November 18, 1953: Tickle tickle tickle

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 WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU SNOOPY?

November 17, 1953: Lovecraftian horror!

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Oh it's not Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos; or Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young.  It's just Linus.  Just little, innocent Linus!

OR IS IT?

This is a retread of the "girls in stadium boots" strip from just ten months back, although the horror is more vague here.  Notice that it's entirely Charlie Brown who's getting worked up.  Lucy knows exactly what's going on.

November 16, 1953: You'll like it because it mentions Shubert!

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Another of the "Charlie Brown: Budding Cartoonist" series.  In these strips Schulz pokes fun at his own pretensions, but they also show how engaged he was with his craft.

One thing I really like about all these is that, for all of C.B.'s faults as a cartoonist, he at least knows enough to work large.  Held edgeways, that sheet of paper is as tall as he is, sans head.

Sunday, November 15, 1953: The Great Experiment

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More to add to the list of Snoopy's powers:
8. Super hearing
9. Teleportation (induced by hearing candy wrapper)

For his sake, I hope we can add:
10. Immune to canine chocolate toxicity

This strip actually reads better without the two lead panels.  Try it out!  We don't need to be told twice that they're running an experiment.  All the important facts are presented without the optional panels, and they aren't repeated.

Finally, importantly, the strip is just funny.

November 13, 1953: Excitable, isn't he?

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Patty doesn't mean to drive Charlie Brown to hysterics, but it is kind of frightening to think about.  The space-filling overtelling of one of the characters here is acceptable, as it improves the joke.

It struck me just now that gender relations in Peanuts are already surprisingly equalized.  This is far from stereotypical girl behavior.  Patty gets used more as being a foil for Charlie Brown than for being female.  Maybe girls are considered to be more impish, and that explains why Patty is happy to point out C.B.'s mistake in the first panel; it's hard to imagine Shermy being happy there.

Look at that expression of fear in panel 3.  It's really a kindness that Charlie Brown doesn't realize that he'll actually be in school for 46 more years.

November 12, 1953

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This is the second instance of the "Snoopy dance" that I count, and it's livelier and more Snoopy-like here.  We can probably add this to his list of powers:
7. Ability to dance (polka, hopak)

More shockingly, it features Schroeder saying something positive about polka!

Snoopy's tongue in panel 2 is strange because it's of realistic length for a dog, that is to say, it's loooong.  Also, the way that his front legs flap about is unusually realistic.  These are very entertaining drawings of early Snoopy.

November 11, 1953: Schroeder conducts in front of Snoopy, Take 2

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The previous Sunday strip had mostly the same idea, but with a different payoff.

I think this could be taken to show how careful Schulz is to mine his premises well. As I've said before, drawing a daily comic strip is one of the most creatively demanding occupations one could hope to find. Imagine the pressure of having to come up with one joke a day for the rest of your life. Schulz is showing good sense by getting additional gags out of his premises.

November 9, 1953: Get yer dog off the football field

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I think this one may be a bit too abrupt. It'd probably be more entertaining to watch Snoopy get tackled in the third panel, rather than obscuring the collision behind that huge POW splash.

I am putting this strip down as containing Charlie Brown, Schroeder and Shermy, but only because those are the only three human male characters old enough to play football.

Sunday, November 8, 1953: Get yer dog away from the orchestra pit

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Schroeder's the one demonstrating his imagination here.

Scribble of ire!

November 7, 1953: More on the mobile ears

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Snoopy's powers:
1. Human thought.
2. Ability to say "Boo!"
3. Ability to blush through fur.
4. Ability to move his ears around like limbs.
5. Ability to understand English.
6. Bizarre "true form." (Also, ability to say a scribble of ire.)

Well-known powers not yet displayed:
Surreal imagination.
Surreal imagination that sometimes leaks out into reality. (Demonstrated by his ability to get Marcie to play along with him.)
Ability to stand on hind legs.
Ability to operate human machinery like typewriters.
Ability to play sports.
Ability to communicate with birds.
Transcendentally-spacious doghouse.