April 9, 1952: Someone get the kid some rubber bands

Just a funny strip. The third panel seems to be a little closer to the familiar Peanuts style than before. The thing that sticks out about it, to me, is the mouth, that little line denoting how the skin of the cheek draws back as the mouth grimaces with the effort of the throw. I haven't pinned it down to anything yet, though. It just surprised me a little.

March 15, 1952: 100m Piano Toss

This strip is a variant of the same kind of sudden reaction as the turnabout strips brought up before. Tossing objects is still a common expression of cartoon anger, isn't it? Do this in real life and I don't like to think of how the police would react.

I'm pretty sure I have never heard the term "pianoforte" outside of Peanuts.

March 11, 1952: Throws like a girl

It's a fairly funny joke here, not the usual source of humor in this one. Most comics (including Peanuts up to this point), it would just be enough to stretch the first two panels here over four.

Consider, for a moment, the comic strip Nancy. Nancy is, itself, a kind of classic, an endless elaboration upon a basic set of jokes. And yet, it cannot really be said to have evolved over time. Ernie Bushmuller was a craftsman. A really good one actually; few comic strips could have maintained the level of competence he provided for Nancy over that period. That is a good word for what Nancy is: competent.

Schulz, we see here, was not interested in mere competence. We can see here that he wasn't interested in applying a formula over and over again forever, that he was engaged with his work and responding to it in an iterative manner. In this strip, he comments upon a kind of joke that just a year earlier he would have made without second thoughts. This is why Bushmuller was a craftsman, but Schulz was an artist.

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....