February 6-13, 1955: Square Balloons and Valentine's Day

We have a fairly uninteresting Sunday strip to lead off, so I included the following week with it. And then just to go that little bit farther, I included the next Sunday strip in with it.

Sunday, February 6

Well, they can't all be winners. Although the sight of a snowman with extremely long arms is kind of amusing. Next!

February 7

More of Linus' square balloons. This does make it a lot easier to store them. By the way, I like how the cartoon convention that blown-up balloons automatically float upward is ignored here. People don't typically exhale helium dammit.

February 8

I wonder if Charles Schulz drew this one in response to letters asking Violet's question.

February 9

This is a good example of something Schulz is good at, taking an absurd premise and elaborating upon it entertainingly. I believe it's not impossible to create a balloon that would blow up into a cube, but I don't know if you could do it with just latex.

February 10

We've seen Lucy at the piano before, and we've seen Schroeder cut her down, but this, I think, is the first time when the setting retreats into the background and it's really settled into the Schroeder/Lucy formula. This strip could just as well shown up ten years later.

February 11

Chagrimace. More willful ignorance from Lucy. I guess some skepticism is healthy, but what a thing to be skeptical of.

February 12

Every year, thousands ones of children accidentally construct cages around themselves using building sets. Won't you please give today to the cause of outlawing these horrible toys?

Particularly noteworthy: this is the first time Linus makes an utterance that isn't obviously either baby talk or an internal monologue. From here, it's only a matter of time before he starts quoting the Old Testament.

Sunday, February 13

That car in the first two panels is entirely a throwaway, but it helps to underscore just how much the world has changed in the years since 1955.

That's an uncharacteristically mocking attitude from Schroeder in panel 2.

This is the first strip that focuses on Charlie Brown's problems with Valentine's Day, I think. Although the object of his affections isn't the Little Red-Haired Girl, this is definitely the kind of silly mistake he'd make with her later.

January 31-February 5, 1955: Charlotte Braun terrorizes the neighborhood

January 31, 1955

Charlotte meets Linus. This may actually be the only strip that features the two of them. Unlike Pig-Pen, who has a similar kind of gimmick attribute, Charlotte doesn't stick around for that long. This may be her last hurrah in fact.

February 1

The problem with Charlotte Braun is that she doesn't have much of a personality beyond loudness. Pig-Pen is so comfortable in his own skin that he kind of transcends his gimmick. Charlotte's gimmick lends itself to obnoxiousness though, so as Lucy becomes bossier she kind of steals Charlotte's niche.

Thinking about how Charlotte Braun disappears from the strip leads me to brainstorm completely made-up Peanuts characters who have similar one-note gimmicks. Maybe a girl who has really big hair? One who walks loudly wherever he goes?

February 2

I've noticed that this mistake, of assuming the range of one's experience matches that of the breadth of the world, is one that lots of people fall prey to, including myself from time to time.

February 3

This is far from the last time Lucy stomps something inches away from Snoopy's nose. There's a memorable bit later where she cures the common cold by having people cough on the ground, then she smashes the cold germs flat with her feet.

February 4

I think that counts as a chagrimace, but it's wider than usual, which I think is more from Schulz's developing art style than intent. It might be argued that Charlie Brown, after some earlier strips, is due to have a couple inches knocked off of him, but of course the characters eventually take it slightly too far.

February 5

I don't think this is the first time Patty and Violet have teamed up on Charlie Brown, but it's the most egregious example to date, and it only intensifies from here. But: "Charlie Brown lives in a purple house?" That's kind of reaching isn't it?

Sunday, January 23, 1955: Charlie Brown's deep attachment to an ephemeral thing

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

This is one of those strip concepts Schulz returns to later. I remember there being a similar strip involving Snoopy, who befriends a snowman, and is heartbroken when it melts away. Cut to Charlie Brown and Linus, who have been watching. Linus: "Poor Snoopy, he's too sensitive." CB: "I notice he's not too sensitive to eat the carrot." I'm paraphrasing, but it happened more or less like that. Even the carrot eating is here, which makes me wonder if that later strip weren't a conscious callback on the part of Schulz.

Anyway, this strip provides a good example of Charlie Brown's developing depression. He really takes this too seriously. I mean, going so far as to beg the sun to stop shining? Wow. A futile statement of man protesting against the universe! I smell a thesis coming on....

