Sunday, July 19, 1953: Snoopy's come to accept the sprinkler

This strip, if your only experience with Peanuts is the later era, is striking in how it treats Snoopy like just a dog. No abundant imagination, no literary pretensions, no "world famous" anything, no Woodstock, no "Happiness is" smarm, no walking on his back legs, and no thought bubbles.

This strip is, I think, padded out a bit. Particularly Schroeder's line "We can't.. we just can't" and Lucy's "You don't understand," both of which seem kind of hollow; the only reason they don't just say "We can't because he's sitting in the sprinkler" is because that would spoil the reveal. Probably panels seven and eight could be removed and the rest rearranged to make the point in fewer panels. Remove the top line of three panels and just four remain, exactly the length of a classic Peanuts daily strip.

Still not a bad strip though. It is a funny joke in the end. Snoopy's smiling expression sells it for me.

May 19, 1953: Snoopy viciously attacked by yard apparatus

This is one of a type of strip from around this time where Snoopy is attacked by some mechanical device that he fails to understand. These strips rely on the dog being naive on the subject of human invention, which requires a certain flexibility of characterization.

Remember, this is the same dog that lives in a duplex and has been seen with a TV aerial atop his house. But Snoopy is used here more for being a dog than for being Snoopy. Later, when his personality becomes less doglike, these jokes will make less sense.

June 18, 1952: Rules for Dog Word Bubbles

- If the bubble contains English text, that is letters that are not meant onomatopoetically then it must be a thought bubble. Animals cannot talk.

- However, animals can "say" the sounds they ordinarily make. So, Snoopy can say "Arf" or "Ruff" or even "Bark."

- As we see here, Snoopy can also say punctuation. Here I believe the intent is just to show a mood. Snoopy isn't actually saying anything, it is just showing his mental state. The word balloon is technically extraneous here.

- Once in a while you'll see Snoopy say something that is borderline between the two. Some time ago he said "Heh heh," which is hard to adjudicate. Dogs can't laugh, but presumably they can make sounds like being amused, so I assume that was Schulz's intent.

- Then there was that strip in which Snoopy had a sheet over his head and said "Boo." The joke in that one was from being inexplicable.

August 21, 1951: King Neptune

This is one of my favorite early strips. Heh heh heh!