October 23, 1951: Finding only half a worm

Another Calvinesque strip, right down to Charlie Brown's angular smile in the last frame. I can picture Calvin doing this to Susie very clearly.

The outline of the tree in the third frame seems rather artsy for Peanuts. It's a nice effect though.

Meta: Strips visible again

Just letting you guys know that Comics.com's site has been down over the weekend and that caused inlined images to not appear on the site. They seem to have gone back up some time yesterday, so you might want to go through the last few days of archives to see what you missed. (I try to do these in batches some time in advance, so the posts were made before the strips vanished.)

Anyway the site seems to be back up and strips are appearing again. I hate being beholden to Comics.com's somewhat iffy webmastering, or linking to a place offering videos of something called "TVPigs.com", but it's what's legal.

In other news, I've been at DragonCon for the past weekend. Unfortunately I didn't find the artist's room until the final day of the con this time, and just before closing, so I sadly missed seeing Jason Yungbluth, the "Weapon Brown" guy this time. I did manage to meet Bob Burden, creator and writer of Flaming Carrot. What an awesome guy.

October 22, 1951: You dig?

I find this one to be pretty funny. It's just the image of Charlie Brown digging furiously right behind Patty in order to evade her finding him in Hide-And-Seek. It's a well-constructed punchline too, with CB's words playing off of the traditional H&S line.

October 19, 1951: Christmas Tree Prototype

I've been trying to skip over a few strips here and there, since if I keep posting every Peanuts strip we'll never be done, but it's hard when things like this keep cropping up. It's one of the rare Shermy strips with no sign of Charlie Brown, it's the first mention of Christmas in Peanuts, the characters are outside of their usual attire, and most of all, we have a Christmas tree that seems like a prototype (without decorations and considerably more needles) of the one from the famous Christmas special.

It's enough to make you want to gorge yourself on Dolly Madison cakes, isn't it?

October 18, 1951: I'm sure Hobbes could think of something

I've mentioned before that, as I go through these, at times Calvin and Hobbes seems like it must have been directly inspired by early Peanuts. The characters are of similar proportions to the kids in C&H, and this bath-avoiding trick could have come directly from Calvin's playbook.

It's not a sure thing, but it does seem like it might be possible.

October 17, 1951: Quicksandbox

I just like this one. I make no excuses.

October 16, 1951: A familiar joke

The premise of this joke should seem somewhat familiar, as Patty and Violet behaved in a similar way in a previous strip, except they were talking about how sweet and gentle girls are.

October 13, 1951: Bang! Bang!

How about Charlie Brown's look of annoyance at the mention of House in panel two? Or his rather overplayed enthusiasm for (singular) Cowboy and (plural) Indians in panel three?

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.