Sunday, January 24, 1954: Lucy flips out

Lucy goes on a glorious campaign of destruction here.  It's the closest she's yet gotten to her malevolent destiny.

I think maybe part of the reason Schulz drew this one is just so he could draw lots of tiny little things flying around the room.  Anyway, I didn't know Violet had a stamp collection.

The lead panels, as usual, aren't needed to get the joke, although they do explain why Schroeder is involved in the mob.  (Linus is too young for such things.)  Of all the offended chasers, everyone seems to be yelling at Lucy except for Charlie Brown, who is uncharacteristically grim-faced.

January 16 & Sunday, January 17, 1954: Trials of a Baby

January 16, 1954:

Sunday, January 17, 1954:

Surprisingly many of Peanuts characters have a special talent, one that overrides the limitations of real life.  Snoopy has many such "powers."  The force of Lucy's anger (later on) is terrifying to behold.  Charlie Brown's ability to lose has already been been demonstrated while playing checkers.  And Linus has a way of making or doing things that doesn't seem quite "right."  Stacking the blocks like he does in the first strip is an example.  He's also great at blowing up balloons halfway, and other unlikely feats of what I'm going to call, for lack of a better term, dexterity.

The second strip is the first time we get something akin to a stream of dialogue from Linus.  Until now his words have been things like "dottie dottie" or loud laughs of derision in the face of Lucy's selfishness, but here are several full sentences.  Noteworthy, however, is that although his words are in speech bubbles so generally are Snoopy's, and neither character has been shown using full sentences to communicate with the other characters.

I like how big kids are represented as running in herds that clean the floor of toys in their wake, like cattle devouring whole fields of grass.

December 24, 27 (Sunday) and 28, 1953: Three with Snoopy

December 24, 1953

December 27, 1953

December 28, 1953

Three good no-thought-bubble Snoopy strips, presenting the dog as annoyance, victim and helpful friend.

November 11, 1953: Schroeder conducts in front of Snoopy, Take 2

Read this strip at gocomics.com

The previous Sunday strip had mostly the same idea, but with a different payoff.

I think this could be taken to show how careful Schulz is to mine his premises well. As I've said before, drawing a daily comic strip is one of the most creatively demanding occupations one could hope to find. Imagine the pressure of having to come up with one joke a day for the rest of your life. Schulz is showing good sense by getting additional gags out of his premises.

November 9, 1953: Get yer dog off the football field

Read this strip on gocomics.com

I think this one may be a bit too abrupt. It'd probably be more entertaining to watch Snoopy get tackled in the third panel, rather than obscuring the collision behind that huge POW splash.

I am putting this strip down as containing Charlie Brown, Schroeder and Shermy, but only because those are the only three human male characters old enough to play football.

Sunday, September 27, 1953: Snoopy vs. The Yard: The Slide

There's not an awful lot in this neighborhood that doesn't have it in for Snoopy.

That's a good question mark in the second panel. Schulz had a kind of ornate style to his type-inspired iconography: serif Zs, fancy question marks, tapered exclamation points. It's one of the little tells that the simplicity of the rendering is an artistic choice and not a cheat.

I've mentioned before that the top row in a Sunday strip are designed to be removed at an editor's option, say to make more room on a crowded comics page. Usually Peanuts will use these in a throwaway joke or just to lengthen the buildup a little, but here I think it actually harms readability a smidge to excise them. Without the top three panels here, we don't have it established that this is Snoopy's first slide, and without that knowledge his Slide Malfunction seems more like an accident than an element of his lack of slidal* experience.

* Not really a word.

September 26, 1953: That's the way it goes

Second time Charlie Brown has said "That's the way it goes" in a week.

Shermy gets a taste of the lovelorn longing that CB would adopt later. One interesting thing here is the subplot, concerning Snoopy and a Scribble of Ire, which is rather rare in a four-panel strip. It serves as a commentary on the main plot, yes, but it isn't what I'd call important. For the record, dogs don't really make good arm-rests.

Snoopy goes through the Four Stages of Annoyance here: Observation, Recognition, Exasperation and Rejection.

July 16-17, 1953: Linus, the Baby Gravity Hates

Linus falls over a lot. Yet oddly for such a clumsy child, when he manages to stay upright he shows himself capable of great feats of dexterity. I think it's due to the relative size of his head....

June 18, 1952: Rules for Dog Word Bubbles

- If the bubble contains English text, that is letters that are not meant onomatopoetically then it must be a thought bubble. Animals cannot talk.

- However, animals can "say" the sounds they ordinarily make. So, Snoopy can say "Arf" or "Ruff" or even "Bark."

- As we see here, Snoopy can also say punctuation. Here I believe the intent is just to show a mood. Snoopy isn't actually saying anything, it is just showing his mental state. The word balloon is technically extraneous here.

- Once in a while you'll see Snoopy say something that is borderline between the two. Some time ago he said "Heh heh," which is hard to adjudicate. Dogs can't laugh, but presumably they can make sounds like being amused, so I assume that was Schulz's intent.

- Then there was that strip in which Snoopy had a sheet over his head and said "Boo." The joke in that one was from being inexplicable.

April 24, 1952: More kite fail

Snoopy exhibits his developing mischievous streak, and Charlie Brown fails at life again. This is a fairly modern strip, except for the art style it wouldn't be out of place in the 60s.

I would just like to call attention to Schulz's question-marks. He drew 'em extra-fancy.

January 9, 1952: Mush! Mush!

It took me a little while to make sense of this one. At the size the strip is rendered by default in my browser, it was hard to tell Shermy apart from Charlie Brown. CB is the one driving the sled, not Shermy.

Beyond that, I think the word "mush" is interpreted by Shermy as short for "mushy."

Snoopy sure looks happy to be pulling Charlie Brown's sled. His question mark in the last panel adds a slight extra punch to the joke.

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.

December 1, 1951: Pork Chops vs. Stew

Not really a lot to talk about here, except for the ground in the third panel which is, unusually, blocked in solid black. Notice that you can only tell the outlines of Charlie Brown's pants there because of the incomplete shading applied to them at the edges.

November 17, 1951: The Smartest Dog Alive

Snoopy hasn't been appearing for a bit lately. His design is subtly different here; he's wider, his body is thicker, he's less puppy-like, and his ears are rounder. His personality also continues to develop.

The problem, or the continuing battle I should say, of drawing a comic strip for years and years is coming up with new expressive ways to draw the characters. If you don't continue to find new ways to have them express themselves then you might as well be using clip-art. The change in the way Snoopy is drawn between the second and third panels is important, to illustrate his increasing pleasure as being complimented. His uplifted tail, his eyebrows and that aura around his head increase the perception of happiness, so the effect is so much greater in the last panel when it comes crashing down.