August 27, 1951: Baby vs. Dog

A funny strip, though a variant of the ball throwing one from a few days ago. How about Schroeder's "talk to the hand" gesture in the second panel?

Notice that, to signal the characters eating, Schulz resorted to word balloons saying "chomp chomp" and "smack smack."

Also, it's not their first appearance by any means, but check out the fancy question-marks in the second and fourth panels, which were kind of a Schulz trademark in the early days.

And: scribble of ire!

August 24, 1951: The Pitcher's Mound

This seems to be the first instance of Charlie Brown pitching. I can forgive the umpire sitting behind the pitcher for the chance to see Snoopy, in one of his earliest fully-intelligent moments, declaring a ball to CB's consernation. A funny strip!

August 23, 1951: Snoopy is overexcitable

Nice drawings of Snoopy here, especially tired out in the last panel. I think this is the first time we've seen that look on him.

August 22, 1951: That's a mean baby

The look on Schroeder's face in the first panel is fairly unique for him. Also, behold the return of the scribble of ire!

August 21, 1951: King Neptune

This is one of my favorite early strips. Heh heh heh!

August 20, 1951: It's not good to sit on a dog, anyway

Schroeder is the default baby character again here, filling in the same kind of role that would later be filled, in turn, by Lucy, Linus, then Sally. These kinds of baby jokes would decrease in number over time, presumably as Schulz's own connection with infants (such as his own young kids) diminished over time. I barely remember seeing much of Rerun's infanthood, he just sort of settled into being the preschool character.

August 16, 1951: Those immortal words

It's the first time a character is called a "blockhead."

August 15, 1951: Silhouette

It's the first time the characters have appeared in silhouette.

One measure of the quality of a comic character's design is how recognizable is its outline. It's easy to tell Charlie Brown apart from Patty here in panel three. (John Kricfalusi had a blog post about this a little while back, but I can't find it at the moment.)

August 13, 1951: Comic magazine

A prescient strip. Here's the article from inside that issue.

(Also, it's another turnabout chase strip.)

August 8, 1951: Origin of the birdbath

It's the first appearance of the birdbath, later site of many furious hockey games between Snoopy and Woodstock. It seems to be in Violet's yard.