April 6, 1954: So that's what radio static looks like

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Some nice, although strangely un-Peanuts-like, abstract art here brought to field in the cause of drawing white noise.  Charlie Brown is still kind of silly/naive sometimes; Linus would be more the type to listen to static later.  Of course it has to be Schroeder who offers to fix C.B.'s radio, because he cares enough about music to help people experience it better.

April 5, 1954: Snoopy will not be deterred

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Another Snoopy power! This makes sense once you realize that Snoopy's open mouth is magnetically attracted to treats. (Oh if you want to be boring you could say he just smelled it.)

Snoopy is slowly becoming looser in design, and it has been good for the character. He was almost like a piece of clip-art at first, but now he's slowly growing larger (more obvious when he's walking -- note how large he is in the last panel compared to the rest of the strip) and his mouth is capable of opening wider, in the second panel here particularly. He's slowly turning into the outgoing, wildly imaginative werewolf we all know.

Sunday, April 4, 1954: Lucy sees the night-time sky as a challenge

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

There are multiple ways one could interpret this strip.

The least charitable is that's it's twee and annoying.  A cute little girl doing a cute little thing.  The kind of place "Happiness is a warm puppy" comes from.  Bleah.

If Peanuts never became anything more than that, then this would probably be the way we would look at the strip now.  But because we know that more complex things were going on inside of Schulz's head, things that were demonstrated by later strips, we can get a better sense of what he was trying to do, and I think that saves this strip.

The point of the strip isn't to look at Lucy and go "awww," the point is to empathize with her.  I think the third panel is the one that proves this, and it's a shame it's one of the ones that was removed from some newspaper printings.  She's been told that it's hopeless, but she is confident in her abilities.  The strip is about her disillusionment when faced with the vastness of the universe, which is a lot bigger than she is.  At the most charitable, we could possibly interpret Lucy's "SLOW DOWN" in panel 11 as Man's rejection of his station, but that might actually be too far for this one.

Schulz does a pretty good job of drawing stars here.  On normal paper, it's a lot easier to depict black dots on a white field than white dots on a black one.

Notice his signature in the first panel, where it intersects the black.  Snazzy!

April 3, 1954: Issues in Mud Baking

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Her problem is she didn't bake them long enough so that they formed a crust.  Violet should look into getting a kiln.

April 1-2, 1954: Two on Baseball

April 1:

The second panel here is a particular favorite of mine.  Lucy is weighing her options.

This may be the first direct instance of direct violence in Peanuts.  There have been chases before, and chases of being hit by projectiles (like one where Lucy hits Charlie Brown with a snowball at very cose range) but I don't think anyone has actually hit another kid before now, with hand or weapon.  I'm sure one of you will correct me if I've remembered wrong.  (In fact, I'm looking forward to it.)

April 2:

Now that another character has directly remarked on Charlie Brown's lack of playing skill, it has become a bit more solidified as an attribute of the character himself.

March 29-31, 1954: Three at sea

Read these strips at gocomics.com.

I'll say this much about Universal's archives having poorly-cropped strips at this point; by doing three at once, we're making fairly good time through 1954.  Although they do prevent me from skipping strips, or organizing like strips together (like the saga of Linus' block building skills).  These three strips finish out March.

March 29, 1954:
This strip implies some kind of empathy between the young Linus and Snoopy.  Snoopy is running towards Linus at full speed, so Linus knows to build a wall for Snoopy to jump over, and he knows that Snoopy will see this as a fun thing to hurdle, and not an effort to get him to crash.

It doesn't look like Linus is building quickly here, but he can't have had more than a few seconds to construct that wall.

March 30, 1954:
This is one of the earliest indications of Charlie Brown's poor baseball skills.

March 31, 1954:
Charlie Brown lecturing Snoopy?  Another point of evidence that he is Snoopy's owner, at least legally -- Snoopy isn't exactly reverential here.

Serif Z!

Sunday, March 28, 1954: An outsider's view of the Van Pelt family

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

The first two panels have more of Lucy's ability to rule it over Charlie Brown in checkers, but the main thrust of this strip is twofold.  First, Lucy shows a rather astonishing lack of interest in Linus.  I think this is the first time her dislike of her brother has really come to fore.  Like many of the relations of Peanuts this is fluid and comes and goes over time, but in the long run at least it seems to be an aspect of Lucy's character that sticks.  It makes me feel kind of sorry for both of them.

But the reason Linus likes to play by himself, it turns out, is that he is insanely functional, like in an autistic sense.

It seems like the way a Cthulhu cultist might not be able to talk without inserting ftagn every other sentence, but has bizarre, yet correct, insights into the nature of the universe.

META: Dammit Blogger

Blogger in Draft's interface has changed completely since yesterday, it's going to take some time to retrain myself for this.  So far my reaction has been: GUH, if I wanted "blogs I'm following" to be the main thing I see upon logging in, I'd go to Google Reader.

March 25-27, 1954: Three, golly gee

Read these strips at gocomics.com.

More glued-together strips from Universal's slightly malformed archive.

March 25, 1954:
Patty is an expert at marbles.  I've had the same reaction that Patty gets from Charlie Brown and Shermy, from people who balk at playing Monopoly without the various house rules (like money on Free Parking or no auctions) that make that very long game much longer.

March 26, 1954:
Now isn't that a hellish visage to have suddenly thrust into your face?

March 27, 1954:
More developing of Charlie Brown's "loser" persona.  I wonder if Schulz knew he was fixing the kid's personality for all time in these strips, or if he thought it was just another story theme, like Linus' Newton-defying block building skills or Violet's mud pie fixation?

March 22-24, 1954: Three don't you see

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

More badly-framed strips from that odd place in the internet Peanuts archives, probably caused by an oversight when these were scanned in from print compilations.

March 22, 1954:
At this point in the strip, examples like yesterday notwithstanding, Patty is kind of like the female Charlie Brown.  Not in the sense of being defeated by the world, but in the sense of being an every-person suitable for use in general.  She is rather more competent than Charlie Brown though, and clearer-headed.

Again, the difference between Peanuts and other strips?  Poorer strips would probably end with a sarcastic comment from Patty and make that the punchline.  Competent strips would end with Charlie Brown pointing at Snoopy, and letting the reader laugh at that dumb kid himself.  Peanuts gives us that last panel, which sympathizes with Charlie Brown.  It recognizes that, hey, we're all stupid like this sometime, and when we realize that we are we should be embarrassed about it.  But we should also get out of the weather.

March 23, 1954:
MUDPIEZZZZZ

Violet's fixation on the preparation of mud pies is one of the earliest recognizable traits exhibited by a specific Peanuts character.  We haven't seen it for a while though.  As I've said previously, when you're sentenced to come up with a joke a day for the rest of your life, you use what you think of.  Schulz attacked this somewhat dismal craft without complaint, and frequently with genius.

March 24, 1954:
Charlie Brown's insecure personality is developing clearly now, but Schulz still gives him an out sometimes, with the kids calling for him.