April 10, 1952: Stacking blocks

This strip is here mostly because it seems a lot like something Linus would do.

Also, while there might be an earlier example, this is definitely one of the first times Schulz uses a bent-over, upside-down, floating in mid-air character as a way of representing them tumbling through the air as they fall. This gets used most often when a character is shouting at another one or, of course, then Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown tries to kick it.

April 9, 1952: Someone get the kid some rubber bands

Just a funny strip. The third panel seems to be a little closer to the familiar Peanuts style than before. The thing that sticks out about it, to me, is the mouth, that little line denoting how the skin of the cheek draws back as the mouth grimaces with the effort of the throw. I haven't pinned it down to anything yet, though. It just surprised me a little.

April 8, 1952: Followed By Monomaniacal

I love the look on Lucy's face in the third panel. The glaring round eyes really work for that one.

It might just be the printing, or the scan, but the second panel looks like Schulz didn't completely encircle the eyes, they look more like the parenthesis eyes Lucy and Linus get later.

April 5, 1952: Nobody Loves Me

1. This is a strip that could just as easily be done in three panels. There is really no reason to have that first panel here, especially since the second panel already combines Violet sighting Patty with Charlie Brown and her remarking upon it.

2. I don't really "get" the joke to this one. Is it that Charlie Brown automatically assumes that he is the "bad?"

3. The trees blowing in the wind in the background of the last panel are a very nice touch.

4. This is the most solid example yet of Charlie Brown's emerging defeatist personality.

April 4, 1952: Snoopy's Monolith is a Wagon

Snoopy moves ever closer to developing real thought bubbles. His dissatisfaction with his dogly lot in life in increasing, too.

Snoopy's dream seems to say that, while the kids may not know Snoopy's owner, Snoopy seems to think that Charlie Brown has a position of importance to him.

April 3, 1952: How does Schroeder whistle chords?

This strip is really well-done from a storytelling standpoint. It sets up the premise, provides a comparison between CB's and Schroeder's abilities, shows Patty and Violet's opinion of those abilities, illustrates Schroeder's charisma and Charlie Brown's feelings of inadequacy, all in four panels.

Scribble of shame!

April 2, 1952: Lucy Pimps Out Her Crib

This strip is something that wouldn't work as well as a later-day Peanuts strip, since a lot of the appeal is in the illustration. The characters gained emotional maturity, but their world lost some of its physical flexibility.

Aren't those records at Lucy's feet in panel three? Didn't she just destroy Charlie Brown's just yesterday? Why can't she eat her own?

Lucy seems to be longing for sleeping in a bed, but once she gets one, she won't be able to keep herself from falling out of it for a while.

April 1, 1952: The Mona Lisa's Got Nothing

I like it whenever Schulz draws that bust of Beethoven, for how it breaks the art style, but more interestingly than that....

Take a look at that smile the statuette is sporting in its panel. Rather mysterious!

The bust of Beethoven works great as a punchline because it only has to be drawn once. For someone on a comic strip's deadline, reproducing it in detail, and consistently, would be difficult across a whole strip.

That doesn't mean he doesn't do it later on though, and in a Sunday at that....

March 31, 1952: First non-traditional layout

Newspaper comics, for all the (potentially) wonderful things about them, are also heavily restricted in format. Charles Schulz is recorded as saying that for a long time he stuck with a four panel layout because it allowed the newspapers the most flexibility in arranging them. They could be run in a two-by-two box, or as a column of single panels. But here we see him experimenting within the form by sub-dividing the panels into two sub-panels each.

It works well here because there is little speech in this one. It wouldn't exactly lend itself to Linus expounding on the Old Testament.

Sunday, March 30, 1952: Lucy's developing taste in music

Lucy is especially baby-like in this one. Since the strip has a new resident infant, it frees Schroeder up to solely be the musician. Weirdly, in this strip Lucy has probably said more than Schroeder has in the entire run up to this point.

This is the first strip to exhibit Lucy's early tendency to refer to herself in the third person. Of all the Peanuts characters, I think Lucy might be the one to change the most. Even more than Snoopy.

There are weirder things still here. Lucy looks extra creepy in the first panel up there, and her words in the next-to-last panel seem oddly chosen, if explainable by her lack of skill in the language. In the last panel Schulz finds a good compromise between the circled-eyes look and general character appeal. It is a prototype of the parenthesis eyes that Lucy would adapt for the majority of Peanuts' run, the same type that Linus has out the gate.