August 8-13, 1955: How dare they sully the good name of Crockett?

Sunday, August 7 isn't on the gocomics site.

August 7:

Charlie Brown experiencing this kind of outburst is rare, through the overall history of the strip. This is more the kind of thing the other characters would do, although CB will do it if it regards someone he really admires. Less often Davy Crockett, more often Joe Shlabotnik.

August 8:

Linus hasn't spoken a word to another person yet, but he plays baseball. (Of course, Snoopy never speaks to another person -- or rather, doesn't say things other than "Boo.") Everyone remember Schroeder-the-musician, but Schroeder-the-catcher appears frequently, if less distinctively.

August 9:

Canine prodigies are disconcerting. Sarcastic ones moreso.

August 10:

Yeah Linus, I know how you feel. The blanket hasn't become a big element of the strip yet, but we're getting there.

August 11:

How does Schroeder know about used cars? I like how the kids don't refer to the baby sitters by name, just by their attributes and reputation. It's an impersonal relationship, that between the high school student and her temporary charges. The most legendary babysitter in comics would have to be Calvin's nemesis Rosalyn. It's really difficult to picture a character like her in Peanuts, and not just because she's an adult.

August 12:

Charlie Brown has mostly laughed at this kind of rejection up to now, but this is getting more to his familiar personality from later strips.

Aside:

Since the last post, the comics world took a grevious blow when Richard Thompson, creator of the best modern comic strip going by a wide margin, Cul De Sac, had to lay down his pen due to encroaching Parkinson's Disease. I'm sorry I wasn't about to work in more references to it in these posts; it is wonderful in a way that fans of Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes will find familiar, but still manages to be distinct from both of them in both style and tone. Alice is kind of like Calvin but more realistic and much more random; Petey is like Charlie Brown except much more introverted and nervous. The strip ended just after its fifth birthday, and in far fewer newspapers than you'd expect from its extreme brilliance, but I'm still suffering from a strong sense of deja vu from when C&H closed up shop. Thompson says he's quitting because the disease made it hard to keep up with the strong deadlines of a newspaper strip, so I'm hoping, kind of like Michael J. Fox, that we haven't heard the last from him, or his brilliant creation maybe in some other form.

August 1-6,1955: Boring days in Peanuts-ville

Not a lot to say about most of these strips.

August 1:

Patty and Violet have taunted Charlie Brown with party exclusion before, but now it's starting to look particularly malicious.

August 2:

Not really a lot of joke here, I guess. It does look a little more like Snoops is Charlie Brown's dog, however. I wonder, in the future post-apocalyptic culture-to-come that treats comics as holy texts, if the mystery of Snoopy's early ownership will become fiercely-contested dogma and the subject of vicious crusades?

August 3:

That's a lot of effort Charles Schulz put into that big star on the left. Remember: these panels are blacked-out, so those stars are all made out of negative space.

August 4:

It just occurred to me, we don't see an awful lot of the Peanuts kids hanging out around water throughout the strip. I remember seeing C.B. at the seashore some time back (Patty and Violet mistook his head for a beachball), and there have been several wading pools.

August 5:

I wonder... is that tree back there the same tree, earlier in life, that we would frequently see the kids laying beneath later on?



August 6:

Charlie Brown's attitude in panel 2 is largely my own opinion on riddles. Neither of us would do very well if tasked to win magic rings from slimy cave-dwellers.

 

 

July 25-30, 1955: Fun is Good Enjoyment

July 25:

Lucy's smile in panel three is an atypical expression for her.

July 26:

Whoop? Although it's difficult to think of a better bit of onomatopoeia to use here. Maybe "whine," but that's not really a sound effect. Maybe "ouch," but Snoopy can't talk. Speaking of which, Snoopy's got another thought balloon here. I think he's finally in the phase where he mostly uses thought bubbles.

July 27:

We've not gotten huge amounts of hate out of Patty and Violet yet, although it's flared up from time to time. Charlie Brown does seem to be giving Violet cause for her outburst here. How about a little personal space, kid?

July 28:

Although Snoopy doesn't talk to the characters, they've never shown themselves (to my knowledge) to have any doubts that Snoopy understands them. Charie Brown's phrase here, "You just aren't much for doing things right, are you?", sounds idiomatic in a midwestern kind of way to me, like something that might have been floating around Schulz's hearing that he thought to call up. But that's just a guess, of course. The drawing of Snoopy running here is very nice, and the next strip shows that it's not the only way Schulz has to draw it. You can imagine pretty well what Snoopy would look like in motion from these.

