February 5, 1954: Charlie Brown has to be honest

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

This strip is a counterpart to earlier strips about the disparity in musical knowledge between Schroeder and Charlie Brown.

The action lines of Charlie Brown pumping the top handle are a little more detailed than is usual.  The arc of musical notes over the top in the second frame is nice.

February 2, 1954: Grape is the lightest of the flavors

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

We've returned to the subject of Snoopy's amazing ears.  Lucy's reaction is interesting.  Increasingly we're getting a sense that the Van Pelt kids, for whatever reason, have their own ways of seeing the world that is different from the other kids.  Linus is able to stack blocks in strange and physics-defying ways, and Lucy seems to have secret knowledge about the gravity-defying properties of grape (or, more likely, artificial grape flavoring).

One could attribute this to their youth.  And indeed the other young member of the cast, Schroeder, also exhibits a unique psychological property -- he's a musical prodigy.  Youth, in Peanuts, seems like it may be a quality tied with genius.  This doesn't last forever however; to my memory, Sally doesn't really seem to ever exhibit these kinds of abilities.

Snoopy seems to be really pleased with himself concerning his trick now.

February 1, 1954: Status in Charlie Brown's neighborhood

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

There was a recent comment about Violet's family likely being wealthier than Charlie Brown's, which seems likely.  This strip is evidence that Shermy's might be too -- or at least he might be more of a train freak.

Shermy's train set is obviously set up in his family's living room, or some sort of sitting room.  How long must that have taken to set up, and how many times would his family have stepped on it by accident?

Sunday, January 31, 1954: Snoopy, Time Lord

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

This is the first strip that implies that Snoopy's doghouse has some extra-dimensional property, that it's bigger inside than outside, although one can take Schroeder's comment to suggest that the rec room is in a basement, and thus underground.  Dog houses don't usually have basements, true, but....

This strip is also evidence that Snoopy is not yet considered to be Charlie Brown's dog.  If Snoopy really were his, wouldn't he already know all this?  As a kid I stumbled upon this strip and wondered why the neighborhood kids were invited into Snoopy's doghouse while Charlie Brown was not, even though he was Snoopy's owner.  It seemed to project upon the kid a sense of being a social pariah that I think stuck with him when I read other, later strips.  Viewed in context with the Peanuts strips up to this point, he doesn't seem to be quite so excluded.

Does Snoopy's rec room have as low a clearance as his entrance?   That could be considered to be something of a flaw if the people he usually has over are all kids.

January 30, 1954: Not a scale model

Read this strip at gocomics.com.
When I was in first grade, the library at the elementary school I attended had a number of Fawcett Peanuts collections.  Of course Peanuts is a lot more than just a kids' strip, and I think this may be why I gravitated towards it.  But because of this, some things about it were confusing, and one of the bigger things is illustrated well in this strip.

Notice Snoopy's reactions here.  They are played very far down.  He provides no dismissive thought bubbles signalling annoyance.  He develops no frown or gaping mouth of dismay.  The only clues to Snoopy's internal state here is how he looks at the camera in the second panel, and his overall actions.  He just leaves.  That's rather cold.

Charles Schulz would become a master at depicting the understated reaction.

Note: Argh, Blogger sometimes marks posts as draft when it's supposed to be publishing them.  This should have gone up yesterday.

January 29, 1954:

 

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Charlie Brown is still something more of a smart aleck than a whipping boy here, but it is an early example of Patty and Violet teaming up against the kid.  Later on he loses this ability to reflect feelings of inadequacy back upon assailants.

Look at Patty's satisfied arms-crossing in the first panel.  Man, that's some serious smug.  Also in the first panel, that's quite a lot of detail on the background there.

January 26-28, 1954: Cold weather gear

January 26, 1954:

January 27, 1954:

January 28, 1954:

The first two strips here are reminiscent of the bits from A Christmas Story where Ralphie's brother Randy is so over-covered with coats and scarves he can't put his arms down, or get up once knocked over.  I suppose that kids aren't bundled up so well with heat-preservers these days.  Of course Schulz grew up in, and at the time was living in, Minnesota, which is rather infamous for its harsh winters.

The third strip is a demonstration of Snoopy's boundless enthusiasm, which I think became less apparent in the final years of the strip.  Shermy is in the first panel mostly to give context to the object Snoopy is chasing; hockey pucks don't real well if they just show up unheralded.  I think the last panel is a rare design misstep on Schulz's part; the motion lines produced by Snoopy look to more like a solid object than an effect of the dog's motion.

January 25, 1954: Peanuts in THREE-DEEEE

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

To think the idle joke about a failed gimmick in movie-making from fifty years ago would be absolutely as relevant today as when it was first read.

This is another of those strips where the emerging, vague un-dog-like nature of Snoopy's personality is the source of the humor.  When I read these strips I'm reminded of a Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, "A Pest in the House," one of the few with a joke that explicitly recognizes how weird is that arbitrary line between its animal characters as animals (things that Elmer Fudd hunts, that sleep in holes, that hope around the woods and float in ponds) and as human-like creatures (that pester hunters, who dress up in women's clothing, that play poker and golf, who hold jobs).

The cartoon in question begins with an announcer speaking: "Once upon a time there was a labor shortage.  It became so bad that employers would hire anybody."  A pause, then, when Daffy Duck zooms on-stage: "Or anything...."

There's another cartoon like that, made later,I think it's People Are Bunny, where Bugs Bunny and Daffy are competing in a radio program's stunt game for a mystery price, where they're racing each other to the studio.  At one point Daffy is flung into the air and left to helplessly fall to painful cartoon injury, and Bugs, looking up from the ground, casually remarks, "I wonder if Daffy will remember that he can fly?"  There is a crashing sound, then he adds, "I guess not."  Later in the same cartoon a similar remark happens regarding swimming.

Sunday, January 24, 1954: Lucy flips out

Lucy goes on a glorious campaign of destruction here.  It's the closest she's yet gotten to her malevolent destiny.

I think maybe part of the reason Schulz drew this one is just so he could draw lots of tiny little things flying around the room.  Anyway, I didn't know Violet had a stamp collection.

The lead panels, as usual, aren't needed to get the joke, although they do explain why Schroeder is involved in the mob.  (Linus is too young for such things.)  Of all the offended chasers, everyone seems to be yelling at Lucy except for Charlie Brown, who is uncharacteristically grim-faced.

January 23, 1953: Snoopy vs. The Yard: The Newspaper

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Another strip showing the dog getting stymied by some artifact of human civilization.  These are kind of boring I think, except for panel two, which is the closest I think we've gotten to this point to the "classic" look for Snoopy, that is to say the late 50s-to-60s look where Snoopy was long, lean and drawn loosely.

By the way, sorry for being a little slow with posts, shepherding the Kickstarter project has consumed a lot of my time over the past two weeks.