July 14, 1952: Murmurs of Linus

This is the first hint as to Linus' existence in the strip. He doesn't actually appear for another week or so.

July 12, 1952: Charlie Brown is bi-lingual

Snoopy can say "Arf." So, apparently, can Charlie Brown, even though he isn't a native speaker.

July 11, 1952: Gimmie some candy!

Patty doesn't seem to be concerned about her own health, does she?

July 8, 1952: HE SPEAKS

Schroeder utters complete sentences!

Also, he can somehow whistle chords!

Sunday, July 6, 1952: Group picture

Lucy still has her round eyes (which look even weirder than usual in the second panel). Snoopy says "Shh!" And it's another turnabout/chase strip, demonstrating that, while Charlie Brown has been seeming depressed lately, he's still got a lot of his old self in there.

July 4, 1952: Snoopy and Schroeder

The two wordless wonders, together for the first time.

One thing about Peanuts that is right there in the open but is mentioned surprisingly rarely is how some characters never seem to interact with other ones. Schroeder and Linus don't have a lot of interactions. Neither do Lucy and Peppermint Patty (who calls her "Lucille"). Schroeder and Snoopy do have some interactions, but not as many as Schroeder and Lucy, who interact so often in the strip's heyday you could be forgiven for thinking Schroeder must be an imaginary friend of Lucy's.

Hey, is this the first "sigh?"

July 3, 1952: Cute little puppy dog

How does someone with a face covered with hair blush?

Looking at Violet walking here, she looks very similar to the style of the characters for the next few years. She's almost at the proportions of classic Peanuts now. Charlie Brown is the human character who still looks the most like the original, with his oval head and thick eye-dots. And Snoopy takes still more time, and doesn't get to the familiar look for many years.

Turnabout strip! What does it say about the Peanuts world that chasing someone, presumably to inflict violence, happens so often?

July 1, 1952: "I won..."

Charlie Brown's losing streak in nearly all games has yet to be firmly established, but it's coming. He somehow loses thousands of games of Checkers against Lucy in the coming months alone.

The storytelling in this one's excellent. Charles Schulz uses repetition in Peanuts in a way that no other comic strip, that I can think of, does. It's a really complex idea to get across in four panels too, of Charlie Brown getting beaten down by Patty's dismissal of his victory, yet I don't see the strip making its point more effectively with more panels.

June 30, 1952: Lucy and the balloon

The thing that confuses me about this strip? Lucy can't fill the balloon with air, right, so she drags it along the ground. But what if she had been able to blow it up, what then? She isn't breathing helium after all; the balloon would still be earthbound.

Sunday, June 29, 1952: Patty, Marbles Champion

It is interesting, and somewhat heartening, to see the girls in Peanuts take part in the same kinds of activities as the boys. Patty has played Cowboys and Indians with Charlie Brown and Shermy before, and here she slaughters him in marbles, and not for the last time. It is enough to bring one to mind the other Patty, although she won't turn up for years yet. And of course, Lucy eventually becomes the terror of the neighborhood.

How goes the plight of the little girl these days? Is it just me, or is gender norming as strong as ever now?