July 29:

This is a very "Peanuts" kind of punchline, taking something the kids have figured out (regardless of whether it's true or not) and extrapolating it to draw further conclusions. I don't think an awful lot of strips would think to do that.

July 30:

Oooooo! Not only do we not get to get the bug's "house," presumably a hole, we don't even get to see the bug. The hyphens between the Ts in "pret-t-t-y fancy" are a good textual representation of a spoken idiom. (I guess "idiom" is the word of the day.)

Sunday, July 24, 1955: WHEN Will I Ever Learn?!

What appears to be an ordinary gag shows unexpected depths when examined more closely.

What does Snoopy mean by "WHEN will I ever learn?!" At first glance it looks like he's expressing regret that he enjoyed himself too much and, in his excitement, hit the pavement. But look at Patty and Violet's faces: they don't smile, or frown, or act even act surprised the whole time. Even in panel six their expressions are remarkably deadpan. In panels eight and nine their reaction is mostly: "Well, that happened. Lemonade?" Because of this, I propose that Snoopy's thought balloon in the last panel has more to do with disappointment at the lack of concern expressed by the human girls than any regret for going overboard.

Oh, also, this is Snoopy using thought balloons completely in the modern style, with a trail of bubbles as if talking to himself. I don't think it's absolutely the first time it's happened, but up until now, except for one or two early instances, he's either been completely wordless or used word balloons. That marks a major advancement for the strip.

July 4-9, 1955: Getting more unpopular every day

July 4:

The "fussbudget" joke continues. Despite what Lucy says this is far from the last we'll be hearing of it.

July 5:

But here we have the beginning of another running gag, that of Lucy teaching her brother about the world. This time, broadly speaking, her lesson is accurate (if a bit depressing). Tomorrow however....

July 6:

It's funnier when Lucy, who as we've already established with Charlie Brown has a somewhat tenuous grasp of the world, spreads well-meaning disinformation to Linus. It's only a matter of time before this is giving Charlie Brown headaches too.

Notice the different backgrounds in each of the panels here. I think Schulz changes them up as a way of illustrating that the "camera" in each is pointing in a different direction.

July 7:

Well, yeah. They're called adults. They still exist, even if we almost never see them in the strip.

When I first saw this strip I assumed the bike had to be a Penny Farthing bicycle or something, which would make Linus' reaction more understandable. But that's not an old-timey bike, that's a reflector on its front, or at least I think that's what it is.

July 8:

For being a comic strip about children, parents are mentioned seldom, probably because mentioning them too often might bring up questions about why we never see them.

The drawing of Lucy walking away in panel three is also a rarity; usually characters either leave the scene to the side, or they just disappear between panels and leave us to figure out they left the scene. We also have another example of serif lettering in panel 3.

July 9:

Charlie Brown is committing an error in his reasoning, conflating "not liking," with "dislike." You don't dislike people you've never met, but neither can you like them.

Yeah, I'm a real hit at parties. Bleah!

June 20-25, 1955: But is it art?

 

June 20:

A weird art error in this one, the rain is drawn in front of the word balloons in the second and third panels.

Inthe June 15 strip we saw Lucy freak out when she demanded the rain stop, and it did. Reader John Evans reminds us that there is a sequence with Linus later in which he says "Rain Rain Go Away, Come Again Some Other Day," it does, and he's disturbed by it. That sequence, compared to these two strips' close proximity, seems to imply an underlying current in Schulz's mind.

June 21:

As long as we're talking about insights into the mind of the creator, I imagine that this question was starting to weigh in as well.

 

June 22:

A comic strip? Can it be art? Now the question, if not completely settled, is at least easier to judge (despite the tremendously influential Krazy Kat), but then comics were regarded as almost a disposable kind of art form, purchased outright from the creator by a syndicate or publisher who then hired him to produce his own work, from which he could be fired at a moment's notice. Newspaper cartoonists now have an easier time of retaining control over their work thanks in no small part to the efforts of people like Bill Watterson who refused to think of their work in belittling terms. It is important to remember, however, that Charles Schulz did not have complete control over his work -- he never did regain the rights to his life's work, and throughout its entire run it was saddled with the name Peanuts, of which he was vocal in his dislike.

June 23:

Say what you want about the lacy border, it looks to me like a girl kite flyer would need to be quite skilled to keep that thing aloft.

