October 22, 1953: Linus nearly kills himself three times

Stylistically this is interesting for being composed of eight panels. It also ends with that frequent (although at this point still rarely-seen) concluding word "*sigh*".

Linus is physically uncoordinated enough that he can't safely step on or off a curb, but he's psychologically adept enough to feel despair for his inability.

October 21, 1953: More mystifying Snoopy attributes

We know that his ears are made of imitation leather. Now it seems that the contents of his head are an excellent sound transmission medium.

Later on we have the "Cheshire Beagle" trick and, of course, the Whirlidog. It'd be fun to work up a cross-section diagram, Baxter Building or MST3K Gamera style, showing where all the devices and mechanisms reside that give Snoopy his powers.

Unless he's actually an amorphous, magical, Shmoo-like creature. He's almost the right color for that!

October 20, 1953: What were they doing in there?

Is this the site of the meetings of their "Doing Things Without Charlie Brown" club? Because that's about the most charitable explanation possible for what these four kids and Snoopy were doing in that pile of leaves before CB jumped in.

October 19, 1953: Withers under questioning

When Charlie Brown begs for a piece of candy, he hints and is often disappointed.

When Lucy wants a cookie, she interrogates and demands.

It has to be noted, Lucy probably has a higher success rate.

Sunday, October 18, 1953: The football, off the other foot

Well after all, she is just a little girl, you know. Riiiiiight....

This is pretty much just a silly strip, although it explains why Charlie Brown has to play by Lucy's rules to kick a football: it's her ball!

Can anyone imagine Lucy as star fullback of nursery school?

October 16, 1953: Er, how long have you been sitting there?

These strips where one character is doing something imaginative or outlandish and another character is revealed to be watching, and smiling, leaving the acting character to walk away blushing, are rather common. I can't help but speculate that maybe Schulz experienced an occasion like that when he was young?

(Still a bit slow, should be remedied in a couple of days.)

October 15, 1953: There is such a thing as being too self-effacing

At least Charlie Brown isn't claiming to be perfect anymore.

This is more like the CB we know, and it also points to what we might call a later personality problem with him. His sense of self-consciousness about his failure kind of sabotages him sometimes. Remember the sequence where he's at camp with a paper bag over his head, and becomes successful and popular? My guess would be it's because, under the shield of anonymousness, it means he can focus more on what he's doing, rather than what he's observing about what he's doing.

Chagrimace!

(Sorry for the lack of updates over the past two days, internet is intermittent right now.)

October 14, 1953: The inner life of animals

Okay, stop for a moment and imagine if you didn't know Snoopy was particularly weird. Back in the day Peanuts was still a young strip and we didn't yet know that Snoopy was a dog in name only, a bizarre creature whose imagination was so rich and powerful so as to have reality-warping powers. And then you run into this:



What is going to become of that dog, indeed. Note that, despite some hints, it's still not certain who owns Snoopy. He's still just a neighborhood dog at this point. The Daisy Hill Puppy Mill Farm backstory of the later years of the strip is still some time off.

October 13, 1953: Stepped right into that one

I bet they said the same thing about a young George W. Bush.

Seriously, that's a pretty sharp wit the girls show there. I never think of those things on the spur of the moment like that.

Sunday, October 11, 1953: The CROQUET GAME

This is quite an interesting strip. In addition to carrying an extra title other than just "Peanuts," there are several different jokes competing for space in these eight complex panels.

- Every character appears except for Linus. However, Schroeder's only in the first three (in the third he hiding behind the tree), Shermy's only in two of them, and Snoopy's relegated to one.
- Although the major gag of the strip is Lucy's trying to bounce a croquet ball, the most interesting exchange is between Patty and Charlie Brown, which is a fairly good depiction of the direction Schulz is taking the round-headed kid. Patty's blunt statement is rather shocking; one can imagine her intent is to reassure Charlie Brown that it's not personal, but when put that way how could one take it as anything but?
- Lucy shows greater appreciation for experimental evidence here than she does in many later strips.