June 2, 1952: Sore Winner

I imagine that Puerto Rico would drive the poor girl insane.

Sunday, June 1, 1952: Don't let him bluff you!

This is one of my favorite Peanuts strips of all. It's just really funny. I've related this one from memory to people on several occasions. Artistically it's pretty good too, the characters don't look like disassociated images that don't relate to each other except by proximity here, which I think is a problem sometimes with Peanuts. Look at Snoopy jumping up on Charlie Brown, and the two running around the tree. I think this is Peanut's first really great Sunday strip. It all works extremely well here. Schulz must have been pleased with it himself, I think, and yet in the cartooning biz there is no time to bask in the glow of a well-made strip; it's always, immediately, on to the next one.

Notice Snoopy gets a thought balloon here containing English words (his second ever), but it isn't the traditional style. It has a tail here. Snoopy's reaction is priceless. "Can this be true?"

And in terms of construction this is also an excellent strip. It's one of the first Sunday strips which tells a complete story instead of a collage of related jokes. Notice how Charlie Brown and Snoopy's positions have become Patty and Charlie Brown's, respectively, in the last panel.

May 31, 1952: I RIDE YOUR TRICYCLE

There is just something very blatant about Patty's commandeering of Charlie Brown's tricycle. He loves his trike and pleads about how he was looking forward to tooling it around, but to no avail. She rides off, the look on her face indicating that she spares not a thought about CB's opinion. She feels no shame, and neither does she feel vicious pleasure. It is a tricycle; Patty likes riding tricycles; anything standing in her way, then, of riding the tricycle is an obstacle to be overcome.

This is really more of a Lucy move, but she has yet to come fully into her infernal powers.

May 28 & 29, 1952: Two strips about baseball

In the first of these two strips Charlie Brown is catcher and Shermy is (I assume) pitcher, but the curse of CB's team is already beginning to take hold. The other strip is the first record I've noticed that CB's team usually loses, and the first time he's noticeably upset by this.

May 30, 1952: Pride in ownership

Schroeder has expressed fewer words in the strip than Snoopy at this point, and yet he has money to pay off his piano. Hm, and somehow he was able to buy it on installment in the first place.

May 27, 1952: A new voice is (not) heard in the land

Snoopy gets his first thought balloon that contains English words.

This must have been a hard decision for Schulz. It isn't just that Snoopy is the dog character, it's that, until now, we never found out what he was actually thinking. We usually found out through his pantomime actions: laughing, angry looks, dancing, and so on. Having a character like that can be useful from a joke-writing standpoint. Now, he can just directly tell us, and so if he doesn't the joke doesn't quite work.

And yet, it is obviously a good choice for the character. If we weren't told what's happening inside Snoopy's head, then his later imagination sequences would become a lot weirder. That is to say, his thought balloons are what make those strips comprehensible, and this possible. Those flights of fancy are one of the most distinguishing and fondly remembered aspects of Peanuts. That put this strip here among the most important ones in the entire sequence.

May 26, 1952: Let's Remember Them When

Many times now I've mentioned how this strip seems like modern Peanuts, or this other strip seems like something Schulz would have drawn years later, or Charlie Brown seems depressed in this one like he does later on, or so forth.

In this strip it is particularly strong, I think. It is the interaction of two characters, one of the exhibiting a personal quirk, and understatedly referring to it in the last panel.

And then, why shouldn't we be having this feeling more and more often right now? Before our eyes it is transforming from early to classic Peanuts. Linus will be showing up before too much longer, who I think is the character who best illustrates the difference. Linus has the same parenthesis-eyes that Lucy has, but he never goes through that phase of having circle-eyes. And Linus's quietly philosophical personality is much in tune with the best qualities of Peanuts. Other comics have Charlie Browns, Sallys, Peppermint Pattys and many, many Lucys and Snoopys (strong characters are easy to write and popular with the crowd), but I can't think of any that have a Linus-like character in them. Often he is serene. Hobbes maybe has some qualities in common with Linus in his more reflective moments, I can't think of others.

By the way, unlike the last strip, Lucy again refers to herself in third person here. I suspect Schulz worked on the daily and Sunday strips on different schedules, and so changing character attributes might be a little out of sync between them.

Sunday, May 25, 1952: Listen: Lucy Van Pelt has become unstuck in time.

The title refers to the fact that, in this era of the strip, she is still maturing. For behold: she has stopped referring to herself in third person! If all the characters did that, then Charlie Brown would be over fifty in the last strip Charles Schulz drew.

The lettering on the crib is interesting. I can't help but think such a thing must seem awfully melancholy when the occupant grows out of it, and it takes up too much room, and it has sold or donated to charity, and so the named crib remains, forever a mute reminder of the childhood of someone obscure we you'll never meet and for all we know died a century ago.

How many stuffed toys does that girl have?!

In the logo in the first panel, there is a weird extra line between the A and the N in PEANUTS. Do you see where the line comes from? Here's a hint: look at the "b" in the word "by" below it.

May 24, 1952: Lucy is non-repentant

A rather different context for the chase/turnabout formula. This is a solid step along the way to Lucy's later personality. Her expression in panel two is like a shadow spreading over the strip. Lucy's on her way and she's not bring flowers and candy canes!

May 23, 1952: Snoopy is not weighed down by life

This is a great strip. It has a theme I heartily agree with, it's cute, and shows a hint of Snoopy's developing personality. It could pass for a strip a few years later all except for the art style, which looks even better, I think, with old-style Snoopy doing it.

Notice that word balloons with music notes do not count against Snoopy's no-talking prohibition.