January 22, 1953: Schroeder signs the fence

These days, the ubiquity of computers has give us the cut-and-paste comic strip. That is why we still have (although we really don't need it) B.C., although Johnny Hart died years ago now, the syndicate has a database of all the characters in a variety of poses, and can now just throw together a strip in a paint program. It's just another way that newspaper comics have come to suck as of late.

Peanuts, although its streamlined, iconic look might make one think it to be one of the few strips that could be conceivably improved by such a process, to my knowledge never used it. Thus, when you see a complex bit of art in multiple panels, such as Charlie Brown's signature here, you can be pretty sure Charles Schulz drew it the same way multiple times. It is fun to play spot the differences in those cases: the 'r' in Charlie is a little wider in the second panel and extents further below the 'l', the 'e' at the end has a slightly larger loop, the 'o' is crossed by the board seam at the right place, but the second dip of the 'w' in Brown is smaller....

January 21, 1953: Snowball

Lucy perceives that the key to a successful snowball throw is to eliminate unnecessary variables like wind resistance and arm strength.

I'm reminded of the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Suzie taunts Calvin for being a lousy shot with snowballs after he misses several times, and just then he hits her square in the head.

Sorry about that....

Other projects have severely weighed down on my time lately. Am working on some more posts, starting now. We apologize for the inconvenience.

January 20, 1953: Snoopy and Schroeder

I think this is the first strip with just the two of them. Later on there are some memorable strips that pair the two that I, um, don't remember at this minute. Heh.

How large is Snoopy in the last panel? The more I look at it, the more he seems to be huge! We know the kids have to reach up to reach the door handle, and as this strip shows Snoopy is still pretty small relative to them. But sitting down in the last panel, his head come up most of the way to the door! Am I just seeing things?

January 19, 1953: Lucy's back in school

She wasn't "expelled" for very long.

January 18, 1953: Linus' security ball

Linus demonstrates that he might have some security issues. He's so happy in the second panel!

Just because I thought was funny, the Peanuts strip up at comics.com today was this one from 1963:



It's nice to see Schulz, even at the height of Peanuts' popularity, not taking the strip all that seriously.

January 15, 1953: Modern Snowman Art

This is another of those posts that Blogger shuffled off to the Drafts folder without telling me:



Another snowman strip. Peanuts is becoming a bit more topical. But more interesting than that is the way Charlie Brown is drawn in side-view, especially in the third panel, which is closer to the classic (as opposed to early) Peanuts look than ever before. When viewed from the front it's less obvious, since his eyes are still pretty far apart from that angle.

January 17, 1953: The unnamed expression

We already did this one, on December 20, 1952:


A strip I passed up, from December 30, 1952:


Another strip I passed up, from January 8, 1953:


Now today's strip:


I think we need a name for that expression Charlie Brown has in the first strip, second panel, and Linus, Lucy and Charlie Brown wear in the last panel of the other strips. It definitely isn't a full "smile." "Smirk" doesn't work because it implies derisiveness. I guess it's a kind of grimace, but

It's a rueful expression. Schulz uses it when a character's plans haven't worked out as he or she wants, or he suffers some reverse. It's not an angry expression, and it doesn't seem to represent straight frustration. One could almost always tie the word "sigh" to it, which hasn't been used an awful lot so far.

I think it needs to be named because it's going to crop up again and again. And ideas?

January 13, 1953: Schroeder has standards

This is a rather funny strip; the turnabout in the last panel is pretty sharp. Again, for this one to work you have to know about Schroeder's music snobbery, which isn't information you can glean from this strip by itself. Of course now we all know about Schroeder and his peccadilloes, but Peanuts wasn't in a huge number of papers in those days.

January 9 & 10, 1953: Onceuponatimetherewerethreebears...

Not to pile on the Calvin and Hobbes comparisons, but I seem to remember Calvin's Dad doing the same thing to get through a loathed reading of Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie.

Lucy's response here demonstrates her developing personality; she is becoming less reluctant to express displeasure.



Another story-reading strip makes a Schroeder & Beethoven joke without actually showing Schroeder. A strip like this doesn't work unless the reader brings into it knowledge from other strips, a type of gag that doesn't work unless the characters have strongly defined personalities. (Or, in Schroeder's case, a strongly-defined personality quirk.)