Sunday, March 21, 1954: Eight stages of grief

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Beginning with panel eight:

1. Shock
2. Disbelief
3. Confirmation
4. Anger
5. Blankness
6. Taking off your shirt(?)
7. Wide-mouthed frowning
8. Sighing

They might not be the official stages, but they work for Charlie Brown.

This is possibly the most directly hostile act so far seen in Peanuts.  It would be worthy of Lucy.  There are no extenuating circumstances, and nothing sets Patty off, yet she accomplishes her self-appointed task with relish.  It's kind of out of character.  Even when she's part of the team act with Violet against CB, their methods are less overt.

Switch the gender roles here and the strip would turn out quite different.  Even this early, it doesn't seem to be in Charlie Brown's nature to do something this mean.  It's the kind of thing Calvin might do to Susie, but not without some form of judgmental comeuppance from the cartoonist.

Sunday, November 29, 1953: Charlie Brown should see this

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Lucy's joy at being the best at jumping rope is wonderful.  Panel 2 is a bit strange for its abstract ground, but it works.  Panel 4 is terrific though, even if, when you look closely at it, Lucy's rope jumping isn't as fluid as it appears at first.  It's really several different, unconnected images of her jumping rope presented together in such a way that it scans as a continuous stream.  It does further the illusion of her skipping rope with a forward motion though, which is important since one jumping rope in place cannot come across other people.

He put so much work into this that I almost feel embarrassed to notice there's a small mistake here in the strip construction.  If you remove the top panels (like some newspapers do) the joke becomes much weaker, since Linus reaching 700 jumps isn't as impressive if we didn't know Lucy was so proud because she hit 600.  The boldface on "SEVEN HUNDRED" loses its relevance.  The strip is still understandable in that Lucy's change in demeanor implies that her brother has surpassed her.  I suppose, in that regard, the knowledge that she had reached 600 is extraneous information?

EDIT: Fixed gocomics link.

November 24, 1953: Charlie Brown *still* has a big, round head

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Maybe I should start categorizing these.  This is a type of joke we've seen several times before, beginning with the beach ball strip.  That began as a kind of comment Schulz made about his art style.  This is Lucy's second time making a joke at the expense of Charlie Brown's head.  The "WHEE!" is new however.

This is a chase strip, but it's not a "turnabout" strip because Charlie Brown has a reaction shot in the penultimate panel.

April 22, 1953: Another chase strip

Usually turnabout/chase strips only concern two characters, but Patty in this one is just a bystander.

So, let's return to the subject of the implications when one character chases another. Why does a character do so? It usually happens when the chased insults the chaser, or uses an exceptionally bad joke, usually appears angry while chasing, and it is implied that the chaser seeks violence. (Otherwise, what would that character do if he catches the other? Make him or her see reason through argument?)

Because of this, when a girl chases a boy it is funnier than when a boy chases a girl. We have reason to believe that Schulz saw it this way too; he has been recorded as saying a girl punching a boy is funny, but a boy punching a girl is disturbing.

The implications here are slightly allayed due to Lucy's spirited "WHEEE" in the last panel. At the very least she doesn't seem to feel threatened.