Sunday, February 7, 1954: The nerve-wracking sled ride

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

In an unusual inversion from the norm in later strips, here it's Charlie Brown's imagination that's active and Snoopy is the realist.  I can't help but think Charlie Brown realizes his little sled ride's kind of pathetic; otherwise why would he talk it up with exclamations like "Down! Down! Down!" or "Racing like the wind..."

The chain he's using to hang onto the sled is a nice touch, as is the care Schulz uses to draw the sled.  It's very well-rendered!

The lead panels, which can be kept or left off of a strip at the newspaper's option, are a continual problem with Peanuts' storytelling.  Schulz has to write each strip so that it works either with or without those panels, which sometimes messes with his timing.  Here he presents what is probably a little too much lead-in, which slightly damages the joke.

EDIT: As Sarah Loyd rightly noticed, Snoopy is sporting a chagrimace in the next-to-last panel.

December 20, 1953: Sorry I asked!

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

I love this strip!  It presents the world of the kids in a way that makes it seem all real, like there's always a dozen things happening at once.  My favorite joke in it, however, is the one in the lead two panels, which is just a throwaway but has some pleasing off-screen violence.

The metaphorical opening panel uses Charlie Brown's trademark zig-zag shirt pattern, but the zig-zag is nowhere to be seen elsewhere in the whole strip, and is in fact a little uncommon in the strip at this point considering the kid usually covers it with a jacket in the winter months.  Maybe he was just reminding the reader of it.

There is a lot of prototype Calvin and Hobbes here, both in the snowman gag and the humorous sled crash at the beginning.

February 4, 1953: Schroeder the Ordinary Kid

Nothing to do with music at all! Even at this early date a high percentage of the Schroeder strips concern music in some way, so it's nice to see the kid have normal childhood experiences.

Sunday, November 2, 1952: I've been tricked!!

A favorite strip of mine! Also a chase, this time after Lucy who is beginning to show her true colors.

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.

January 3-5, 1952: Three strips of winter

Three strips in a row here, I'm going to condense them into one post to help keep things moving.



Funny.



Awesome.



D'oh!

Tune in tomorrow for an important strip indeed.