November 28, 1954: CTHULHU COMMANDS IT

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

This is a momentous strip: it marks the first appearance of imposing, wrathful Lucy. While all the Peanuts characters are complex, I think it's safe to say that this aspect of Lucy's personality will grow and become the most prevalent. It's certainly the most memorable.

It is interesting, I think, that so many of Lucy's most memorable attributes have arisen so rapidly, and over consecutive Sunday strips. Last week we saw a particularly extreme example of her fussiness. The week before saw the first really empathic treatment of her affection for Schroeder. Schulz and Peanuts puts forth the theory that Lucy's character (other than some early bits inspired by their young daughter) was adapted from Charles Schulz's wife Joyce. If we accepted that, then these strips might suggest some marital strife at the time.

It is my own theory that, when forced to create a lot of material over a long period, that it's impossible to avoid revealing and using aspects of your inner self, that eventually it comes out onto the page one way or another. However, I don't think it's necessarily the case that we can draw a direct line from Joyce to Lucy. I think a canny creator will obfuscate matters, and end up combining aspects from different people to write his characters. Still, the rapidity with which Lucy is approaching her mature form suggests (but certainly doesn't prove) Schulz had some kind of breakthrough or epiphany as he was drawing these strips.

Some meta stuff:
Sorry the blog has been slow lately. I've been trying to catch up with old projects (especially In Profundis), and it's left me a little bereft of energy. Am plugging away at them though.

Sunday, January 24, 1954: Lucy flips out

Lucy goes on a glorious campaign of destruction here.  It's the closest she's yet gotten to her malevolent destiny.

I think maybe part of the reason Schulz drew this one is just so he could draw lots of tiny little things flying around the room.  Anyway, I didn't know Violet had a stamp collection.

The lead panels, as usual, aren't needed to get the joke, although they do explain why Schroeder is involved in the mob.  (Linus is too young for such things.)  Of all the offended chasers, everyone seems to be yelling at Lucy except for Charlie Brown, who is uncharacteristically grim-faced.

November 15, 1951: The Girls of Wrath

It's been less than a year since sweet little Violet was introduced, and look at how well she hates Charlie Brown now.

Funny, if Violet and Patty didn't pick up their disdain for CB, then maybe it would have seemed less cruel over time, but probably the strip wouldn't have picked up the depth with which it is remembered for today. Little kids doing funny things day after day is funny, but it's not going to be remembered.

There are plenty of comic strips out there, some as old or even older than Peanuts, where the characters just sort of bumble along amiably. Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith, Garfield, which characters in those strips really hate each other? Which characters experience unrequited love? These are the aspects of Peanuts which are rarely copied. Everyone instead goes for Snoopy.

I recognize that there may be some selection bias in here. It might not be so much that people don't attempt to attain some of Peanuts' emotional depth, but more that those strips are less likely to be picked up for syndicates who care more about merchandising rights and greeting card sales than complex characters. In a way, part of Schulz's genius is that he was able to get it into papers. If Peanuts had started out the way it would become a few short years later, would Universal Features Syndicate have still bought it?

November 10, 1951: The claws come out

Another unexplained burst of rage from Patty and Violet, who in later strips would become almost defined by their disdain for Charlie Brown. When I was a kid reading 50s and 60s Peanuts strips in compilations, I thought the characters existed mostly to hate him.

This one implies that the two characters were reacting to something distasteful Charlie Brown did. Is it possible that the characters were always considered to be reacting to something CB said, offscreen, but in later strips the setup was just left out to save space?