Sunday, September 12, 1954: Smart alecky kids

Read this strip at gocomics.com

Linus has strange and mysterious stacking powers. Charlie Brown has ordinary and understandable smart aleck perceiving powers.

It's not just that Charlie Brown is bad at making card houses, or that Linus is good at them. It's that the baby character is so much better at it than the older kid. This is kind of a repeat of Schroeder musical genius, and, to a lesser extent, Lucy's ability to beat Charlie Brown at checkers. This stops when Sally is introduced, who appears to have picked up the same gene of mediocrity Charlie Brown got.

September 6-11, 1954: The first weekday story

What do I mean by a "story?" It's a sequence of consecutive strips that tell a story that builds between them. They may stand alone, but you get something extra out of the strips if you've remembered the prior strips in the sequence. This is what separates stories from the sequences we've had before, which were not sequential and thus Schulz could not expect a reader to remember prior strips in order to get a joke in the current one. There might be continuity, such as with Schroeder's musical talents, Charlie Brown's checkers losing streak, Violet's mud pies or Patty's ability at marbles, but Schulz sets each strip up as if the prior strips didn't exist. These strips work alone too actually, but there is obviously a thread that connects them, they are meant to be read together.

We had one prior sequence that could count as a story, the "Lucy in the Golf Tournament" Sunday strips, which are atypical Peanuts strips in many ways. To my memory, this is the first story-related sequence to stretch over four consecutive non-Sunday strips. (One could consider all Sunday strips to be in their own sequence, since Schulz probably drew them on a different schedule and some newspapers only carried Peanuts on weekdays or Sundays.)

September 6

This is the first time we've seen a drawing of Pig-Pen clean, which is a different enough design to almost count as a separate character. He looks like a cross between Shermy and Linus, in overalls.)

September 7

Violet is talking about career; one could interpret Charlie Brown as talking about something more profound.

September 8

This is the first strip in the story I mentioned above. We had Pig-Pen drawn clean on Monday. Now we can imagine Schulz amusing himself by drawing some of the other characters dirty in Pig-Pen's usual style. Pig-Pen's messiness extends virally to several other characters. First, Schroeder.

The question of people admiring Pig-Pen is interesting. I think there is something admirable about him, but it's not specifically his messiness.

September 9

Next, Snoopy. Although a dog is kind of expected to be dirtier than people, here they seem to consider him of the same status as the other kids.

September 10

Charlie Brown speaks in bold, but he doesn't look angry. It looks to me more like he's dismayed that he's gotten messy like the other kids, only to find out it might not hold the advantages he was expecting. (Whatever those might possibly be.)

If the kids allow themselves to be "influenced" by Pig-Pen so easily, I can only say that they're unusually vulnerable to peer pressure.

September 11

The pay-off strip. This isn't the first strip in which we've seen Patty dirty -- there was an earlier one in which she and Violet were making mud pies. I don't know what it is, but I always thought Patty looked quite charming messed up like this.

Sunday, September 5, 1954: Lucy, Patty and Violet

The beginning of this strip demonstrates how Patty and Violet are slowly becoming a double-act, reinforcing each other's opinions and building up the will to confront Lucy. Lucy is also true to form here, fussing and throwing a tantrum about "not playing her way." (That generic reason for the confrontation and tantrum seems kind of weak, but it serves to keep the focus on the characters and their reactions, and not whatever game it is they're playing.)

This strip also demonstrates that Lucy's behavior is, to some extent, an act she puts on to attempt to get her way. When it's evident that her ruckus is to no avail she comes around quickly.

The drawings of her tantrum are very energetic. Panels five through ten show particularly varied reactions. Schulz must have put some thought into how to illustrate characters pitching fits or otherwise expressing anger/dismay. Note, Charlie Brown hit his own head against a tree not long ago, and now Lucy is doing it too.

August 30, September 1-4, 1954: Not short from choice

August 30

More consequences of Pig-Pen's extreme dirtiness. Nearly every Pig-Pen strip is a variation of this theme, in case you haven't figured it out by now.

August 31

This strip is missing from gocomics.com's archives. Hooray. Can anyone with the Fantagraphics collection fill us in?

EDIT: Myron found a scan of the missing strip! There are no words in it, just a sight gag of Patty jumping rope in eight panels with her hair up. Thanks, Myron!

September 1

This is an uncharacteristically energetic response from Charlie Brown. Even ignoring the fact that bombing and strafing is unlikely to be in his power, this seems somehow un-Charlie-Brown-like. He's looking very self-satisfied in the last panel.

