Sunday, September 6, 1953: MAYBE

This one's awesome for that last panel, and that note of concern you can hear in Charlie Brown's voice. Yes I said hear. I know they're just words on the page, that doesn't mean I can't hear it.

This does put the uncertainty back into just who is Snoopy's owner. It still has not been conclusively said at any point, it's just been implied from time to time.

September 5, 1953: More on Lucy's picnic school career

Previously.

I still don't know what the heck picnic school is. Nice fence, though.

September 4, 1953: Wash your mouth out with soap young man

Sacrilege!

September 2, 1953: Why, I never!

Never trust a girl who speaks in serif lettering.

September 1, 1953: BIRD

I've seen this happen to cats. Probably on YouTube. It's really kind of a plain strip though. The premise is really just "Birds can dive on things that annoy them."

It is another step along the road to Woodstock, though.

August 31, 1953: Teaming up

Violet can be something of a copycat, can't she?

Complaining that CB is crazy or talks too much I guess I could possibly understand, but how could the kid do anything about his face?

Sunday, August 30, 1953: It looks a bit like this

There are two versions of this premise. There's the one where one of the characters directly compares CB's head to a ball (usually concluded with a chase), and there's instances such as this one where a character indirectly remarks that Charlie Brown's head is round like a ball.

The very first joke about the size and shape of CB's head was of the second type, when the kid was in the water and Patty and Violet wondered why a beachball had floated out so far.

This is far from the last joke about the poor boy's head.

August 28, 1953: Lucy fusses, again

We've seen this setup several times by now. Whether Lucy's asking for a glass of water, or for sandwiches with the crusts cut off, she just doesn't seem satisfied. CB's reaction this time is the same as the previous instances. Lucy doesn't yet have the muscle to back up her demands.

August 27, 1953: Be careful what you wish for

This seems more like a Lucy maneuver than something Patty would do, not because Lucy is spiteful (she hasn't shown a lot of that yet) but just from misunderstanding Charlie Brown's request. Maybe Schulz used Patty because she's physically larger than Lucy, and thus more obviously capable of shoving CB out of his seat.

August 26, 1953: Charlie Brown the killjoy

Most of the characters in your standard comic strip have what might be charitably termed "quirks." Usually, comics don't intend you to emphasize with them. The humor comes from laughing at rather than with. One of Peanuts' great innovations is in making all of its characters, at one time or another, truly relatable. Even the terrible Lucy, at the height of her fell power, had strips in which she was a more-or-less normal little girl.

But of all these characters, Charlie Brown, the one Schulz himself described as the Everyman of the cast, is the one who is obviously the one intended to be empathized with the most. That's why I like these strips in which the focus is on another character reacting to CB, instead of the reverse.