 

 

June 24:

A back-and-forth conversation between Charlie Brown and Lucy is becoming one of the staples of the strip. Their different outlooks provide endless opportunities for humor. It is theorized by the author of Schulz and Peanuts that Lucy is based off of Charles Schulz's first wife Joyce, which might explain their their conversations are so frequent around now, as well as Lucy's growing antagonism over the years.

June 25:

Charlie Brown only added the rec room to be able to charge higher rent.

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.

June 13-18, 1955: "Dot" is a sound effect

June 13:

At this point the girls aren't always disgusted with, annoyed by or bored at the sight of Charlie Brown, as this strip shows. I think the thinness of the tree could be taken as a metaphor for the thinness of Violet's affections, which makes this strip poetic in a way.

June 14:

I had not heretofore suspected that "dot" was onomatopoeia. but it is a kind of appropriate noise for jabbing a piece of paper with a drawing instrument like a crayon or pencil.

June 15:

I expect that today's kids don't get messed up as much, on the average, during their summertime adventures.

June 16:

This is exactly the kind of thing a Lovecraft protagonist with unknown blood ties to fiendish creatures, ancient sorcerers or some godling's spawn would do, and it's also similar to such a being's probable reaction once he discovers the universe obeys his or her whims -- at least, if he didn't immediately faint from the shock.

June 17:

I think Charlie Brown just might not have been laughing at "Pig-Pen"'s ambitions. A bit of youthful can be good for a kid, although probably something along the line he'll probably have to clean up more. For example, I can't picture, say, Mitt Romney covered with dirt. (In fact, his skin looks stain-resistant, like maybe some kind of polymer.)

June 18:

Ah, the ease with which the winds of love turn when you're seven. The characters are seven now aren't they? Originally I think they were intended to be just before school age, but now we've seen some moments in school, they were probably aged to that point since school is a ripe source of storylines, although we haven't seen very many yet. (And when Rerun shows up and enters kindergarten both Linus and Lucy, being siblings, kind of have to age to make room for him.)

May 29-June 4, 1955: Ol' Aerial Ears

On gocomics.com's archive, this sequence begins here.

Sunday, May 29

I should certainly say Lucy drives Charlie Brown crazy. She has caused him to hallucinate his kite string turning into a heavy anchor chain! It's not like we can believe that was one of the "few things" Lucy had. The question remains how Charlie Brown was able to run that chain up high enough into the air so that it could ground the kite with such a resounding CLANK, not to mention how Lucy brought it to him in the-- you know what, skip it.

May 30

Pinky Lee was the star of a children's TV show in 1954 and 1955. His catchphrase was "You make me so mad!" The Wikipedia page on him notes that he collapsed on-air later in 1955, which the audience of children had assumed was part of his goofy act. This basically ended Pinky's role on the show, although contrary to rumors at the time he didn't die until 1993.

June 1

By my reckoning, this is the first time Linus has ever had an attack due to the absense of his blanket. Lucy's attitude towards her brother's flannel dependence varies from warmly supportive to fierce antagonism.

June 2

At least he didn't say Beethoven!

June 3

I spoke too soon. Good grief!

June 4

He still COULD have licket Crockett, he just had something else to do.

June 5

Snoopy powers demonstrated: prehensile ears & improved auditory reception.

 

May 22-28, 1955: Scenes from an Illustrated Childhood

Sunday, May 22

These old Sunday strips show off just what Schulz was capable of when his drawing hand was at its best. Just look at all that. In panel 6 Charlie Brown is leaping a barbed wire fence, and those cans in panel 9 can't exactly be safe to wade through either.

These strips show us a kind of iconic, idealized version of the world of kids that largely doesn't exist anymore, one made up of unfenced backyards, vacant lots, junkyards, back alleys and broken fences.

May 23

Lucy doesn't have many weaknesses, or at least ones that she'll admit to, but rollerskates are one of them.

May 24

The Peanuts characters are accident-prone.

May 25

Shades of Calvin and his bicycle here. And a scribble of ire!

A character displaying affection, love, tolerance, pleasure, joy? These things are not funny. Conan! What is funny in life?

May 26

Lucy turns into quite the feminist later on, this attitude turns out to be fairly atypical of her.

May 27

It's possible to miss it if you just glance at the strip, but the joke here is that Lucy is missing one skate, which is the one that Snoopy's riding.

May 28

Violet and her mud pies again. Old habits die hard. Y'know, I don't remember if we've ever seen any of the Peanuts kids eat one of those mud pies. I'd assume that they're just playing, but that look of distaste on Charlie Brown's face implies that he at least has considered eating one of the things. I guess kids had stronger immune systems back then.