One thing about the art from this age is that it's found a pleasing middle-ground between the extreme stylization of the first couple of years and the slightly more realistic proportions of later and modern Peanuts. The wide smiles, the shorter bodies, the looser art style, I think this is about as good as Peanuts has looked right here.

Yet I can't think that Schulz wasn't conscious that the art moved away to less cute figures over time. Is it possible that he purposely moved away from cute kid appeal to encourage readers to not trivialize these kids and their concerns?

September 2

You can tell everyone who's sent you that pass around email about using buttered toast strapped to the backs of cats as a source of infinite energy, or as the basis of a levitating train, that the toast part of the joke has been around for almost 57 years now.

The joke itself is another one about science, as usual in Peanuts from a layman's view. Schulz tends to view artists more empathically, maybe, than scientists, although I don't think he's really antagonistic towards them. One can certainly read the strip as just a joke about Lucy's misperception, anyway.

September 3

I don't think Peanuts' male characters ever went through a girl-hating phase like Calvin. In that way, they seem fairly emotionally mature (or immature, if you consider CB's question to show him to be clingy).

September 4

Snoopy vs. the Yard: Football edition.

EXTRA: The Peanuts Wiki

There is one, a Peanuts Wiki that is, and it's pretty good! Check out the article on Shermy, where it notes:

Schulz said he had no regrets about dropping Shermy from the cast, and stated many years later that it had gotten to the point by then where he only used Shermy in situations where he "needed a character with very little personality".

Sunday, August 29, 1954: And there on the fence I saw drawn a giant X

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

I find the huge 'X' at the end of Lucy's aborted count to be starkly evocative. Those tally marks could be raindrops, or stars, or maybe lives.

Charlie Brown remembers Lucy counting the stars in previous strips. The spectre of continuity rears its head here, and with it, unavoidably, the characters move closer towards being individuals more than interchangeable placeholder images for jokes.

Week of August 23-28, 1954: Charlie Brown still has an ego

August 23

Only the second bit of negativity we've heard from Pig-Pen, the first being in his introduction.

August 24

That's not Snoopy, someone switched his bust of Beethoven for a figurine of the RCA dog!

August 25

Is this sarcasm from Schroeder, or condescension?

August 26

Charlie Brown still has some of the old ego in him, I see. I wonder when is the moment when that's finally pounded out of him, and when it happens, if ultimately it's Lucy, or Patty and Violet who are the cause

August 27

Her beleaguered mother has resorted to trying to play her and Linus against each other. Lucy takes the long view here. Lucy is forward-thinking in the next Sunday strip too, although she doesn't look quite so far ahead.

August 28

This is a fairly standard comic inversion. Not really terribly noteworthy, but I've commented on all the other strips this week, so why not?

(If I do leave strips out, I will still link to the gocomics page for the absent strips. I don't think it's proper to present strips I don't have much to say about, since I'm hosting these copies to avoid hot linking gocomics, and not to provide an alternate archive of strips. As I said before, they are presented here for commentary purposes only.)

Sunday, August 22, 1954: The aliens have arrived

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

I think this strip is more effect without the lead-in panels, which means our first glimpse of the floating wading pool will be the same as Charlie Brown's. Lucy's final comment also works better in that case; it's unnecessary with the first two panels included.

This is a very funny strip (especially "He pointed his flame thrower right at me!"), but it's a kind of humor that seems out of place in Peanuts, heavily reliant on sight gags. At least it's Charlie Brown who's the silly one here.

That's gotta be a pretty strong wind.

Week of August 16-21, 1954: Airplanes must fly around clouds or else crash

August 16

It is odd to think of Pig-Pen as going to kids and bumming sand off of them. I can understand if he's unnaturally attuned to the stuff, but it can't be that expensive can it?
August 17

Lucy is kinder here than she was back on February 15 16, but it's still a mean trick.
August 18

At this point Pig-Pen is rolling along as if he's going to become a major character. It won't be for too much longer I think.
August 19

One problem with the week-at-a-time format is, often there's just not much to say about a strip. I'll probably start leaving some out before long -- I didn't mean this to become a repost of every strip....
August 20

If Peanuts were still being printed er, I meant written today, Lucy would be denying climate change. Charlie Brown's reaction is priceless. I find this kind of reaction funnier than the headaches and stomaches the poor kid's afflicted with later.
In the last panel, Lucy's laughing expression, with the slanted eyebrows, is atypical for Peanuts.
August 21

Charlie Brown brings his hand to mouth in wonder in the third panel is nice. Peanuts kid arms are usually drawn as simple tubes, so I find the shape of his arm there interesting. Not hugely interesting, but still.

August 4 is Snoopy Day!

Happy Snoopy day!