Sunday, June 19, 2012: Head over Heels

Lucy's loud voice is again reinforced as a character trait. But we also get some of the playful and energetic Snoopy of the classic era of the strip, which became less visible later when his proportions ballooned out. He's very dog-like here.

This might be the first somersault experienced by a character solely due to a very loud voice or sound.

March 7-12, 1955: Candy and bugs

March 7

Snoopy's candy detecting powers at work again.  We've already established that Snoopy has a much longer detection range than this.  Note: both of them are probably inside here.

March 8

I've said it multiple times before but it really should be driven home: chocolate is toxic to dogs.  If we can bring ourselves to overlook that little thing, we can notice that chocolate creams are the default "good" candy of Peanuts.  Come back in two days to find out the default "bad" candy.

I seem to remember Snoopy doing the "mmmm" thing later on, and it annoying people.  I don't have a clear recollection of it though, it could be something else.

March 9

Linus is doing his googy face again.  It still looks funny to me.  I suppose this is the expression he makes when he sucks his thumb, but without his thumb in the way to obscure it.

March 10

Charlie Brown hates coconut.  Apparently, so does Snoopy.  (Their opinions on the issue closely mirror my own.)  In both this strip and March 8, the girl is used entirely as an observer, someone to which Charlie Brown can talk without seeming like he's talking to himself, or directly to the reader.

March 11

Lucy is at that magical time where she can say something that looks like pure glurge, but then turn it around 180 degrees in the last panel.  Charlie Brown exists in this strip to tip off the reader's reaction.  The second panel could be taken straight (it's a lesser reading, but possible), so Schulz put him in there to let us know it's supposed to seem sappy, and so we'll be able to see how loud Lucy is being in the last panel.

That disgusted look on his face in the second panel is not a standard Peanuts expression, I notice.

March 12

Somersault!  Aaugh!  You know, I think this might be Peanuts' very first "Aaugh!"

Bugs are not a part of the balance of Charlie Brown's back.

February 8-12, 14, 1954: The missing strips are back

The strips I mentioned yesterday as having been missing are back, so let's have a look at them.

February 9, 1954:

A nice inversion of the usual way these Schroeder vs. Charlie Brown strips go, with Schroeder proving to be the one who annoys Charlie Brown.  One of Schulz's particular observational gifts appears to be being able to see all sides of a situation.  No character is wholly admirable or horrible.

Scribble of ire!

February 10, 1954:

Snoopy vs., not the yard, but the living room.  Panel two is weird; it seems obvious that Snoopy is trying to pick the top up, but it's not something we often see Snoopy do.  Panel three isn't immediately readable, but thinking about it I think Snoopy is being pushed away by the top's rotational force.

 February 11, 1954:

Charlie Brown returns to the idea of perfection.  At first he thought he was perfect.  Now he aspires to perfection.  Soon he'll realize his faults (and those he doesn't see Lucy will be happy to point out) and despair of ever overcoming them.  Isn't this how it goes in real life?  There is no truth more clearly and bitterly seen than that which comes from disappointing disillusionment.

February 12, 1954:

Fence gags aren't common in Peanuts, but for some reason Schulz decided now was a good time for one.  There's another coming soon, with Patty and Lucy.

Sunday, February 14, 1954:

Lucy counting the stars.  This is the first one where she seems to be serious about it.  Interestingly here, the sky is not represented as solid black; instead the grass in the background is solid.  You can only really tell it's night from the characters' words and the moon hanging in the sky.

February 13, 15, 16 and 17, 1954: Lucy, Patty and Violet

The strips for February 9-12, and the 14th, are currently missing from Universal's website.  We'll skip those for about a week, then will probably try to get them from another source.

February 13, 1954:

Lucy seems to be exhibiting problems with her indoor voice.  When she's shouting, notice the post of dismay Violet is wearing.  But Lucy doesn't have "angry eyebrows" in any of these panels.
Sometimes Charles Schulz will draw a doll in one of the panels, and I'm always amazed by the effort that goes into them.  Like I said about the last strip, showing a character small isn't really like just drawing it at a smaller scale.  The doll here shows so much attention to detail looks like it could well have been a new character.

