August 8, 1952: Charlie Brown wins one

Is Snoopy actually playing, or is Charlie Brown playing both sides? For the most part the dog has shown mostly dog-like abilities. But if he's not really playing, then why does he seem invested in the game?

Charlie Brown certainly put the game away fast in the last panel.

August 7, 1952: Music humor

You know, I get the feeling that real musicians probably crack bad composer puns all the time.

June 23, 1978: Happiness is....

It never ceases to amaze me how different the strip looked in the early days. Well, at least he stopped doing those saccharine "Happiness is..." bits.

August 6, 1952: Charles Brown

Almost as if Schulz himself noticed what it looked like when CB preemptively complained about Snoopy's begging for candy a couple days ago, here he does it with a human character who can audibly express her displeasure.

And Violet now, firmly, finally seems to be done with mudpies.

August 4, 1952: He still can't stand it

Charlie Brown's joy getting stomped on by another, unthinking character is becoming a common theme for strips. Just three days ago Snoopy "fetched" CB's golf ball in play, and Charlie Brown couldn't stand that either.

Could it be that Snoopy's disdain for the candy here results from Charlie Brown's harping and hawing over the idea that Snoopy will beg for it? The dog has some pride after all.

Sunday, August 3, 1952: I can taste that ice cream now coursing through my veins!

I love the second panel for this one. Simultaneously delicious and disturbing.

Lucy's confused copying of Patty and Violet, to me, are an unexpectedly important part of this strip. It's a mocking echo of Charlie Brown's torment! She is become Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos! Ia! Ia! ...

Oops, sorry about that. I should probably tone down the Lovecraft references, heh.

In the next-to-last panel, it is weird to see the girls hiding from CB's wrath. There isn't even any lead up to it; the girls are suddenly in the background behind those trees. Then in the last panel they're instantly back.

Oh, and how about that look on Lucy's face in the first panel? She really seems to be into that wagon.

August 2, 1952: Lucy Channels Prometheus

Lucy discovers that skill which is forbidden to the very young: the awesome ability to get out of the crib by herself. This is, I think, one of the last strips in which Lucy interacts with her unseen father. Linus is showing up very soon, freeing Lucy for use in other capacities.

Lucy's eyes are still part-way between their evolution from circles with dots inside them to full parenthesis. Of all the major characters in Peanuts, only Lucy, Linus and Rerun have parenthesis around their eyes. This gives them subtly stronger powers of expression than the other characters, since we can always see the assumed corner of their eyes, instead of only when characters are looking in a direction other than they're facing (which produces eyes-as-apostrophes).

August 1, 1952: Snoopy wants to play

This is a cute little strip, cute enough to overcome my usual aversion to sports jokes. Poor ol' Charlie Brown. But then, I'm pretty sure dogs aren't allowed on golf courses, so doesn't CB only have himself to blame? It is in dogs' nature to fetch. To bring Snoopy onto a golf course is to invite disaster.

The last panel gives us one of the earliest examples of Charlie Brown exhibiting dismay. "I can't stand it" is one of Charlie Brown's unofficial mottoes, along with "Good grief!" and "Rats!"

July 31, 1952: The Doll Doctor

This strip looks a little familiar to me, like I've seen another strip like it, and recently.

A lot of this strip depends on technique. The punch comes from Patty's setting up the reader for expecting an actual medicine with a fancy, scientific name in the third panel. It's all but required that they be multi-syllabic words, so Charlie Brown can foil those expectations in the last panel with his single-syllable retort of "Glue!"

Sunday, July 27, 1952: You-you-you-GIRL-you

Patty pulls off what, later, would probably be a Lucy move.

We get a rare glimpse here of a really angry Charlie Brown, who hadn't yet learned to internalize life's slings and arrows.

To little things are particularly interesting here. Schroeder's expression is, except for a bit of a sad look in panel 5, neutral for the rest of the strip. He serves as a norm that sets off CB's anger. And Patty's expression in the last two panels is also neutral; she doesn't feel ashamed for her act, and neither does she gloat about it. All the emotion in the last half of the strip belongs to Charlie Brown.

Few cartoonists made as much use out of neutral expressions as Charles Schulz did. His kids could really play a scene down.