META: Comments don't seem to be working

Just letting everyone know that comments seem to be broken for some reason on newer posts.  I have done nothing to break them, it must be on Blogger's end.

April 24, 1954: Fashion arbiter of novelty records

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

I assume this is a kid's record or some sort, or maybe a popular song of the day.  Regardless, Lucy's summation is probably accurate.  It is kind of a strange thing to write a song about I'd think.  Her diagnosis might be regarded as practice for the Psychiatrist's Booth.

April 23, 1954: The aerodynamic properties of that ball seem unsuitable

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

It's harder to throw, but you can't expect it to go so far if the batter gets a good whack at it.  However, if he hits it really solidly it will probably take several minutes just to put the ball back together.

I think this is one of the few strips with Shermy, Schroeder and no one else.  (Charlie Brown is mentioned but not pictured.)

April 22, 1954: So, it's his umbrella?

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

This is a silly strip, it doesn't really have a strong gag but it's visually appealing.  One has to wonder about the practicality of a dog owning an umbrella though.  How does Snoopy close it?

April 19, 1954: Lucy, team paperweight

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Lucy's mostly-permanent position in right field is some time off, but this is the first time she's shown as a player (excepting perhaps last week's rain-out).

The baseball gloves in Peanuts are laughably outsized compared to the kids.  This one's the size of Lucy's head!  It looks like her arm could just about fill one of those gigantic fingers.

Sunday, April 18, 1954: Who needs peppermint?

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Here we have one of the more interesting questions about the Peanuts strip.  Schulz and Peanuts makes the claim, if I remember it correctly, that the two Pattys, the original and the "Peppermint" variety, were based on the same person.  At first that assumption seems laughable, despite the two sharing the same name, but think.  Besides this strip, every physical contest we've seen Patty in (marbles, mostly, and mostly against Charlie Brown), she's won.  And their times in the strip don't intersect very much; one wanes right when the other waxes.

Oh well.  Idle speculation aside, I think this strip has a hilarious final panel.  I don't know of any other strip that would think to end it so understatedly, or half as effectively.

One weird thing though: look at the backgrounds of the last two panels.  They're completely different!

April 12-17 1954: A week at once

Let's do a batch of six this time.

April 12, 1954:

This is the first strip of a new running gag, where Charlie Brown reads something about Beethoven aloud to Schroeder from a book, and he reacts loudly to it.  Like Snoopy vs. the Yard or Linus' surreal block-building skills, or indeed Charlie Brown drawing cartoons, this goes on for a bit.  Schulz must have found the idea interesting.

April 13, 1954:

More development of Charlie Brown's defeatist personality.  There is no hard dividing line between what I call "early" Peanuts and "classic" Peanuts, the strip's evolution isn't actually reducible to those terms, but if we accept them anyway I'd call this definitely a "classic" strip.

April 14, 1954:

This is the first time Snoopy has been shown digging.  It's a good pose for him.  The first panel shows Schulz's new, loosened style for drawing him.   Snoopy has already evolved quite far from the cute little puppy that walked beneath Patty's window.

The throwing of the golf clubs is slightly shocking, because they are presumably the result of an action performed by (gasp!) adults.  We should be coming up soon on that weird section soon with Lucy in the golf tournament, which actually has adult figures in it, although never their faces in detail.

April 15, 1954:

Next on his reading list: "Who's On First," by B. Abbot and L. Costello.

April 16, 1954:

This shows, a bit, how Peanuts kids differ from real kids.  What child in the world has ever said "Well!  What an insult!" in response to anything?  I assume from this that the fussing in question is a kind of unspoken, whiny kind of thing, which Schulz didn't attempt to depict visually like he did with the white noise from a few days ago.  He could have depicted the singing with a musical note, but it would have spoiled the joke.

April 17, 1954:

Oh I am so not making a "two girls one dish" joke.  I'm only mentioning it here to prevent any of you from bringing it up in comments.

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

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

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.