November 4, 1952: Linus' head is too big, #1

There are a number of these strips that deal with baby Linus' head weighing him down. This is but the first.

Sunday, November 2, 1952: I've been tricked!!

A favorite strip of mine! Also a chase, this time after Lucy who is beginning to show her true colors.

November 1, 1952: Happy Day After Halloween

Early Peanuts has a number of day-after-holiday strips. One of my favorites, still to come, is a day after April 1 strip.

Halloween, 1952: Do your worst!

Remarkably cocky of Patty here, but then maybe she knows her opponents.

Scribble of ire!

October 30, 1952: Punkin

Compared to other comics, Peanuts characters are unusually poker-faced. The only hint of the kid's slow burn leading up to the last panel, perhaps, is that Charlie Brown is a little too happy in repeating Lucy's mispronounced line.

It's difficult to imagine him getting away with this later on.

October 28, 1952: Fickle Lucy

There are some character combinations that seemed to inspire funny situations to Schulz, while some others didn't get used much. Lucy is funny with many other characters (Charlie Brown and Linus now, Snoopy and Schroeder later on). Patty is most often shown interacting with Charlie Brown or Violet. Maybe that's one of the things that led to poor Shermy's obsolescence, he doesn't have many other characters who react to him.

October 27, 1952: Snoopy and Linus

Snoopy and Linus get to be a double-act at times. When Sally joins the strip later, she and Snoopy team up occasionally, sometimes against Linus.

Sunday, October 26, 1952: Lucy's First Halloween

Lucy's fearsomeness is not yet firmly established, so this strip was probably intended more being a general strip about kids instead of specifically about the characters.

October 25, 1952: Taking notes at Bridge

To get this joke, you must know that remembering what cards have already been played is an essential skill for playing Bridge well. Any serious Bridge player would know taking notes like this is not allowed.

If you know nothing about the game, you would not believe the levels of anal-retentiveness involved in high-level Bridge. There are elaborate systems of bidding designed to communicate to your partner information about your hand, but there are also rules regarding this, that if you use such a system the other team must be aware of it. I don't really understand it entirely myself.

October 24, 1952: That's how you know it's Lucy

This is the first real sign of Lucy's loud, angry persona. Not in what she does; she's been cranky before. The key element is how Charlie Brown recognizes it, and Patty reacts to it in the last frame.

The letters of the word BANG here appear to be stenciled or pasted, or at least drawn with mechanical aid, instead of hand-drawn. I wonder if that was how they were originally rendered or if the syndicate replaced them?