August 1-6,1955: Boring days in Peanuts-ville

Not a lot to say about most of these strips.

August 1:

Patty and Violet have taunted Charlie Brown with party exclusion before, but now it's starting to look particularly malicious.

August 2:

Not really a lot of joke here, I guess. It does look a little more like Snoops is Charlie Brown's dog, however. I wonder, in the future post-apocalyptic culture-to-come that treats comics as holy texts, if the mystery of Snoopy's early ownership will become fiercely-contested dogma and the subject of vicious crusades?

August 3:

That's a lot of effort Charles Schulz put into that big star on the left. Remember: these panels are blacked-out, so those stars are all made out of negative space.

August 4:

It just occurred to me, we don't see an awful lot of the Peanuts kids hanging out around water throughout the strip. I remember seeing C.B. at the seashore some time back (Patty and Violet mistook his head for a beachball), and there have been several wading pools.

August 5:

I wonder... is that tree back there the same tree, earlier in life, that we would frequently see the kids laying beneath later on?



August 6:

Charlie Brown's attitude in panel 2 is largely my own opinion on riddles. Neither of us would do very well if tasked to win magic rings from slimy cave-dwellers.

 

 

September 28-October 3, 1954: Beethoven, Forget it, Serif hey, I'M NOT, Fancy signals, Fancy signals and Dog explosions

September 27

September 28

As someone who's often guilty of just the thing Charlie Brown is doing here, I have to say I find this hilarious.

September 29

September 30

Lucy seems to have the ability to exclaim, not just in serif lettering, but with lowercase letters too! This isn't even the fanciest writing we'll see this week.

Charlie Brown's spirit hasn't been beaten down quite so much yet.

October 1

How do the girls hear those fancy signals? Does Charlie Brown adapt a different tone of voice? Those typefaces are very well-rendered. Schulz was a true artist, but he was a great craftsman too. All of this done for a throwaway joke one Friday in 1954. I wonder if he worked from reference typefaces when he drew this one.

October 2

(This strip is a copy of the previous one in gocomics' browse order. I don't know what's supposed to go here.)

Sunday, October 3

Those are some great backgrounds in panels one and three. They must have taken Charles Schulz a long time to do! The juxtaposition of the deceptively simple characters and the elaborate, realistic backgrounds is one of the many little joys of classic Peanuts.

November 3, 1951: Gesundheit

Not really much of a joke here, but there hasn't been a lot of Snoopy in the last few weeks.

How about Shermy's expression, with his tongue out the side of his mouth? In the strip there have been two instances when this has been used: a character is eating or wants to eat, and when a character is focusing hard on something. I'm not really sure how either usage got started. Has anyone who's hungry ever stuck his tongue out like this? People hard at work might bite their tongues, but stick it out?