Friday, July 2, 2010

December 22, 1952: Musical Fake-out

Peanuts

Well at least Charlie Brown has been studying classical composers in preparation for his little talks with Schroeder.

What we are seeing here is the mining of a situation, slowly, of all its obvious jokes. This is what cartoonists, and indeed sitcom writers, primarily do, they pick a situation and think of ways it is funny, or can be made funny. But the soul of humor is novelty, and a situation can only provide so many jokes.

What happens when all the obvious jokes have been made? In the case of Garfield the strip just continued to mine, reformulating the old jokes as best they could, the characters never evolving beyond their simple personalities. This is actually what happens to most comic strips, and it's why most of them become much less interesting 20 years after their creation. 20 years is 7,305 strips, 7,305 separate, supposedly individual, jokes. By way of contrast, stand-up comedians never come up with all new material for every performance.

Cartooning is a difficult-enough business to get into that most young hopefuls focus on the short term, impressing the syndicate gatekeepers enough to get into the business, and not with how they're going to maintain their work for decades. The great Bill Watterson, perhaps recognizing how hard it is to keep it up until your keel over at the drawing table, wisely stopped Calvin and Hobbes just over ten years in. But ten years in Peanuts was in its prime.

This is worth mentioning now because jokes about knowledge of classical composers are already approaching the limits of how far they can go. What Schulz is doing, slowly, is segueing from jokes about situations (composer knowledge) to jokes about character types (musicians), and eventually to jokes about specific characters (Schroeder).

Thursday, July 1, 2010

December 20, 1952: 4,000 games

Peanuts

The key difference between this strip and prior "Oh Those Kids" strips is the expression on Charlie Brown's face in the last two panels. Before, if Schulz did a strip like this, Charlie Brown would have a neutral expression at the end. Here, he's speaking sarcastically. With just a lowered eyebrow drawn over the eye, the entire point of the joke has changed.

The Peanuts characters are unusually difficult to draw in complex poses, due to their short arms and legs, but Schulz does a good job with CB's legs in the last panel.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

December 18-19, 1952: Now that's a sad kid

Peanuts

Schroeder in the third panel is rather sadder than the average. His expression is maybe a little overdone? Anyway the kid is probably four or five right now, that's rather young to be obsessed with playing the big room.

Peanuts

He's not sad at all here.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

December 16-17, 1952: Charlie Brown writes to Santa

Peanuts

Peanuts

This is a very Calvinesque pair of strips, as in, Watterson got a lot of mileage out of Calvin's letters to Santa. I especially like the second one, I find it hilarious.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Sunday, December 14, 1952: Sandwich histrionics

Peanuts

Lucy remarks about Charlie Brown's annoyance with her asking him to do something. This is another case of a character's personality becoming defined from another character's verbal recognition of it.

That happens because comics use exaggerated behavior as a way to communicating effectively to the reader. To show anger, you show a character actually kicking the thing he's angry at, even though a real person would not usually do such a thing. It illustrates anger effectively however, and I think readers subconsciously recognize this and adjust their expectations. But it also means that, to actually establish a character's personality, you have to describe it explicitly somewhere, and in a strip that doesn't (generally) use narration like Peanuts you have to do that by putting that description in the mouth of another character.

Schulz would become quite masterful about adjusting reader expectations. His characters are able to act out theatrically when necessary, but can also play it very far down at times.

I also like the serif lettering on "RATS!" in panel 7.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

December 13, 1952: Lucy offhandedly remarks

Peanuts

I could remark something about her incredibly Lucy rage, but Charlie Brown's already done this in a previous strip. Lucy has too.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

December 11, 1952: Zombie Linus!

Peanuts

Look at it in the wrong frame of mind and there's something gruesome about the last panel here. Be careful around TV kids, it'll transform your eyes into circular scribbles.

Friday, June 25, 2010

December 9, 1952: It's the classics for Schroeder

Peanuts

It is worth reminding the reader that light piano jazz would become inseparable from the animated adaptations of Peanuts, so we must assume that Schroeder's not speaking on behalf of Charles Schulz in this strip.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

December 8, 1952: Charlie Brown changes his shirt

Peanuts

It is rather a long time to go on wearing the same shirt. But the other characters have their own distinctive looks, including Violet, so it's really unfair to pick on the kid for this.

I wonder what it was that caused Schulz to decide on that distinctive zig-zag pattern, which is not a style of shirt that I am aware of as ever being popular, or at least not other than in the sense of referencing Peanuts.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

December 6, 1952: Delayed reaction

Peanuts

I think it's just the idea of "BOO" that startles Charlie Brown in this strip. A philosophical horror at the nature of the word.

I think it's almost funnier that Lucy's so confident that her trick will work.