April 1-2, 1954: Two on Baseball

April 1:

The second panel here is a particular favorite of mine.  Lucy is weighing her options.

This may be the first direct instance of direct violence in Peanuts.  There have been chases before, and chases of being hit by projectiles (like one where Lucy hits Charlie Brown with a snowball at very cose range) but I don't think anyone has actually hit another kid before now, with hand or weapon.  I'm sure one of you will correct me if I've remembered wrong.  (In fact, I'm looking forward to it.)

April 2:

Now that another character has directly remarked on Charlie Brown's lack of playing skill, it has become a bit more solidified as an attribute of the character himself.

March 29-31, 1954: Three at sea

Read these strips at gocomics.com.

I'll say this much about Universal's archives having poorly-cropped strips at this point; by doing three at once, we're making fairly good time through 1954.  Although they do prevent me from skipping strips, or organizing like strips together (like the saga of Linus' block building skills).  These three strips finish out March.

March 29, 1954:
This strip implies some kind of empathy between the young Linus and Snoopy.  Snoopy is running towards Linus at full speed, so Linus knows to build a wall for Snoopy to jump over, and he knows that Snoopy will see this as a fun thing to hurdle, and not an effort to get him to crash.

It doesn't look like Linus is building quickly here, but he can't have had more than a few seconds to construct that wall.

March 30, 1954:
This is one of the earliest indications of Charlie Brown's poor baseball skills.

March 31, 1954:
Charlie Brown lecturing Snoopy?  Another point of evidence that he is Snoopy's owner, at least legally -- Snoopy isn't exactly reverential here.

Serif Z!

Sunday, March 28, 1954: An outsider's view of the Van Pelt family

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

The first two panels have more of Lucy's ability to rule it over Charlie Brown in checkers, but the main thrust of this strip is twofold.  First, Lucy shows a rather astonishing lack of interest in Linus.  I think this is the first time her dislike of her brother has really come to fore.  Like many of the relations of Peanuts this is fluid and comes and goes over time, but in the long run at least it seems to be an aspect of Lucy's character that sticks.  It makes me feel kind of sorry for both of them.

But the reason Linus likes to play by himself, it turns out, is that he is insanely functional, like in an autistic sense.

It seems like the way a Cthulhu cultist might not be able to talk without inserting ftagn every other sentence, but has bizarre, yet correct, insights into the nature of the universe.

META: Dammit Blogger

Blogger in Draft's interface has changed completely since yesterday, it's going to take some time to retrain myself for this.  So far my reaction has been: GUH, if I wanted "blogs I'm following" to be the main thing I see upon logging in, I'd go to Google Reader.

March 25-27, 1954: Three, golly gee

Read these strips at gocomics.com.

More glued-together strips from Universal's slightly malformed archive.

March 25, 1954:
Patty is an expert at marbles.  I've had the same reaction that Patty gets from Charlie Brown and Shermy, from people who balk at playing Monopoly without the various house rules (like money on Free Parking or no auctions) that make that very long game much longer.

March 26, 1954:
Now isn't that a hellish visage to have suddenly thrust into your face?

March 27, 1954:
More developing of Charlie Brown's "loser" persona.  I wonder if Schulz knew he was fixing the kid's personality for all time in these strips, or if he thought it was just another story theme, like Linus' Newton-defying block building skills or Violet's mud pie fixation?

March 22-24, 1954: Three don't you see

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

More badly-framed strips from that odd place in the internet Peanuts archives, probably caused by an oversight when these were scanned in from print compilations.

March 22, 1954:
At this point in the strip, examples like yesterday notwithstanding, Patty is kind of like the female Charlie Brown.  Not in the sense of being defeated by the world, but in the sense of being an every-person suitable for use in general.  She is rather more competent than Charlie Brown though, and clearer-headed.

Again, the difference between Peanuts and other strips?  Poorer strips would probably end with a sarcastic comment from Patty and make that the punchline.  Competent strips would end with Charlie Brown pointing at Snoopy, and letting the reader laugh at that dumb kid himself.  Peanuts gives us that last panel, which sympathizes with Charlie Brown.  It recognizes that, hey, we're all stupid like this sometime, and when we realize that we are we should be embarrassed about it.  But we should also get out of the weather.

March 23, 1954:
MUDPIEZZZZZ

Violet's fixation on the preparation of mud pies is one of the earliest recognizable traits exhibited by a specific Peanuts character.  We haven't seen it for a while though.  As I've said previously, when you're sentenced to come up with a joke a day for the rest of your life, you use what you think of.  Schulz attacked this somewhat dismal craft without complaint, and frequently with genius.

March 24, 1954:
Charlie Brown's insecure personality is developing clearly now, but Schulz still gives him an out sometimes, with the kids calling for him. 

Sunday, March 21, 1954: Eight stages of grief

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Beginning with panel eight:

1. Shock
2. Disbelief
3. Confirmation
4. Anger
5. Blankness
6. Taking off your shirt(?)
7. Wide-mouthed frowning
8. Sighing

They might not be the official stages, but they work for Charlie Brown.

This is possibly the most directly hostile act so far seen in Peanuts.  It would be worthy of Lucy.  There are no extenuating circumstances, and nothing sets Patty off, yet she accomplishes her self-appointed task with relish.  It's kind of out of character.  Even when she's part of the team act with Violet against CB, their methods are less overt.

Switch the gender roles here and the strip would turn out quite different.  Even this early, it doesn't seem to be in Charlie Brown's nature to do something this mean.  It's the kind of thing Calvin might do to Susie, but not without some form of judgmental comeuppance from the cartoonist.

March 18-21, 1954: Three in a tree

Read these strips at gocomics.com.

Another triple.

March 18, 1954:
If you're as small as Linus, a bag of blocks is in fact a very useful thing to have.  Of course most little kids don't have the block-stacking skill or the utilitarian frame of mind to make the proper use of them.

March 19, 1954:
Linus' block-stacking powers have met their match.

March 20, 1954:
This is sort of a response to Charlie Brown giving Violet chocolates for Income Tax Day back on Monday.  Charlie Brown's "Wow!" in the first panel is mighty fancy, like a small version of the looping letters Schulz sometimes draws large.

March 15-17, 1954: Three for free

Read these strips at gocomics.com.

Three more conjoined strips, caused when whoever scanned these forgot to crop.

March 15, 1954:
A funny strip in general.  Charlie Brown is not one to let a card go to waste, even if it's not really suited for its purpose.  At least we should be glad Schroeder isn't giving out Beethoven's Birthday cards.  Yet.

March 16, 1954:
Snoopy is using thought balloons!  I think he used them one time before, but this time I think it "takes."  Good faces on Snoopy here.

March 17, 1954:
Patty is unexpectedly a marbles shark.  Not as bad as Lucy at checkers, but still.  What do marbles champs do with all their winnings?  She must have a huge collection of the things by now.  I wonder if the marbles companies engineered the whole "playing for keeps" idea, the same way Wizards of the Coast put playing "for ante" in the official rules to Magic: The Gathering?

Sunday, March 14, 1954: Snowball Fail

Read this strip over at gocomics.com.

Charlie Brown doesn't have it in him to make a really evil face, such that Calvin could or, closer to home, Lucy of a few years from now.  There is sort of that aspect of Calvin picking on Susie here, although it's usually more of an outside source that gives him his comeuppance.

Chagrimace!