September 15, 1952: The blue cup or the red cup?

Here Charlie Brown and Lucy reenact a shot from The Matrix that was left on the cutting room floor.

Seriously, it's another strip of Lucy asking for a drink of water from Charlie Brown, a scene that Schulz gets a surprising amount of mileage from.

Lucy's becoming more willful. While it's kind of sad that the sweet little girl is becoming more demanding, she becomes a much better, much more fun character when she grows into her full crabbiness. In a way, Lucy is just as iconic to Peanuts as Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Sunday, September 14, 1952: I'm a success!

This is one of the best early strips I think, it's just really funny and original IMO, despite a couple of pretty weird quirks. Its action can occur only because Lucy never looks down. The really weird thing about it is how Charlie Brown doesn't tell Lucy the cause of her "success," that she was being held up by Snoopy. The whole thing has an air of allegory about it.

Lucy's phrasing "I'm a success!" is very odd. It's funny partly because of its oddness, but it is oddly specific, like it might be a reference to something in Schulz's life.

September 12, 1952: Seven Spades

If you have a strong hand of one suit in Contract Bridge, you can bid strongly in it and try to make it trump. If you have seven cards of a suit, then the most any other player can have is six, guaranteeing you one trick and probably worth several more. And Spades is the strongest bidding suit, beaten only by No Trump.

Snoopy's reaction here is great.

September 8, 1952: God of the moving image

(For some reason this one didn't go up when it was scheduled....)



We've seen plenty of radios in prior strips, but this is the first TV set.

September 11, 1952: Stoking the flames

Charlie Brown will eventually come to regret treating Lucy so badly.

Sunday, September 7, 1952: Perspective problems

Besides a step in the development of Charlie Brown's trouble with kites, the second panel here is weird in that the perspective is a bit wrong; it looks like Charlie Brown is much larger than the other kids in that panel.

Also notice, all the kids are here except for Shermy.

September 3, 1952: Ludwig Van Beagle

This is the first strip in which Snoopy imitates someone. There is a great sequence in the early classic era of the strip in which Snoopy imitates a number of things (which includes one of Peanuts' relatively small number of pop-culture references). This strip also leads towards Snoopy's developing imagination.

September 1, 1952: Snoopy's sense of dignity

Charlie Brown is known to remark, later on, "Why can't I have a normal dog like everyone else?" Such is his enthusiasm for the game of Fetch that he describes it out loud. Snoopy will have no part of it.

Impressing stick fetching upon the reader's mind in a form that sounds somewhat demeaning is essential to the joke. Phrasing it like that, and posing that exposition as Charlie Brown's excited words, that is not I'd call standard joke construction. Jokes have constructions you know, and there are fewer ways for putting them together than you might think. Finding a new way of building a gag is a difficult task. One of the aspects of Schulz's work I enjoy the most is his ability to so often to construct new kinds of gags. Many things about Peanuts seem to express a kind of genius, but to me this may be the greatest thing about it, Schulz's ability to present a joke to us in a clean, iconic way, that is understandable but not overstated. It is wonderful.

Sunday, August 31, 1952: But it's his pool, right?

This is a case where Charlie Brown's responsible for his own disappointment, to some extent. It's his pool, right? That's why he filled it? I guess he doesn't want to throw his friends out when they're having such a good time. (Schroeder especially is getting into it, although I doubt he really needs to hold his nose as he jumps in.)

Why is it necessary for Charlie Brown to empty the whole pool just because Snoopy is sitting in it?

As a kid, I'm not entirely sure why, I loved the picture of Snoopy sitting, smiling, looking out of the pool at Charlie Brown. It's something about his profile, or his attitude maybe. Or maybe it's just really cute.

The shading on the underside of the pool as CB empties it is an unusual touch for Peanuts.

August 29, 1952: Charlie Brown plays it safe

This time the game is more obviously Bridge (although it could be another bidding game like Spades, I suppose). A nice, subtle touch here is the smile on Patty's face.

For those who are not familiar with the game... In Bridge, a good hand is generally one in which you have one suit with a lot of cards. If you're the highest bidder then you determine which suit is trump, so if you have a strong suit it's mostly to your advantage to bid high. But there are many other factors at work as well. For a game that so limits the types of actions available to players, Contract Bridge is remarkably subtle and deep.

To add to the list of things Snoopy can say: *gasp*.