January 3, 1951: Why you little!

This is the beginning of a particular strip formula that would be used a lot in these months, especially between Charlie Brown and Patty.  The first three frames present either a bad joke or one that insults one of the parties, and the fourth shows the non-joking character's reaction, usually in the form of the joking character knocked down but still mirthful, or being chased.  We'll see this pattern so many times in the upcoming strips that I should think of a name for it.

"Turnabout" strips are the best I've come up with, referring to the sudden, undepicted change of attitude between the third and fourth panels.  The punch from the formula comes from the sudden break between the last two panels.  Notice that Patty hasn't changed expression between the second and third panel of this strip, and we only see the result of her wrath in the fourth.

It's fairly amazing, really, that with all the hostility the Peanuts characters are capable of showing for each other, so much of it is understated or not shown.  It wasn't until crash of thunder Lucy showed up that a character could commonly get away with much wrath depicted directly on the page.

EDIT: fixed formatting.

December 29, 1950: What were they doing?

I like the look on Snoopy's face here, resenting Charlie Brown's intrusion on his and Patty's private time.  But what were they doing?  Was Patty reading to Snoopy?  The current-day, South Park-informed joke to make here, of course, is to suggest some naughty activity they were engaged in.


I will resist these implications with every fiber of my being.

December 27, 1950: They grow up so fast

One source of jokes in early Peanuts is in puncturing the premise.  Children behaving like adults, right up to the moment in which they suddenly don't.

Look at Shermy's expressions and body language as he goes through panels two through four.  Angry in three, pleading in four.  They're a little exaggerated, but on purpose since they can't move on the page.  It's not as easy as you might think to come up with good poses for characters as they play their roles!  It's one of those little things that cartoonists have to do to give their characters life.

December 22, 1950: Put your hand inside the Snoopy head

Another somewhat pointless strip, Schulz must have been close to his deadline for some of these.  Snoopy is especially cute and puppet-like in this one however, especially in panel two, where we get a three-quarter perspective into his smiling mouth, and in panel four, where his eyes are winningly far apart.  As Snoopy became a much stranger creature later on, Schulz would lose the ability to draw him like this; Snoopy became a creature of imagination far more than a placeholder dog in a world of child jokes.

December 21, 1950: Tick tock

I've actually done this thing, with the hands, in real life.  I believe the joke here, which is a little subtle, is that Charlie Brown doesn't know how to tell time.

This strip is notable for, I believe, being the origins of Charlie Brown's distinctive zig-zag "Crayola" shirt.  (hangashore pointed it out in the Metafilter thread first.)

December 20, 1950: Don't you know, about the bird?

This rather straight-forward and pointless strip is notable for being the first appearance of a bird in Peanuts.  It looks quite different from Woodstock later on.

Woodstock originated as a hachling from a bird that built its nest on Snoopy's stomach as he lay atop his dog house.  The mother bird, if my memory holds up, looked fairly realistic, a lot like this one.

December 17, 1950: Shermy?!

At last, Shermy-the-mystery-boy is named!  Notice that all four of the original characters have an "ee" sound at the end of their name: Charlie, Shermy, Patty, Snoopy.  While I appreciate that Schulz always thought the name "Peanuts" for his strip was unnecessarily trivializing, with names like that I don't think he was helping his case.

But then, it was the 50s.

December 16, 1950: Hope you like dirt!

Mud pies, yum.  I was actually never under the impression that kids actually ate mud pies.  Note that Patty's mania for this dubious treat will in no way approach Violet's in coming months.

December 14, 1950: Upstairs, downstairs

A long-standing question for comic strip artists is, if the joke is wholly verbal, what do the characters do while they talk?  In this one, they walk up and down stairs, stairs that seem to exist to go nowhere.  Much later, Schulz will use the hang-out wall for this.  Bill Watterson, who has obviously read a lot of classic Peanuts, would adapt this into Calvin and Hobbes' wonderful sledding sequences.

December 8, 1950: Not receiving visitors

Unusual story construction in this one, basically two jokes in one four-panel strip, which is uncommon even today.  Dilbert pulls off two or more jokes sometimes in one weekday strip.