Sunday, March 16, 1952: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

If your opinion of Peanuts has been determined entirely by "Happyness is a Something Saccharine" plaques, then take a look at panel 5 here. SNOOPY in an ELECTRIC CHAIR. It is also Snoopy's first thought balloons, although there are no words in these. The dog has not yet learned the rudiments of human language.

Dogcatcher jokes have been a staple of cartoons since at least the Termite Terrace days. Snoopy, being ownerless at this time, would have a special cause for avoiding the Homeless Police.

An ice cream bone? Just this one I envy those papers that clipped off the top panels.

March 15, 1952: 100m Piano Toss

This strip is a variant of the same kind of sudden reaction as the turnabout strips brought up before. Tossing objects is still a common expression of cartoon anger, isn't it? Do this in real life and I don't like to think of how the police would react.

I'm pretty sure I have never heard the term "pianoforte" outside of Peanuts.

March 14, 1952: He's not THAT snoopy

Snoopy's appearance has been gradually progressing all this time, but this strip seems like one of the more obvious changes.

The later jokes of Snoopy acting a lot like a person, and being treated like one, evolved out of gags such as this one. When Snoopy has been half-human for twenty years it is hard to get humor out of his doing things not expected of dogs, or being treated as human.

Really, what could the girls be so defensive about? They're, what, six?

March 13, 1952: Suddenly materializing chair and footstool

Lucy's fourth strip.

Where did Charlie Brown's chair and footstool in the last panel come from? Did he pull them up and sit down just so he could luxuriate in the punchline?

EXTRA: Old-school Peanuts figures

Thanks to RAB of Estoreal for pointing me to these figures Dark Horse is putting out of Peanuts characters then and now.

Of course there is nothing wrong, exactly, with the modern representations. But there is a charm in the old depictions that is missing in the newer ones, and that's especially evident in Old-School Snoopy.

The evolution of a comic strip is an interesting thing.  The Garfield of today is unrecognizable compared to the Garfield of the strip's beginnings, and that was in 1978.  In that case, they began as remarkably unattractive characters, enough so that one can only think they were intended to be ugly.  Peanuts went the other way; strikingly composed and sharply designed characters, over the first few years of the strip, transitioned into slightly more realistic, yet definitely less attractive realizations.

Why would Charles Schulz move towards lessening the cute-factor of his characters? My theory is to stave off a perception that his work was kid's stuff, which would be especially important as the strip began to lift off to philosophical heights and cultural relevance. Of course, you may have different ideas.

March 12, 1952: Lucy is top-heavy

Lucy's third strip here. She looks fairly different with those huge eyes, doesn't she? Probably added to make her more visually distinct from Violet, they don't last very long.

March 11, 1952: Throws like a girl

It's a fairly funny joke here, not the usual source of humor in this one. Most comics (including Peanuts up to this point), it would just be enough to stretch the first two panels here over four.

Consider, for a moment, the comic strip Nancy. Nancy is, itself, a kind of classic, an endless elaboration upon a basic set of jokes. And yet, it cannot really be said to have evolved over time. Ernie Bushmuller was a craftsman. A really good one actually; few comic strips could have maintained the level of competence he provided for Nancy over that period. That is a good word for what Nancy is: competent.

Schulz, we see here, was not interested in mere competence. We can see here that he wasn't interested in applying a formula over and over again forever, that he was engaged with his work and responding to it in an iterative manner. In this strip, he comments upon a kind of joke that just a year earlier he would have made without second thoughts. This is why Bushmuller was a craftsman, but Schulz was an artist.

March 10, 1952: Because he is a dog

A dog eating half of a tiny piece of candy quickly is worthy of two exclamation points from Charlie Brown?

This one's posted mostly for the haunted look from CB in the last panel. Weird.

March 7, 1952: William Tell

It's been a little while since we've seen Snoopy. So, here: Snoopy!

March 6, 1952: Three-quarters angled down Violet head

This is a fairly ordinary strip, but it's worth posting for the view of Violet's head in the third panel, which is quite interesting. The angle works pretty well I think.