December 1, 1951: Pork Chops vs. Stew

Not really a lot to talk about here, except for the ground in the third panel which is, unusually, blocked in solid black. Notice that you can only tell the outlines of Charlie Brown's pants there because of the incomplete shading applied to them at the edges.

November 30, 1951: However....

This strip is a kind of mirror of the first Peanuts strip, in which Shermy, in panel 3, said "Good ol' Charlie Brown" right before adding "Oh, how I hate him!"

Funny, lots of later retrospectives of Peanuts make it a point to show that first strip, but then skip over the first couple of years, the ones we're going through now. That first strip, though in the original art style,

If you pay attention, this strip marks a slight change to the characters. They've been changing slowly this whole time of course, but they're subtly taller here than before, or so it seems to my eye anyway. It might just be because they're sitting down in all the panels; usually Schulz has to cheat a little when characters are shown sitting, since the lengths of their arms and legs make it difficult to show them bending cleanly.

Noveber 29, 1951: Comic books!

The kids' love of comic books is a staple of the early years of the strip. Part of this may be due to the fact that Universal Features Syndicate published comic books in those days, in which many of their newspaper strip characters, including the kids of Peanuts, would feature. I saw an issue of their classic title Tip Top on a dealer's shelf while at DragonCon a couple of weeks ago. It was selling for around $200 dollars, if I remember correctly.

Noteworthy is the fact that, as the decades rolled by and comic books lost their prominent place in kid culture, that nothing really moved in to replace them, except perhaps television. (As we've seen, in the earliest Peanuts strips the kids listened to radio instead of sitting watching TV.) Since then there's been rock music, action movies and video games, but the kids never really caught on to those things. One can only speculate what Schulz thought about those strange advents.

November 26, 1951: Some Advice: Before Hiding, Make Sure You're Playing

How do mistakes like this even happen?

Check out the halftone in the second panel. You don't see that a whole lot in Peanuts.

November 25, 1951: Let Play the Fanfare

It's the first appearance of Schroeder's famous bust of Beethoven! Also, the first time he's said "Beethoven." It's fun to say Beethoven. Beethoven!

Technically that bust breaks the rules about depicting adult figures, but it is just a knickknack, and it's nice to see that Charles Schulz could render realistic faces too. There's so much character in that face. I think half the humor in this one comes from the different art style used to render that bust.

It seems to me that, over time, the characters get bigger. I think it comes from the slightly more mature proportions and the decreasing thickness of the lines. There's usually nothing to compare scale with other than the other characters, but Schroeder's piano and Beethoven bust give us something to judge scale by. Here the bust is bigger than the piano, and juts out over the top. Lucy wouldn't have any room to lean here. Later on the bust fits entirely on the piano, implying that either the bust is smaller or the piano is bigger.

November 24, 1951: Cute, Too

Rather a strange thing for Charlie Brown to be jealous about. The exclamation point over Snoop's head is a nice touch.

November 23, 1951: Patty & Violet Team Up

Violet's status as younger than Charlie Brown and Patty seems to have been abandoned. The two are starting to double-team him as well.

Can you believe that, at just over thirteen months of the strip in, we're over halfway through Peanuts' early period already? If you don't believe me, take a sneak peak at the strip that appears one year after this one. In the next year are introduced Lucy and LinuxLinus, and Snoopy starts getting thought balloons.

EDIT: Fixed the link. Thanks Zachary!

November 22, 1951: Starring Patty as the Queen of Hearts

It's the Scribble of RAGE! Grrar!

This seems very much like a Lucy maneuver. This seems a somewhat misogynistic strip, doesn't it? How would we feel about this if it was, say, Shermy who was his opponent?

November 21, 1951: Snoopy likes parties

Does this mean Charlie Brown now definitely owns Snoopy? I'm not sure, because he seems to be treating Snoopy as more of a colleague, an equal, than a pet. He says Snoopy has the biggest appetite of "anyone I know."

Check out Charlie Brown's jacket. It's like a suit version of Patty's dress! That pattern of lines, that continues through the fabric of clothing regardless of body contours or perspective, is not uncommon in comics and probably deserves a post off its own. This one isn't it, though.

Also, look at Patty's cross-legged pose while at the phone. It seems like an ungirlish pose, sure, but it's especially weird because Schulz doesn't cheat on the size of her foot there, and so it comes up to the length of her lower leg. It's a pose that's pretty much impossible in real life.

November 20, 1951: And They Disapprove of Baby Bottles In The Orchestra Pit

Speaking of Schroeder....

Many strips these days aspire to just the crazy stuff from Peanuts, without copying the normal strips in-between. Those strips reset the norm, regrounding the strip's world in reality, which makes it more effective when the strip takes another flight of fancy a few weeks later.