Showing posts with label spaceman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spaceman. Show all posts

Sunday, January 29, 2012

March 27-April 2, 1955: The Martian Chronicles

March 27

 A fairly intriguing sequence this week, continuing the prior spaceman strips.  Schulz gets some good mileage out of halftone shading, a system which I don't think I recall him using much outside of these strips.  Maybe he got given a free sample of halftone transfer sheets or something and figured, in a thrifty midwestern sort of way, that he should at least get some use out of them.

March 28

More halftone language gags.  What sound is Charlie Brown actually producing in these strips?  I like to think it's like radio static, but that's difficult to shout like in the third panel here. 

March 29

 Whatever sounds C.B. is actually making, Lucy seems to be learning to understand it.

March 30

And to translate it!  But this all is simply a throwaway joke for CMS, something to use one week then never refer to ever again.

April 1

 This strip proves that the halftone speech effect is not a representation of distortion provided by the helmet but some sound Charlie Brown was actually making.  Lucy takes the opportunity to rag on C.B.'s round head again.

April 2

 Hey kids, don't try this with a cat!  I love how Schulz leaves the actual rubbing undepicted -- you can tell what happened just from context, Snoopy's fur, and the look on Snoopy's face.

Friday, December 2, 2011

February 28-March 5, 1955: Everybody look down, it's all in your mind

February 28
The phrase "Good Ol' Charlie Brown" was used in the very first Peanuts strip, and continues to show up from time to time.  For a long while it shared the lead panel with the title.

March 1
This is the beginning of a sequence in which Charlie Brown pretends to be a spaceman.  I like the retro-look of the helmet, I might have to use that somewhere.

March 2
An often under-noticed problem with wearing glass space helmets on planets with both atmospheres and mischievous little girls.

March 3
One of my favorite things about the spaceman sequence is the straight face Charlie Brown keeps through most of it.  We have another example here of a character looking slightly silly when they look directly up.

March 4
Well, almost all of it.  Charlie Brown takes a lot of guff all because his head is styled a little differently from the others.

March 5
This repeated strip is probably a problem with gocomics.com's archive.