March 28, 1953: Snoopy goes crazy

I think this strip illustrates pretty well why Snoopy is kind of jaded over Charlie Brown in later strips. He gets maudlin if you get too friendly with him.

We do get one of those rare, ultra-cute three-quarters drawings of Snoopy with his mouth open in the second panel.

A new tag introduced in this post: "allpurposeears". I wonder what that could mean.

March 28, 1953: Patty and Violet Reject Charlie Brown

They've done stuff like this before, but this time it seems explicit and personal, which positions the characters more towards being antagonists.

March 27, 1953: Back to the slaughter

This is the first time we've seen Charlie Brown in bed, and also the first time we see him fretting while laying there. Poor kid.

We're establishing Charlie Brown's classic personality here. Most of the time up to now he was, Schulz's own word, kind of a smart-aleck. Here we see him as the sensitive, put-upon type which is more in line with how we remember him.

March 26, 1953: How many marbles?

What use would a kid have for that many marbles? Could we project that they are to 50s schoolyards as cigarettes are to prison inmates?

I'll admit, as a kid I had a bit of a marble collection. I never played the game though; I just thought they were neat. I don't really know if anyone still plays marbles anymore.

March 25, 1953: More Marbles

This is one of the first genuine sequences in Peanuts, a set of connected, consecutive strips that present a kind of narrative.

March 24, 1953: Patty Plays Marbles

Patty builds a reputation as a marbles shark in upcoming strips, especially against Charlie Brown. This is the one that first establishes her fearsomeness at the game. One might take these strips as foreshadowing the other Patty.

The use of Schroeder as the concerned friend in this strip, instead of Shermy, is a bit interesting.

Sunday, March 22, 1953: The Earth Invaders

One could take this as another Lucy-abusing-her-brother strip, except for the looks on the faces of Shermy, Patty and Charlie Brown, which make this strip more about human nature than Lucy's specific nature.

This is fairly notable for being a complex play scene with many characters, in perspective, with action poses, and with realistic living room scenery thrown in.

March 20, 1953: Lucy and the Basketball

This strip well illustrate's Schulz's emerging skill as a joke writer. Important to is he Lucy's repetition of the word "basketball," which helps illustrate the diverging things the two characters are saying. They're only on the same page in the first panel; none of them are even listening to the other in the others. Characters talk through each other a lot in Peanuts. I'm not even sure this is the first instance of it. The body language of the characters is also important here; in the last panel, Lucy's jumping rope emphasizes that she's more talking to herself than to Charlie Brown.

Psst! I'll be at DragonCon, like starting today. If this blog ends up knocking off a few days that's why, although I usually schedule several strips in advance in these instances. If by some fluke you happen to be at the con, I'll usually be in the board gaming room in a brown "Game Face" T-Shirt.

March 19, 1953: That's the Charlie Brown we remember

I think this is the first strip to really solidify Charlie Brown's emerging personality. That of the depressed everyman, who considers himself mediocre and ends up being, so partly because of his belief, and partly because everyone can't be Dave Singleman. Who even his own dog (now cemented as Charlie Brown's in three strips) finds boring.

Chagrimace!

March 18, 1953: Lucy Plays Space Gun

Usually the girls so far have engaged in stereotypical feminine pursuits when playing, but Lucy shows that (aside some some onomatopoetic problems) she is fully prepared for the coming age of high adventure in space, due to arrive some time, oh, around the 1990s.