November 1, 1951: Money or Eats

It's that profile doorstep scene that would play a role in so many later strips. I don't think this is its first appearance though.

"Tricks or treats, money or eats," did Trick or Treaters really use that line? Seems awfully mercenary to me. Around here I don't think it's common for people to give money for Halloween.

October 31, 1951: Halloween #1

This is actually not Snoopy's first instance talking! The first was another strip, coincidentally also a one involving costumes, in which he, covered with a sheet, says "Boo!" That's some vocabulary that dog has.

This is a pretty silly strip, but I like it. The fancy shadow on the first "Boo" is probably a first for the strip.

By the way, we can tell it's Violet beneath the sheet through simple process of elimination. There are only five human characters right now, and Schroeder's still too short to be confused with the other characters.

October 30, 1951: The Day Before Halloween

Like the hiding-behind-the-tree and floating-beach-ball strips before, it's another strip making fun of Charlie Brown's appearance, which only makes sense if the characters seem each other as the reader sees them, that is, as stylized cartoon characters and not flesh and blood.

October 29, 1951: Ghosting days

This is a predecessor of Schroeder's "X days until Beethoven's birthday" gag. It's also another reference to a real-world day, in this case Halloween. The extraneous "boo" in the last panel is one of those things that's funny for no real reason. It's like he just added it as an aside.

October 27, 1951: Why am I reminded of Mr. Bean?

Notice how she goes effortlessly from viewing Dolly as affection object, to melee weapon, then back to affection object.

Why did Violet leave the doll on the ground where it could be run over by a tricycle, anyway?

October 26, 1951: Could someone PLEASE help this poor girl out?

She's labored under this delusion for almost a year now. You're not supposed to EAT them, Violet!

October 25, 1951: How do you pronounce that?

♥?

The heart-in-a-balloon is kind of a manga-ish touch, but it does read fairly well. No, this doesn't count as Snoopy speaking, or even thinking, although it's a step in that direction.

October 24, 1951: Dog vs. Toy

We've not seen much of Snoopy lately, so here. It's not really a very special joke, but we do get to see a little bit of a fang on Snoopy in the third panel.

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.