July 17, 1952: Lucy answers the phone

This is one of those strips that relies on a character being very young and not quite grasping how the world works. These strips gradually lessen in number as Peanuts switches from being mostly about situations to which generic characters are exposed, to being more about characters with definite personalities and the ways they exhibit them.

At the moment, Schroeder is the character that leads the way in that direction. There are not very many generic musical prodigies in the world. Charlie Brown is also developing a definite personality, but there are still few strips using him that couldn't also be changed to feature some other character. Shermy is still (and would ever be) fairly generic. Patty's role as foil to Charlie Brown seems to be subsiding, and other than the occasional mud pie episode Violet doesn't tend to show a lot of individualistic behavior. Lucy, on the other hand, is a real hit and will only become more willful in the months to come.

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.