Week of May 31-June 5, 1954: The Blanket

May 31:

I spoke too soon regarding the spelling of "coconut." Actually, it's possible this is the first time Schulz called it "cocoanut," and I misremembered. I sometimes scout ahead a few months so I know what's coming up, and I might be remembering this odd spelling from that.

Charlie Brown's distaste for coconut is one of those facts about the character that didn't really survive into the later strip.

June 1:

This is the first strip in which Linus holds a blanket, and the first one in which we're told he does it for security-related purposes, although the explicit term "security blanket" isn't in use yet.

June 2:

On the art of extracting comfort from flannel. Lucy isn't really opposed to it at this point -- in fact, I think you can probably find several strips in which Lucy is anti- and pro-blanket. Their grandmother, however, is less divided about it.

June 3:

Snoopy keeps one part of his brain awake at all time to watch for food opportunities. It's like a processor devoted to background tasks.

We get the serif-Z representing sleep here again.

June 4:

We've seen versions of this strip before. An early strip had them playing hide-and-seek, and the width of Charlie Brown's head gave him away.

In fact his head isn't that much wider than the others, it just seems to stick out more. Patty would have trouble hiding behind that tree without the sign (also because her dress extends out wider).

June 5:

Snoopy vs. The Yard: The Faucet

Even assuming the dog isn't familiar with the workings of human gardening apparatus, it's an oddly specific place to choose for a nap.

January 23, 1953: Snoopy vs. The Yard: The Newspaper

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Another strip showing the dog getting stymied by some artifact of human civilization.  These are kind of boring I think, except for panel two, which is the closest I think we've gotten to this point to the "classic" look for Snoopy, that is to say the late 50s-to-60s look where Snoopy was long, lean and drawn loosely.

By the way, sorry for being a little slow with posts, shepherding the Kickstarter project has consumed a lot of my time over the past two weeks.

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.

November 3, 1953: Snoopy vs. the yard: Attacked by leaves

Click through (opens in new window): http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1953/11/03/

That's a nice drawing of Snoopy lying down, which is a pose that modern Snoopy could never hope to assume. It does make him seem a bit larger than usual.

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So I'm currently supplying a link to the gocomics page of the strip in question. I'm including a target="_blank" attribute on the link that causes it to open in a new window by default, so at least you won't leave the blog each time you want to look at a strip.

But this causes me to think: shouldn't it be possible to do this automatically? And maybe not have it open in a new window, but inside another HTML element, or something? Didn't there used to be, long ago, an ancient website entity, something called a frame, that this page could be opened in?

But I'm not thrilled with the idea of making a site with frames in 2011. If we assume that gocomics is going to persist in their no-inlining policy until the end of time, though, then I think it's evident that we're going to have to do something to make seeing the individual strips easier. At least loading their site in a side frame would count as a page view on their site, wouldn't it, giving them the opportunity to make ad revenue off the load.

Still trying to puzzle this one through. I'm open to suggestions.

October 4, 1953: Snooopy vs The Yard: Another Realistic Bird

Unlike previous bits of suburban malice directed at the poor beagle, this one has the mental capacity to actually be contemptuous.

Those are some very good bird drawings, and Snoopy himself looks great in the second frame. Isn't that branch awfully low to the ground though?

September 29, 1953: Snoopy vs. The Yard: The leafpile

At least Snoopy isn't being splashed, tumbled, knocked about or chased this time. Just confused.

September 15, 1953: Snoopy. vs the Yard: Butterfly II

Be careful what you want!

I like this one for the variety of sounds Snoopy makes in the last one. Especially "fooey." Very descriptive.

September 14, 1953: Snoopy vs The Yard: Butterfly

It's not yard equipment, but it's the same idea; something in the world confuses Snoopy terribly. It's a light, whimsical strip.

Is that one butterfly in the last panel flying fast, or is it multiple butterflies. Are they defending the first one, or is it just a happenstance swarm? For some reason my initial reading was the former, but now that I look at it I think it's intended to be a swarm.

August 22, 1953: Snoopy vs. the Yard: The Ball

Another chapter in the tale of a poor young dog's persecution by lawn equipment.