October 10, 1951: Humph!

Schulz had been heard to say that Beethoven was Schroeder's idol primarily because it was a funny word, but it cannot be denied that the idea of a young child fixating upon the notoriously stern composer adds a certain complexity to his character, which this and later strips take advantage of.

October 9, 1951: Gag

Some people complain about cloying sentiment in Peanuts, and it is true that there is some of that at times. This strip is proof.

However, I find that most of the people who complain about it haven't really been exposed to much of the strip. For every saccharine "Happiness Is A Warm Puppy" there are a hundred "Lucy Demolishes Charlie Brown Utterly, Destroying His Soul Like Some Demon Girl." For giving us all of those, I think I can excuse the occasional spoonful of sugar.

October 8, 1951: Charge

When Charlie Brown needed a direct antagonist in the earliest days, most often Patty would fill that role. Look at the look on her face in panel four here. There is no mirth in her destruction. Her kick is simply a mechanical process. It is the role of CB's toy soldiers, in this world, to be kicked, and it is CB's role to have his toys abused. This is simply the nature of the Peanuts' universe.

October 6, 1951: See how they run

With this one, I think it's time to stop posting Schroeder-as-musician strips solely on that basis. This one's still interesting for presenting a straight-forward look from Violet, which is rather uncommon.

October 5, 1951: Inconsiderate druggist

How about that spread of comic books? Were those days really all that long ago? It's hard to read it here, but I think the comic in the bottom-right corner of panel 2 is Nancy! And beside it is Tip Top, which appears to be a Universal Features Syndicate comic from that period that featured new adventures of their comic characters. (Universal Features Syndicate is Peanuts' owner and distributor.)

This is as good a time as any to talk about the Peanuts comic books. These weren't compilations; they were actual comic books with material created specifically for them. I don't know much about them, but I do know that some (maybe all?) of them have Peanuts art not drawn by Charles Schulz. I remember seeing one book strip somewhere on the web that I saved a copy of (and was probably lost in a recent hard drive crash, unfortunately) which involved Linus and Snoopy meeting a small robot that grabbed Linus' blanket, inserted it into a slot on the robot's body, made a grinding noise for a panel, then neatly pooped it out into a pile of pastel threads.

Forget about Shermy and Faron. Gimmie back Blanket Pooping Robot!

Some information on them appears to be here. Here's Aaugh.com's history and guide to the books.

October 4, 1951: Editorial judgement

How does crossing the message out in panel three result in its seamless alteration in panel four?

Oh, and happy birthday Dad!

October 3, 1951: Guess I'll go eat some worms

Charlie Brown takes a big step towards his familiar personality with this strip, in which Snoopy rejects him in order to beg for Patty's ice cream cone. The falling leaf in the last panel is a nice touch.

October 2, 1951: Year 2

He doesn't get that the adult piano is so big Schroeder's tiny arms couldn't possibly stretch to the end of the keyboard from his seat?

---

This strip marks the beginning of Peanuts' second year of publication. During that time:

The characters of Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty, Snoopy, Violet and Schroeder were introduced, and all are still in rotation, although sights of Shermy are already kind of infrequent.  We've also seen an anonymous bird (chased by Snoopy) and an unknown dog (seen chasing a car).  We've heard Charlie Brown talk about his dad, and characters have also with an unseen druggist.

Charlie Brown's already begun to settle into his eternally-pessimistic personality.  Patty is his main antagonist, and sometimes shows signs of malevolence, but not quite up to Lucy's later volcanic standards.  Violet is more girlish in general.  Shermy's pretty much a non-entity.  Snoopy is very doglike, although he sometimes gains human attributes when it suits a joke.  Schroeder was first the strip baby, but very soon became the strip musician, although he's still obviously younger than the other characters.

We've seen a fence a couple of times that CB's seen things drawn on, and he's drawn on it himself.  The characters have spoken of school, but no school scenes have appeared yet.  

Let's have another look at the first strip for comparison purposes:



Eye ovals have become thicker, characters are overall cuter, heads (except for Charlie Brown's) are less ovoid, and, although it's hard to tell with Schroeder's still ill-defined hair, its shape plays a bigger role in defining a character's head.

October 1, 1951: Visual Splendor

I like this one, mostly, because of the quality of the background art. Usually Peanuts didn't lavish that much attention to it (rightfully focusing on the characters), but earlier on there were some nice scenes. Scenes like these.

While we're here, let's take a moment to look at how the characters post in the frames. One of the things about cartooning is that there's really not a huge number of ways to draw each character, and in Peanuts this is often exacerbated by the extreme stylization of the characters.

There are only three poses in this whole strip: walking, standing, and arms-outspread. What's more, three of the panels the characters do nothing more than walk, and two of them would be identical in graphic content if it weren't for the backgrounds, and the fact that they're at the opposite point in their stride (check panels 2 and 4). Later in Peanuts' history the characters would lose some of this flexibility, so Schulz will provide the visual interest in other ways, like zooming in on one character as they sit beneath the Tree, or by having walking characters visit the Wall for a panel.

The stride is an oft-used cartooning trick to show walking: the character at side-view, slightly in the air, one leg out front and the other behind, the arms positioned opposite. But in panel 1, Schulz uses a three-quarters stride, which is rather uncommon.

The explanatory arms-outstretched post in panel 3 I like. Why does this pose seem natural to us?

October 1, 1951: Visual Splendor

I like this one, mostly, because of the quality of the background art. Usually Peanuts didn't lavish that much attention to it (rightfully focusing on the characters), but earlier on there were some nice scenes. Scenes like these.

While we're here, let's take a moment to look at how the characters post in the frames. One of the things about cartooning is that there's really not a huge number of ways to draw each character, and in Peanuts this is often exacerbated by the extreme stylization of the characters.

There are only three poses in this whole strip: walking, standing, and arms-outspread. What's more, three of the panels the characters do nothing more than walk, and two of them would be identical in graphic content if it weren't for the backgrounds, and the fact that they're at the opposite point in their stride (check panels 2 and 4). Later in Peanuts' history the characters would lose some of this flexibility, so Schulz will provide the visual interest in other ways, like zooming in on one character as they sit beneath the Tree, or by having walking characters visit the Wall for a panel.

The stride is an oft-used cartooning trick to show walking: the character at side-view, slightly in the air, one leg out front and the other behind, the arms positioned opposite. But in panel 1, Schulz uses a three-quarters stride, which is rather uncommon.

The explanatory arms-outstretched post in panel 3 I like. Why does this pose seem natural to us?