Sunday, April 11, 1954: I'm getting worried about Charlie Brown

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

I think this is a very important strip.  It establishes that Charlie Brown doesn't just play baseball but is kind of obsessed with it.  Of course it could well have been a transitory aspect of the character at this point, valid just for one strip, but already Charlie Brown is really the only character of Peanuts' cast who works here.  Linus is too young, Schroeder isn't so serious about anything that isn't music, and Shermy is kind of a non-entity.  Snoopy is still too dog-like, and anyway can't talk.  While Peanuts' girls aren't very girly overall, it would take a tomboy type to be this obsesses over sports, and "Peppermint" Patty is still many years away.

At the end of it we kind of feel sorry for Charlie Brown, standing alone in the driving rain, even as we recognize his predicament is his own making and continuing.  Part of that comes from Schulz's art, which is top-notch here.  One of the most effective techniques in his cartoonist's bag of tricks is the way he depicts rain, which requires great attention to line thickness and patience in just rendering all those lines.

It's very easy to mess up, but the effect is wonderful.  The way the lines blend in with each other in the last panel, how they get darker above the horizon to provide the illusion of a blurred backdrop, the care he takes to make sure that the important parts of the panels aren't too broken up by the crosshatching, it all demonstrates the immense care Charles Schulz took in rendering the strip.

Notice where a character has a dark portion of his clothes or hair, that he changes how he shades it in.  He's also careful to make sure the rain doesn't make it difficult to read a character's identity of expression.  Character faces are mostly unobscured.  This strip must have taken Schulz some serious time to put together, and all for one day's output.  Whether you think Peanuts has yet attained the status of art, it's certainly got the chops when it comes to craft.

Here's a question for you: who is the kid in the next-to-last panel?  Shermy is the character is most fits, but he ran away in the previous panel.  He is carrying a baseball glove in panel six and is holding it overhead in panel seven, so I guess there is some continuity there.  But looking closely at panel six, it's not entirely convincing the way he holds his glove there.  It looks huge there in any case.

April 10, 1954: Linus' favorite show

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

I wonder how Linus feels about the Viacom 'V of Doom.'

April 8, 1954: I can't resist a sight gag

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I probably should stop linking to every sight gag strip.  This one's pretty funny for that last panel, and contains a chagrimace, and it has to do with baseball, and has an non-musical appearance by Schroeder, but other than those four things isn't that interesting.

Well, the floppy baseball in the first panel is funny too.  Other than those five things, it isn't that interesting.

April 7, 1954: Snoopy doesn't "do" fetch

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Snoopy is both centered a bit more as being owned by Charlie Brown here, he uses a thought balloon, and shows some of the Snoopy-like personality at the end.

On the matter of Snoopy's ownership, there is a quite informative, unofficial FAQ on Peanuts hosted on www.fivecentsplease.org.  It is item 4.29.  It is detailed and informative and is probably the definitive statement on the growing certitude over who owns Snoopy, and I'm pasting that item here.  It's seems to be pretty much the last word on the matter:

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Casual fans generally assume that Snoopy always has belonged to Charlie Brown, at least since the beagle was returned to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm after briefly being taken homeby his first owner, a little girl named Lila (this story lending itself to the second big-screen Peanuts film, "Snoopy Come Home").

But it didn't start out that way. When Peanuts first began in late 1950, with its small roster of characters, Snoopy was more a "neighborhood dog" who might pop up with any of the newspaper strip's first stars: Charlie Brown, Patty or Shermy. On October 25, 1950, for example, Snoopy can be seen eavesdropping as Patty makes a call from her toy telephone ... which definitely seems to be inside her house. In the November 7 strip that year, Snoopy is in Charlie Brown's house; and on several occasions Snoopy is shown keeping company with Shermy. On February 2, 1951, Patty quite clearly tells Charlie Brown that Snoopy lives in "that direction" ... which does NOT point to Charlie Brown's house.

The first suggestion that Snoopy might have a specific connection to Charlie Brown comes on April 11, 1951, when the beagle shows up dressed in a zig-zag shirt just like Charlie Brown. But even here, it's hard to be sure; Snoopy might simply be making fun of poor ol' Chuck.

Stronger evidence comes September 12, 1951, when we see that Charlie Brown has a picture of Snoopy in his room ... which seems to suggest that the beagle is, at last, specifically bonded with Chuck. (Or maybe not. A few weeks later, Snoopy goes "home" ... to Shermy's house!)

On December 15, 1951, Charlie Brown repairs Snoopy's doghouse ... which certainly suggests that our beagle's home is in Chuck's yard. Unfortunately, on April 3, 1953, Patty and Schroeder ask a passing Charlie Brown what color he thinks THEY should paint Snoopy's house!

That latter incident notwithstanding, by 1953 Snoopy still is visiting other kids in their homes, but there are no strong indications that he lives with anybody except Charlie Brown. On November 28, 1953, for example, Charlie Brown tells Snoopy to go to bed, and both definitely are in Chuck's house.

But ambiguity creeps in once more. On December 5, 1954, after slipping Snoopy a piece of candy that came from Pig Pen's pocket, Charlie Brown says, "Psst ... Snoopy, ol' pal ... you'd better come home with me, and have a drink of water." Take note of the words "with me" ... one would think, if Snoopy lives with Charlie Brown, that Chuck would simply say, "You'd better come home."

Finally, on October 15, 1955, Charlie Brown gives Snoopy some food from the dinner table, while saying, "There you are, old friend" ... a phrase that strongly suggests ownership. A few weeks later, on November 1, Charlie Brown gives Snoopy his dinner in front of the family TV set ... definitely in Chuck's house. On November 3, Charlie Brown tells Violet that "All the dogs in the city [now] have to be kept tied up." Violet asks if he has tied up Snoopy, and Charlie Brown says "Of course ... what else could I do?" Clearly, at this point, Violet is identifying Snoopy as Charlie Brown's dog. And a few weeks later, on November 18, Charlie Brown tells Patty that he has Snoopy (who's no longer roped to a tree) "tied up with a sense of obligation" ... another strong indication of ownership.

Feeding Snoopy becomes more of a habit; on December 8, Charlie Brown tells Shermy that he'll be out in a minute, after he "attends to the hound." On March 10, 1956, Charlie Brown tells Lucy that Snoopy always brings his supper dish to him when he (Snoopy) is hungry.

On December 14, 1956, Charlie Brown buys Snoopy a new collar ("...something more masculine"). On November 14, 1957, Charlie Brown refers to Snoopy as "My pal" and says that "Everyone should have a dog to greet him when he comes home."

And finally -- FINALLY -- we get the smoking gun on September 1, 1958, as Charlie Brown is writing a letter to his pencil-pal. As his faithful friend peers onto the table to see what's going on, Charlie Brown adds, "Oh, yes, I also have a dog named Snoopy. He's kind of crazy." As of that moment, Snoopy is -- without question -- Charlie Brown's dog!

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Wow, not until September, 1958 huh?

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

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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

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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!