June 18, 1952: Rules for Dog Word Bubbles

- If the bubble contains English text, that is letters that are not meant onomatopoetically then it must be a thought bubble. Animals cannot talk.

- However, animals can "say" the sounds they ordinarily make. So, Snoopy can say "Arf" or "Ruff" or even "Bark."

- As we see here, Snoopy can also say punctuation. Here I believe the intent is just to show a mood. Snoopy isn't actually saying anything, it is just showing his mental state. The word balloon is technically extraneous here.

- Once in a while you'll see Snoopy say something that is borderline between the two. Some time ago he said "Heh heh," which is hard to adjudicate. Dogs can't laugh, but presumably they can make sounds like being amused, so I assume that was Schulz's intent.

- Then there was that strip in which Snoopy had a sheet over his head and said "Boo." The joke in that one was from being inexplicable.

June 16, 1952: A reasonable request

There is a whimsicalness to early Peanuts that I find appealing. It's not just that Lucy washed her hands in Charlie Brown's glass of milk, it's that she asked nicely first like this is standard Lucy protocol.

Turnabout strip!

Sunday, June 15, 1952: I know people who do this during DVD movies

Schroeder still hasn't said that many words. I get the feeling that Schulz intended his lack of verbosity to be a part of the character. Or maybe it's just that he doesn't want to talk over his own music so much?

June 13,1952: The shame of it all

Subtly revealing of Schroeder's personality. He's not just a musical genius, he's a picky genius.

June 10, 1952: Some of us take our flavors seriously

Why did Charlie Brown even offer the red ones then?

June 9, 1952: Wishy-washy!

Mostly this one is just cute, but it is a foreshadowing of one of Charlie Brown's most-mentioned character traits, his wishy-washiness.

Sunday, June 8, 1952: Someone get that kid a helmet

Now imagine this kid pitching a baseball. At YOU.

June 7, 1952: Violet has mood swings

Violet is one of the more generic Peanuts characters in the classic era, but in the early period she seems to be purposely more moody than her counterpart Patty. This is not the first time a joke like this has been used for her, and it won't be the last either.

June 6, 1952: The dangers of accepting random bugs

Kind of an anti-climatic last panel here. Most of the joke, to me, comes from the idea that Lucy just thought Charlie Brown would want a bug at all. Later on, she takes to stomping such insects with exaggerated force.

June 5, 1952: Standing on one foot

Lucy's monomania is developing in this strip, but I link it mostly because you get a really good look at her clothes in this one.

Lucy wore two primary outfits that I know of in Peanuts' run. This shows her earlier outfit and the one she wore during most of the classic period, a slightly formal number with a bow in the back, and colored blue on Sundays. Here the skirt is fairly normal, later on it would become highly stylized and stick out almost at right angles to her body. In later years, probably as a nod to changing fashions, Schulz would adopt a kind of jumpsuit for her attire, which made her look vaguely more athletic.

She still has the round eyes here. I never get tired of pointing them out. They won't be here much longer. When Linus shows up, which is in a month or two I think, he has the same eye style as Lucy but from the start he has her parenthesis, or "Binkley," eyes.