Sunday, December 6, 1953: Snoopy appreciates the source of beta-carotene

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

It's amazing how much care Schulz put into Peanuts' backgrounds in the old days.  Look at all the different kinds of tree, the houses, the snow and the path.  Patty has a couple of very nice poses in this one too, especially with her shovel.  Charlie Brown running up to see her in panel 4 is also very good; panel 4 overall is one of the most beautiful of the whole strip's run.  The characters, despite their stylistic deformations, are realized in three dimensions very well.

Of course dogs will eat just about anything, but is it weird that Snoopy likes carrots so much that he'd swipe one off a snowman? 

December 5, 1953: Reciprocal slobber

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

There are a few strips that notice a basic similarity between the behavior of very little kids and dogs, and by my reckoning this is the first.  I seem to remember a few strips that played this up when Sally comes on the scene, when she and Snoopy team up to steal Linus' blanket.

Why is the noise of Snoopy licking depicted as "smack," and why is it in a word balloon?

When characters stoop over, like Lucy is in panel three, it seems easy to imagine them unfolding their legs and ending up much taller than they should be.

Sunday, January 4, 1953: The Cookie-Hound

Snoopy at his cutest harasses the hapless Linus for his cookies. Eating a whole box of the things probably isn't very good for either of them.

Question for you. If Linus weren't on the scene yet, would it be suitable to use this same strip, all other things being equal, with Lucy when she was an infant? Even with her put-upon early personality, it doesn't quite seem like it would be a suitable strip for her, which indicates that the characters' do have a developed personality at this point.

November 6, 1952: Snoopy follows the trail

I'm linking this one because there's been a running gag for a little while now, one that intensifies a bit in the months to come, about Snoopy's ability to infallibly seek out someone with some kind of snack treat and beg. He carries this skill to great heights in upcoming strips.