January 9, 1952: Mush! Mush!

It took me a little while to make sense of this one. At the size the strip is rendered by default in my browser, it was hard to tell Shermy apart from Charlie Brown. CB is the one driving the sled, not Shermy.

Beyond that, I think the word "mush" is interpreted by Shermy as short for "mushy."

Snoopy sure looks happy to be pulling Charlie Brown's sled. His question mark in the last panel adds a slight extra punch to the joke.

January 8, 1952: Schroeder steps out

Schroeder's first strip outside. No mention of music here. I notice that the baby Schroeder has a much better throwing arm than Violet. Maybe all that piano playing strengthened his arm muscles?

January 6, 1952: The First Sunday

And here we have the very first Sunday strip of Peanuts' 49 year run.

Already we see the effects of the unique format requirements of the Sunday edition. The top panels of the strip must not be essential to understanding the whole, since some newspapers don't run those to save space. Since the first panel can't be too important to the story, later Schulz would play around with clever bits of stylized art in the first panel, but here it's just used to extend the lead-up.

The characters look a little funny here, possibly due to their being rendered a bit larger than usual.

Notice, four of the five characters are named in this strip! Could this have been a concession to papers that only ran Peanuts on Sundays?

I like the quotes around "Tag" and "It" in all the panels. Especially "It," I'm going to start using scare quotes around all my pronouns! Not really

January 3-5, 1952: Three strips of winter

Three strips in a row here, I'm going to condense them into one post to help keep things moving.



Funny.



Awesome.



D'oh!

Tune in tomorrow for an important strip indeed.

January 2, 1952: Dreams of the Round-Headed Kid

Slick joke by Patty here, and there's also some nice non-standard poses for her. The art in panel 3, however, is kind of weird. It looks like there was either a printing error, a hasty erasure, or maybe Schulz just forgot to ink in the front of the chair.

New Year's Day, 1952 : I think I see why Patty hates Charlie Brown now

I think Patty is fully due that Scribble Of Ire in the last panel.

New Year's Eve, 1951: Well, I hope so!

The last strip of 1951, and a funny one at that.

December 29, 1951: Where did he get tinder?

The icicle-dripping word balloon in the second panel is nice.

Let's talk for a moment about the Peanuts characters' repertoire of expressions.

1. Neutral: No mouth at all when viewed in profile, a small dot or dash when viewed from the front

2. Mild Surprise/Interest: Neutral, but with small, upside-down-U eyebrows over the eyes. See Violet in panel four here.

3. Happy: Triangular mouth in profile, standard smile from the front or a faked profile triangle.

4. Angry: Eyebrows drawn as one long line from the front ("unibrow"), diagonal eyebrows going down towards nose when viewed in profile. Mouth is Neutral if mild anger, or a horizontal line if stronger.

5. Worried: Similar to Angry, but with slanted eyebrows arcing up at the nose line. Also, no unibrow. Mouth as in Neutral. Charlie Brown in all frames here, also Violet in panel three.

Decembet 27, 1951: Schroeder, not Snoopy

Not one of the funnier strips, but worth linking for the image of Snoopy sleeping in three-quarter perspective in the first frame, and his angry look in panels three and four.

Oh, and for the record: Parcheesi sucks.

December 26, 1951: Charlie Brown has lips!

Doesn't Charlie Brown's mouth look funny in the first panel?