As the first panel indicates, snowman building is an artistic statement with Charlie Brown. He's a sculptor who works in the medium of snow, and he's at least got Schroeder's admiration for it.

I wonder if this isn't some kind of statement, conscious or not, by Charles Schulz about the ephemeralness of his own medium? Peanuts will probably be around much longer than other concluded strips, mind you. There are a lot of forgotten newspaper comics out there.

Sunday, January 19, 1955: Nervous energy

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Charlie Brown started out very slightly antisocial. Now he's moved into obsessive compulsive disorder. He's shown some signs of depression, but it hasn't really set in yet. The market isn't yet large enough to support five cent psychiatrist booths, but it's coming.

January 3-8, 1955: It snow problem

January 3

Snoopy vs. the Yard: Snowflakes

January 4

This is the first sign of strife between Lucy and Linus concerning Linus' blanket. Still, Linus' holding onto a security blanket hasn't been presented in anything other than positive terms otherwise -- this seems to be more Lucy selfishly claiming Linus' property as her own than shame or anger that he's carrying it around.

January 5

Lucy might have just a touch of OCD....

January 6

It is funny when a character defines a trait so completely that it causes extraordinary things to occur. Pig-Pen seems quite pleased by his accomplishment, and even the snowman itself seems happier than average.

January 7

Lucy's mood continues to sour. Although Linus hasn't spoken much yet, we can already see their relative ages beginning to approach each other.

January 8

It's like, the snow might all melt tomorrow, so might as well get your snowman quota for the year out of the way now.

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It's becoming harder to find insightful things to say about every strip, and it was never the purpose of the blog to re-publish every strip anyway, so it is probable that soon we'll go back to only notable strips, of which there are still a good number at this point.

January 7, 1954: Anyone want to buy half a snowman?

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Wow, that's a smug look on Charlie Brown's face in the third panel.  Whatever happened to annoy Patty, anyway?  The "inside" of the snowman is shaded for some reason, like it was filled with chocolate.  The carrot and buttons are missing, so it actually looks like Patty took slightly more than half of it.

Chagrimace!

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.

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? 

January 15, 1953: Modern Snowman Art

This is another of those posts that Blogger shuffled off to the Drafts folder without telling me:



Another snowman strip. Peanuts is becoming a bit more topical. But more interesting than that is the way Charlie Brown is drawn in side-view, especially in the third panel, which is closer to the classic (as opposed to early) Peanuts look than ever before. When viewed from the front it's less obvious, since his eyes are still pretty far apart from that angle.

Sunday, December 28, 1952: Forgetting something

Lucy's expressions and poses here seem somehow unLucylike. Especially with that dopey grin she wears in panel four.

The foolish one here actually turns out to be Patty for suggesting it in the first place.

November 13, 1952: The snowdog

Another strip in which Snoopy's human-like qualities form the punchline. I've said before, some of these strips seem like prototypes for the many snowman jokes of Calvin and Hobbes. (This isn't one of those, though.)

February 20, 1952: OMG NEU CHARACTAR

Hey everyone meet Olsen!

I can't say he lasts very long. Especially once the sun comes out....

January 22, 1952: I bet she has a darkroom too

Overall the early Peanuts strips hold up fairly well. But there will eventually come the day when most people won’t know of the sometimes complicated decisions needed to take a physical photograph.

January 15, 1952; Snow-cial Injustice

There’s even a frowning face on the dejected snowman.

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.

New Year's Day, 1952 : I think I see why Patty hates Charlie Brown now

I think Patty is fully due that Scribble Of Ire in the last panel.

December 20, 1951: Snowman Custody

December 14, 1951: She throws like a...

Setting aside the question of whether Violet's throwing range is realistic, this is a good example of the kind of strip that fueled Peanut's early popularity. It's just funny. Everything about it. The surprised pose from Charlie Brown in the first frame, the determined look on Violet's face throughout, the wide smile on Charlie Brown's face in the end, and the frustrated reaction from Violet.

There are a lot of funny strips coming up....

December 12, 1951: Sleeping In The Snow

Snowman shenanigans is another thing Peanuts has that Calvin and Hobbes appropriated. Although to be fair, Watterson took it to lengths that approach the sublime. Peanuts could get quite dark, but Charlie Brown never did anything like the uproarious Snow Goons sequence, or any of the one-off snowman chamber of horrors strips.

EDIT: Argh, forgot the embed code. Fixed now. Thanks Eric J for pointing this out.