Showing posts with label trick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trick. Show all posts

Sunday, February 12, 2012

April 18-23, 1955: Watson come here, I need groceries

April 18 

More of Pig-Pen's philosophy, which could be regarded either as kind of profund or as indicative of the lengths he'll go through to excuse his willful messiness.

April 19

Fun with halftone!  It definitely is possible to get mad at someone who's really neat, if they're still marking up the wall, although I suppose the Van Pelt folks could just tell people it's wallpaper.  Really freaky wallpaper.

April 20

Lucy believe, if you're losing on one front, just open up another.

April 21

Snoopy has the advantage of having a flatter head.  It'd be a lot harder for Charlie Brown to balance like that.  By the way, this strip demonstrates well how much Snoopy's body shape has changed.  He still has a little ways to go before he starts to balloon out.

April 22

You can't please all the people all the time.  There's kind of a Betty-and-Veronica thing going on between Patty and Violet here.

Charlie Brown's rather pleased with himself in the second panel.

April 23

I never got much use out of tin can telephones as a kid, beans or not.  I figured out much later that they really depend on the string between cans to be pulled tight, which it obviously isn't here.  Anyway the matter is moot, as the first panel makes it clear that whoever it is Charlie Brown is talking to is standing right off panel, well within earshot.

Tin can telephones have passed into the lore of kid life, as something that children make to amuse themselves, even though I imagine in this age of cell phones and casual texting that this type of playground technology is hardly ever put into practice anymore.  This hasn't stopped the things from soaking into our culture -- an episode of the My Little Pony cartoon (don't laugh) used one in a scene, and that "Kids Next Door" cartoon from some years back used them as an essential communications tool for its weird kind of tree fort tech.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

April 28-30, 1954: Comics, stairs and hoops

April 28, 1954:

The latest in the "Charlie Brown, Cartoonist" sequence. This one, I think, has an uncharacteristically clunky final panel. I find it difficult to imagine how Schulz could have thought CB's statement at the end works, it's very un-Peanuts-like.

April 29, 1954:

This is more like it. After the "Big Kids" Sunday strip, I think this is the first one to have a full thought balloon from Linus. I find the stairs in the second panel a little problematic, though. It's like the stairs sort of "slope" down off the side, like a carpeted hillside or something.

April 30, 1954:

Is it any wonder Snoopy forgets the kid's name? Anyway, this strip only works because of the limited size of the panels. Presumably Snoopy can see ahead off-panel, so why doesn't he notice the hoop is only as large as his snout beforehand? Maybe it's why Schulz draws him with his eyes closed in the third panel.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Sunday, August 23, 1953: Be specific with Snoopy

Peanuts

There's something of Calvin reacting to his dad in Snoopy's responses to Charlie Brown here. There's a later strip, involving a camera, that's makes this even more noticeable.

In the next-to-last strip, Snoopy's snout is thicker than usual, moving him closer to his modern appearance. But he's still got a long way to go there.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

January 29, 1952: Snoopy's Pride

Peanuts

Snoopy doesn’t stoop to begging for treats... unless someone else might get it instead.

What kind of candy is this that it’s equally suitable for kids and dogs?