February 15, 1954:

 Here is what I meant by "angry eyebrows."
I assume this is before class started, or else I'd think Violet's outburst would cause a disruption.
The change in Charlie Brown's poses from panels 2 to 3, and from 3 to 4, are strange.  He goes from happy, to flinching like he's about to be hit, to a kind of casual leaning back.  Violet is still pretty angry in the last panel though.
For some reason my attention is drawn to Violet's exclamation in the third panel.  It doesn't have an exclamation point, and it has an apostrophe noting the removal of the "e" in "the."
This is not the first strip that shows characters in a school setting, but it might be the second.

February 16, 1954:

This is classic Lucy, and helps to show what a terror she's developing into.  Although there's no spite shown on her face it's difficult to avoid assuming some.  We also get a somersault here, although it's not the side-view one we usually get later.

February 17, 1954:

The question presented by this strip is, is Patty's long pause her intended to be hers, or are we just sort of seeing Charlie Brown's mental state illustrated?  The latter is a bit of a stretch, so I believe it's the former.
Note Charlie Brown's expression in the last panel is not a chagrimace.  It's more like a frown.

Sunday, January 3, 1954: More of Lucy's infatuation with Schroeder

Read this comic at gocomics.com.

We've recently seen more hints about Lucy's developing self-centered personality.  We've seen a little of it before in one prior strip, but this here is the true beginning of Lucy's long-running crush on Schroeder, what Charles Schulz had been known to call her "weakness."

While Lucy can be bossy, crabby and fussy, in some ways she's rather admirable.  She has a very strong personality, is (usually) very confident, and doesn't often take 'no' for an answer.  The second panel here is a good depiction of this side of her.  Generally the Schroeder strips depict Lucy at her best, although this is far from universal.

Panel three is rather abrupt if the first two panels, which newspapers sometimes remove, are missing.  The only previous hint of Lucy having a crush on Schroeder was that other strip almost a whole year back.





Most Lucy vs. Schroeder strips make the musician a bit more inscrutable.  We're usually on Lucy's side in the struggle.  That had yet to develop in this strip, which is more egalitarian in presenting clash of the characters' wants.

We get another somersault here.

December 14, 1953: Lucy goes that extra mile

Read this comic at gocomics.com.

In this strip, we begin to see that Schulz is becoming more careful about showing emotions.  It's not just the hilariously shaken image of Linus in the last panel, it's that we can't get a good read on why Lucy did this.  She betrays no satisfaction or joy throughout the process.  It's like she's just doing what her mother told her like a good little girl.  But why is she sneaking up on her blissful brother?  Why is she shouting at him?  Later on the thrust of whole strips turn on whether a character's mouth was drawn with a slightly upturned stroke.

This is the third strip to use the "somersault" visual shorthand for violent disruptive motion.  The first time was in the first football strip (which has still yet to become a yearly thing).  The second time was, interestingly, another instance involving Lucy shouting near Linus.

March 12, 1953: Head-over-heels

This is the first strip in which a character is thrown head-over-heels just from the force of some other action, usually a loud noise. We have had a case sort of like this back in the first Lucy football strip, but it didn't happen in the iconic Peanuts fashion. This is the first time in which it's mere noise that causes the tumble.

The head-over-heels motion will become one of the most distinctive elements of Charles Schulz's visual comic language. It looks natural on the page, but it doesn't animate very well; the implied force is away from the noise, so the subject can't stay on-screen long enough to read the motion well. Also, is the victim spinning, or just being thrown back? And what kind of sound should the somersault itself make?

Sunday, November 16, 1952: THE FOOTBALL

It's the first of the (eventually) yearly strips where Lucy holds the football and Charlie Brown, for whatever reason, fails to kick it. The WHOMP in the last panel echos throughout the decades; through it, we hear history.

The first time it happens, as we see, there was no malice in Lucy's act, and there's no iconic AUUGGHH either. Charlie Brown's rueful reaction in the last panel certainly seems familiar though.

I've looked ahead a bit recently, and I'm pretty certain that the next year doesn't have another football strip. We might consider it compensation that Charlie Brown ends up on his back twice in this one.

To think, Lucy doesn't consider it a good idea....