Charlie Brown's pose in the last panel is not the kind of thing he'd be seen doing in later years of the strip. There's still something of the old, more confident Charlie Brown still around.
Charlie Brown's pose in the last panel is not the kind of thing he'd be seen doing in later years of the strip. There's still something of the old, more confident Charlie Brown still around.
Even Snoopy's vaunted candy-detection abilities have their limits. Serif Z! Also, a serif'd "sigh," in lowercase.
This isn't the first time Lucy has responded to a direct refutation of her beliefs with a non-sequitur counterattack. Lucy's not the sort to waste too much time on introspection.
Comic images from gocomics.com.
Somewhat uncharacteristically, Pig-Pen gets angry at the way people refer to him here. It's a bit difficult, through all the grime, to read his expressions of ire. I'm not quite sure I get this strip though -- I sense there's something about it, maybe some context from the time, that I'm missing. I'm not actually sure the girls are judging his appearance, although if they're not then why would Schulz use Pig-Pen here?
I think Schulz spelled it "SKWEEK" in the third panel just to mix things up a bit. We get another funny drawing of Snoopy here, who is already the most plastic of the Peanuts characters.
My favorite thing about this strip is the slight irregularity in Snoopy's jaw in the third panel, indicating Snoopy chewing. Lucy's mouth seems to be missing in the first panel.
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.
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.
Lucy believe, if you're losing on one front, just open up another.
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.
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.
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.
Charlie Brown doesn't have nearly the fixation on D. Crockett as Schroeder does on Beethoven, but his embarrassment makes the strip.
At first this seems like another joke on the size of C.B.'s head, but really any of the characters could see around that thin tree. The angry look on Lucy's face is adorable.
There are a handful of strips that establish that Schroeder isn't simply a child prodigy, but actually has a music career. Lucy's general apathy towards music makes her choice of crush an odd one; Schroeder doesn't actually have much personality other than his music.
The first line drive Charlie Brown ever dodged (although it looks more like it bowled him over, dodging is how it's described in later strips).
This is more of a Lucy kind of strip, but neither her right field position nor her incompetence at baseball have been firmly established yet.
For some reason, I can easily imagine one of Thurber's dogs in Snoopy's place here.