May 2, 1952: When Schroeder Met Snoopy

I believe Snoopy and Schroeder have been in the same strip before (a Sunday baseball one), but this seems to be the first one in which the two interact.

I suppose we should be thankful that Snoopy isn't a musical prodigy too.

May 1, 1952: Glub

The inverse of the "girl cares more about Snoopy than she does boy" joke we've seen before.

April 30, 1952: Smaller characters

This strip seems a little under-depicted. Watching Snoopy sliding to a halt in the third panel seems abrupt without seeing him run in the second panel.

Look at the first panel here. The characters viewed from a distance are rendered a little more simply to simulate the increased distance from the reader. Particularly, Lucy's eyes are simple dots instead of circles, making her look a bit more like modern Lucy.

April 29, 1952: The birth of Charlie Brown's insecurity

We've seen hints of it before, but this is the first one in which Charlie Brown seems actually delighted just to be included with the others', like by default he is some kind of pariah, shunned by all.

This is also the first strip in which Lucy is used as a background character. It might also be the first strip in which Schroeder is used as such. That's an important step towards promoting them to full kid-hood.

April 28, 1952: Adult word-balloon!

Schulz probably used one of these rarely-seen adult-spoken word balloons due to the difficulties in depicting muted trumpet on the comics page.

Lucy's eyes are growing out of their wide-circled phase slowly.

Sunday, April 27, 1952: That was sensational, Lucy

Lucy refers to herself in the third-person again here. I'm glad she grew out of that. That is not the only other thing, of course, that is different about her here. Between the wide eyes, tendency towards accidents and meek demeanor, there is probably no other character in Peanuts that changes so much between its conception and final version. (Well, except maybe for Snoopy, but that is a question for later....)

I read a lot of Peanuts back in first grade, for our school's library had a good collection of 50s and 60s Peanuts compilations. In a way, these early strips feel more like "real" Peanuts to me than the strips from the 80s and 90s.

I kind of miss that people don't use words like "sensational" in casual conversation these days. Or, if they are, they're not in the conversations that I tend to have.

April 24, 1952: More kite fail

Snoopy exhibits his developing mischievous streak, and Charlie Brown fails at life again. This is a fairly modern strip, except for the art style it wouldn't be out of place in the 60s.

I would just like to call attention to Schulz's question-marks. He drew 'em extra-fancy.

April 23, 1952: The largest scribble of shame yet!

There are a lot of strips about arguments and their nature right now. Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography notes that he got a lot of ideas for the strip from his social circle, including characters and pastimes, so presumably this strip about arguments originated from his observations of real arguments in his group.

It is a little-known fact that Charles Schulz started a second, short-lived comic strip later on, called It's Only A Game, the U.S. Acres to Peanuts' Garfield. My guess was he started it as an outlet for many gaming-oriented ideas sparked by his social circle that would be out of place in Peanuts.

April 22, 1952: How undignified

Snoopy's expressions in panels 2 and 4 are cute. Of particular note here, this strip is rather busier than the standard four-panel Peanuts episode, with the "subplot" of Patty looking for the piece over to the side.

Note, on Comics.com's site, the day before is a reprint of this strip. I don't know what strip is supposed to be up for the 21st.

Sunday, April 20, 1952: Strange mystery game

In this strip from the early 1950s, the kids are playing some bizarre game the origins of which being long lost to time. It appears to involve throwing several "horseshoe"-shaped objects (themselves artifacts from some activity or process now unknown to us) towards a stake stuck in the ground in an attempt to score a "ringer."

Judging from their progress, it seems likely that the kids must still be playing their game today.