June 29, 1953: Lucy in the outfield

The beginning of a long-standing Peanuts theme, Lucy as problematic baseball player. Note here her position is center field. I'm not sure, but I think most of the time she is a right fielder.

June 30, 1953: Linus' first steps

Linked for notability.

When Rerun joins the cast much later, in a way it's almost like these early strips with Linus return. Rerun looks so much like Linus, even if his personality is a little different, that it's hard to escape the conclusion that Schulz named him as a self-referential joke.

June 28, 1953: This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction!

Charlie Brown has a bright future ahead of him in cable news.

June 27, 1953: He who hesitates is lost (or at least gets no ice cream)

Lucy is what we might call an expert drinker of other peoples' milkshakes.

Chagrimace!

June 26, 1953: August 4 is Snoopy Day!

Mark it on your calendars!

How did Snoopy communicate his desire to have a specific day to Charlie Brown? It's not like he's learned to type yet.

June 25, 1953: Stop that draft

This is Lucy more as we recognize her, gloriously unreasonable.

June 24, 1953: Snoopy vs. the Yard

Another of those strips in which Snoopy, naive in the ways of yard equipment, investigates something and gets surprised by it. Here the reaction shot from Charlie Brown is needed to complete the joke.

June 22, 1953: Lucy and the bugs

When I read this strip, I have a strong sense that we are now firmly in the era of classic Peanuts. The characters are solidly of that style, as opposed to the early or modern styles. There's still some evolution left to occur within the style, everything becomes just a little simpler over time and the characters get slightly more realistically proportioned, but we're mostly there now I think.

Two things that really drive this sense home for me. First, the theme and writing of the strip are solidly of the classic versions of the characters. We haven't really seen a crabby Lucy yet, but Lucy was never an entirely angry little girl, she has good days even in her tyrant years. And second, Charlie Brown's eyes when facing the reader, here, seem to be closer together than we've seen recently, which was the major thing about him that still harkened back to the old style.

Sunday, June 21, 1953: Linus thinks

Being thoughts, this doesn't count as Linus' first words. I'm not even sure this counts as Linus' first thought balloons, but I can't find the strip in the archives in which he complains about "big kids," which is the prior use I remember so maybe that comes later. But I think it is the first example of Linus' voice really coming through clearly to the reader, even if it isn't audible to other characters.

Linus is interesting because we first get a few strips with him thinking before he actually starts talking. Sally also does this when she shows up. I think Rerun gets it too.

June 20, 1953: Peanuts' evolving sense of humor

A different strip would have Snoopy bite down on the bone, have a sight gag of his reaction, and then maybe him chasing Charlie Brown. In fact, Peanuts itself wouldn't really be above that kind of joke right now.

But where this strip shows growth is that Schulz purposely passed up the chance to draw a funny picture of Snoopy biting a rubber bone to make a strip where he's embarrassed because he expected treachery and didn't find it.

Schulz also avoided Talking Head Syndrome (where a strip's joke is entirely dialogue, using art pretty much solely to attribute speech) by giving us good drawings of mortified Snoopy, laughing Charlie Brown and thoughtful Patty.