip, the funniest thing to me is how effortlessly Charlotte Braun belts out her words. There's a good set of lungs on the girl.
Oh no. Oh, no no no no no. What character in comicdom can get something as willfully wrong as can Lucy Van Pelt? Other than Mallard Fillmore, of course. Lucy actually knows she's wrong unconsciously, I think, which is why she sets herself against Charlie Brown's disagreement before she even hears his opinion. She's so happy with her discovery.
Notice... both here and in the previous strip, Schulz draws forward-facing characters with neutral expressions without a mouth, possibly for parity with the way he draws his characters when they face the side. He experimented with this a time or two before. He abandons it eventually.
I've had conversations with people that have gone exactly like this, right down to my depressed skulking away at the end.
Another mouthless face. And Lucy called Charlie Brown's face funny-looking.
Charlie Brown has some standard ways of expressing displeasure, which are already beginning to get set in. 1. "Good grief." 2. "I can't stand it." 3. "My stomach hurts."
Schroeder is practicing his scowl for the role.