May 24, 1952: Lucy is non-repentant

A rather different context for the chase/turnabout formula. This is a solid step along the way to Lucy's later personality. Her expression in panel two is like a shadow spreading over the strip. Lucy's on her way and she's not bring flowers and candy canes!

May 23, 1952: Snoopy is not weighed down by life

This is a great strip. It has a theme I heartily agree with, it's cute, and shows a hint of Snoopy's developing personality. It could pass for a strip a few years later all except for the art style, which looks even better, I think, with old-style Snoopy doing it.

Notice that word balloons with music notes do not count against Snoopy's no-talking prohibition.

May 22, 1952: Lucy requires a lot of supervision

Lucy and her long-suffering father again. It'll be nice when she loses those huge eyes.

Two strips seem to be missing from Comics.com's archive, May 20 and 21. Anyone know what we missed?

May 19, 1952: Snoopy chews out Charlie Brown

A very cute strip. I like that one "ARF!" that's rendered with serif letters.

Charlie Brown takes it so hard that he reflexively holds his hat in his hands in defense!

Suinday, May 18, 1952: FREAKISHLY HUGE EYES

Lucy in the second panel looks rather hideous with her big, circular eyes. The other strips show her from the side where she looks a lot more normal.

None of the kids really have all that good a hiding place. (Schroeder in the waste basket is funny.)

Here, "Rats!" is cemented as the Peanuts world's all-purpose curse word. Like most of these mild oaths it seems king of quaint now, which is something of a shame because there's a lot more variety to these milder versions than the strong examples turned to the most now. (Of course these are kids we're talking about, and not the ones from South Park.)

Lucy's system of counting is strange and non-deterministic. Still, if you're going up to eight million, it's probably better to do it that way.

May 17, 1952: Blocks have many uses

Lucy gets a lot of use out of her blocks.

The premise of this strip relies on Charlie Brown not noticing Lucy as she constructs her staircase. If he had looked over and Lucy making her ramp he probably wouldn't be scared. So, a subtext of this strip is that Charlie Brown gets deeply involved in books, and Lucy knows this well enough to rely upon it for her prank.

May 15, 1952: Exit, pursued by girls, stage left

It's another turnabout/chase strip, although the cause this time isn't Charlie Brown smarting off, or at least not on purpose.

What is it about comic characters chasing each other that works? What would they do if they caught him? Inflict violence? Is that funny?

I don't seem to remember Lucy being the chaser in many turnabout strips. Generally, she's probably more likely just to slug someone and get it over with.

May 14, 1952: Lucy in Profile

Slowly over the months, the character's shapes have been edging closer to the modern style.

All of the characters except Lucy have thick eye-dots, solid little ovals of black. Lucy instead has those wide circle-eyes, at least when we see her from the front. Here she's only seen from the side; when seen in profile, or when she's looking at something out of the corner of her eye, Schulz tends not to draw the complete circle, which makes her look a lot more like her modern look.

Thus in this strip, Lucy looks very much like she does in the years to follow.

May 13, 1952: We've all known people like this

This is a remarkably understated strip. There is no punchline!

May 12,1952: Roll a d20 to resolve the attack

Role-playing games often use the question of who-shot-whom in a game of Cowboys and Indians to explain why they use die rolls to resolve those issues. They assume that most players aren't as fair-minded as Charlie Brown!

Calvin would not have let Shermy win like that. In fact, Watterson would have probably turned this into a Sunday strip, and have Calvin go to extravagant lengths to come up with reasons that Shermy could never have hit him with his ray gun. This is why Calvin was so popular with his non-tiger friends.