January 27, 1953: The beginning of the courtship

Two days later, here's another important Schroeder strip; the first one between the familiar combatants, him and Lucy, on the familiar battlefield, at the piano, and with the familiar tone, Lucy's infatuation. The main thing missing is Schroeder's annoyance.

Schroeder could get very angry at Lucy later on, but so far no character has really gotten very angry at another. The worse we've seen is Violet throwing Charlie Brown out of her house, and so far, more times than not, they forget why she was angry before the end of the strip and invites him back in.

It's the calm before the storm.

Sunday, January 25, 1953: Schroeder at his zenith

This is a good example of a kind of Schroeder strip that never gets seen later on. It does a fine job of illustrating his personality. Schulz here presents the true Schroeder, not some dilettante doodler at the keyboard but a determined artist. In the classic age of the strip Schroeder is by far most often seen as a supporting character, setting off Lucy's monomania or Snoopy's whimsy. Here he trains alone, building himself up to be capable of performing the music he hears in his mind, determined to live up to his vision.

While we might can sympathize with the spurned Lucy's pleas for affection, and his maniacal worship of Beethoven is often played for laughs, Schroeder is generally an admirable character.

January 24, 1952: MEOW

The first hint in the strip of Snoopy's dislike/fear of cats, which would find fullest expression in his battles with World War II, the unseen Cat Next Door with the incredibly destructive claws, a creature of wrath so potent as to nearly rival fell Lucy herself.

January 23, 1953: The chagrimace

Thanks to Sarah Loyd for this name for the diagonal, straight-lined expression Charlie Brown wears in the last panel here, and he and other characters frequently use around this time. Aditya came up with the other good name, a "dashed" expression, which, while also a pun, doesn't seem to be quite as good. Sorry Aditya. :\

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.