Sunday, November 23, 1952: CTHULHU RISES

Blogger sometimes takes posts I've set to publish and makes them drafts instead, which once in a while results in strips getting overlooked. Sometimes it doesn't matter much, but this strip is incredibly important, so I'm using it even though it's a couple months old by this point:



This seems to be the first act of full-on spite Lucy commits that cannot be explained by familial antipathy or mere childishness. It is an act of pure evil by her, and it's glorious. Look at that little smile on her face in panel six. It's against her favorite punching dummy, too. And Charlie Brown was so happy in the throwaway panels!

We even get that "down on his luck" slanted mouth in the last panel.

Schulz had many, many positive attributes as a cartoonist, but there are a couple of things in these early days he could have used some improvement on. One of them was in varying his phrasing; here, Lucy uses the "slaughter" line twice, which is a bit awkward. This isn't the only strip in which this defect can be seen. As Schulz gains experience writing dialogue I believe these errors eventually go away.

December 30, 1952: The Disdain of a Dog

Linus is the most recent character to bear that weird, slanted frown, which turns up frequently around this time.

More interesting perhaps is that this strip clearly shows how Snoopy's design has progressed. His snout is thicker, his ears clearly rise up off his head a little, he sets a better pose standing, and he seems to definitely be a larger animal than the early form of the character. He seems a bit more like a real dog here.

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November 12, 1952: Slanted mouth #2

Here it is again, two days later.

November 10, 1952: Charlie Brown is easy to convince

Last strip featured some strife between CB and the girls, here things seem to have been patched up fairly well. Well, at least that's what the girls want him to think.

Note the look on Charlie Brown's face in the first panel! That slanted, straight-mouthed expression. It hasn't been used much up to here, but it'll start getting fairly common in upcoming strips.