February 9, 1952: Hut Times Any Other Number Is Hut

While not an exceedingly funny joke, this is the first inside-classroom strip, and the eventual site of Peppermint Patty's long struggle against academia.

EXTRA: The least-accurate depiction of Charlie Brown ever drawn

His shirt is much less stylish (and much more cloying), but at least the kid finally grew some hair!

Don't believe me that this is actually a drawing of ol' Chuck? See for yourself. Found on musical oddities site Way Out Junk, it's from the cover of a rendition of the music from You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Evidently they got the rights to the music but not the strip, so I'm guessing they had to purposely draw characters that looked nothing like the kids we all know.

February 8, 1952: Beware the Wrath of the Prodigy

Can't really blame Schroeder for getting angry over this one!

Two things. First, Peanuts characters seemed to mellow out a lot over time. Even the mighty Lucy rarely seemed to wear an expression of this ferocity. Second, the rules concerning the depictions of adults and their communications was much less in force here. In many later strips, you wouldn't have seen a word balloon over the radio, and the joke probably would have had to be reworked into a conversation between two of the kids.

February 7, 1952: Snob Dog

Oh come on now.

February 5, 1952: Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I've done this very thing, although in my defense I was in the kitchen at the time, and not standing out in a field far away from a stove with which to heat the can's contents. What is required here is another application of the Yossarian School of Philosophy.

February 4, 1952: Albert Payson Terhune

Albert Payson Terhune. He wrote about collies.

Daily reading time for a dog? Very cute drawings of Snoopy here by the way. Especially in the third, although it looks vaguely un-Snoopy-like.

Sunday, February 3, 1952: G.R.O.S.B.

This one is a little stereotypical I guess. It is a general Peanuts fact that the female characters are the equal of the male characters concerning strength, so they could have at least helped. (Lucy may be the same usually, but her FURIOUS ANGRY RAGE gives her super powers. Peppermint Patty is simply a mutant.)

February 2, 1952: The Rapids Under The Bridge

It helps one feel a little bit better about Patty and Violet in their cruel years to think that they have such a short attention span that they can't remain angry at Charlie Brown for more than three panels.

February 1, 1952: And I'll Rock You Away To That Sugar-Plum Tree

Isn't it just a tiny bit hard to believe that songs like this were ever popular? I think this joke is actually a little bit funnier now because of that.

January 31, 1952: Dog On Skates

It strikes me that, right now, we are about halfway between the original look for Peanuts and the "classic" style of the strip's heyday. Charlie Brown still has an oval head and solid black eyes, but his proportions are a bit less stylized. Snoopy is still relatively small compared to the other characters, but he is a bit longer. (He's still far away from the balloon animal-like look he had in Peanut's later years.)

Oh, the strip itself? There have not been a huge number of funny-cause-he's-a-dog strips so far. (The one with the TV antenna atop his doghouse has been the funniest of that lot.) Thing is, as Snoopy's personality becomes better-known and he becomes less like a normal dog, these kinds of jokes become less effective. I remember, as a kid, seeing some old compilations of Peanuts strips with Snoopy jokes and not quite "getting" them because the humor was tied up in Snoopy doing non-doglike things, when most of my experience with the character came from the days when he had almost given up dogliness altogether.

Just today I saw a copy of one of the old Fawcett Peanuts collections, flipped through it, and found the strip in which Sally laments that she can't go to school because she's not old enough. Snoopy responds in a thought-balloon that you also have to prove you're a human. I remember that strip from reading it in 1st grade and not finding it especially funny. I like it a lot better now.