Wednesday, November 16, 2011
OFF-TOPIC: American Censorship Day
This is an off-topic post intended to help spread the word about the harmful "PROTECT IP" act moving through the U.S. Congress. To find out more: http://americancensorship.org/
(EDIT: Removed the code that put the link in the banner.)
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 1933: Tum De Tum Te Da Te Dum ♫
Read this strip at gocomics.com.
Put a crayon in Lucy's hand and the world is her kitty. Comic characters are susceptible to manias that would get real people committed. Can't you just imagine a Batman villain whose schtick was drawing lines between dots? "The Connector." It can't be any less silly than the Riddler, whose gimmick is providing clues by which he can be caught.
Every once in a while Schulz allows himself a metajoke. The strips in which people make fun of the size and shape of Charlie Brown's head are among these ("Is that a beach ball?"), as are the ones where Charlie Brown can't hide behind a tree because his head is too wide. One strip Schroeder even threatened to put in a transfer to a different comic strip. The last panel here is another such joke.
Some time later, Lucy will ask Charlie Brown if he thinks she has beautiful eyes, and, perhaps risking a pounding, Charlie Brown says they look just like little dots of india ink.
The first frame here is one of Schulz's more abstract lead panel designs.
January 24-29, 1955: Snoopy unmoors from reality
Another early Linus/Snoopy interaction. That's a rather overstated frown in the last panel there.
A simple gag about a kid not understanding an idiom. Yeah yeah, let's get to the real reason we're here:
THIS. One of the most important strips in Peanuts' entire run. The first strip in which Snoopy fantasizes about being something else. In these four panels we see the origin of the World War I Flying Ace, Joe Cool, and a hundred World Famous things. They are cute strips of course, but there are strange depths buried there.
This strip is a bit problematic mechanically though. Schulz uses a thought balloon for Snoopy's thoughts in the first panel, but in the second the balloon does double-duty as a thought and speech balloon, which makes it seem like Snoopy is speaking in English.
Charlie Brown's wide, amused smile is, in its way, as funny as Snoopy's snarl.
Lucy is willfully wrong about something else. Some notes here:
1. The subplot about Charlie Brown's paddleball is a nice touch.
2. The letters asked about and responded with are written with serifs and with little single-quotes around them.
3. Charlie Brown's annoyance that Lucy refuses to believe 'F' follows 'E' in the alphabet is interesting. He seems to care that Lucy get her facts straight, and takes it personally when she refuses to see reality. That's admirable in a way, but will probably cause him problems later in life, for there is no shortage of Lucys in the world.
When I was a kid, I would read these strips where Lucy is referred to calmly as a fussbudget, and the sarcasm flew roughly two miles over my head. It didn't help that Lucy would then respond without a trace of irony. The humor of Peanuts could be really dry sometimes.
Violet's smile throughout this strip is vaguely infuriating.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 1955: Charlie Brown's deep attachment to an ephemeral thing
Read this strip at gocomics.com.
This is one of those strip concepts Schulz returns to later. I remember there being a similar strip involving Snoopy, who befriends a snowman, and is heartbroken when it melts away. Cut to Charlie Brown and Linus, who have been watching. Linus: "Poor Snoopy, he's too sensitive." CB: "I notice he's not too sensitive to eat the carrot." I'm paraphrasing, but it happened more or less like that. Even the carrot eating is here, which makes me wonder if that later strip weren't a conscious callback on the part of Schulz.
Anyway, this strip provides a good example of Charlie Brown's developing depression. He really takes this too seriously. I mean, going so far as to beg the sun to stop shining? Wow. A futile statement of man protesting against the universe! I smell a thesis coming on....
As the first panel indicates, snowman building is an artistic statement with Charlie Brown. He's a sculptor who works in the medium of snow, and he's at least got Schroeder's admiration for it.
I wonder if this isn't some kind of statement, conscious or not, by Charles Schulz about the ephemeralness of his own medium? Peanuts will probably be around much longer than other concluded strips, mind you. There are a lot of forgotten newspaper comics out there.
EXTRA: R. Crumb on C. Schulz
From Crumb on Others (warning: link is NSFW -- I mean, how could it be, it's R. Crumb):
"I liked Peanuts for a while. In the late '50s, early '60s, I read it. It was good; well written and funny. I didn’t mind the minimalist drawing style. He caught on because his stuff was so cute and still kind of poignant and meaningful that everybody liked it. Everybody! How could you not like it? Who could dislike it? [laughs] There’s not a thing unlikeable about it. And because of that, Shultz became the richest cartoonist – one of the richest men in America. I met him once actually, at a book fair in San Francisco. He told me he liked my work, which took me aback."
"I liked Peanuts for a while. In the late '50s, early '60s, I read it. It was good; well written and funny. I didn’t mind the minimalist drawing style. He caught on because his stuff was so cute and still kind of poignant and meaningful that everybody liked it. Everybody! How could you not like it? Who could dislike it? [laughs] There’s not a thing unlikeable about it. And because of that, Shultz became the richest cartoonist – one of the richest men in America. I met him once actually, at a book fair in San Francisco. He told me he liked my work, which took me aback."
Saturday, November 12, 2011
EXTRA: XKCD makes a subtle Peanuts joke
Page: http://xkcd.com/972/
Hover over the image on that page to see the source of the joke made overt. It's a reference to a very silly Lucy/Linus Sunday exchange, which starts off when Linus tells his sister "I'm aware of my tongue."
January 17-22, 1955: It Snow Trouble
Another snow pun for a title! Get used to them, it's far from the last....
We had another strip like this not long ago, where Charlie Brown didn't seem to come out of it too badly, but poor Snoopy was overwhelmed. Like in that strip, the funniest thing to me is how effortlessly Charlotte Braun belts out her words. There's a good set of lungs on the girl.
Oh no. Oh, no no no no no. What character in comicdom can get something as willfully wrong as can Lucy Van Pelt? Other than Mallard Fillmore, of course. Lucy actually knows she's wrong unconsciously, I think, which is why she sets herself against Charlie Brown's disagreement before she even hears his opinion. She's so happy with her discovery.
Notice... both here and in the previous strip, Schulz draws forward-facing characters with neutral expressions without a mouth, possibly for parity with the way he draws his characters when they face the side. He experimented with this a time or two before. He abandons it eventually.
I've had conversations with people that have gone exactly like this, right down to my depressed skulking away at the end.
Another mouthless face. And Lucy called Charlie Brown's face funny-looking.
Charlie Brown has some standard ways of expressing displeasure, which are already beginning to get set in. 1. "Good grief." 2. "I can't stand it." 3. "My stomach hurts."
Schroeder is practicing his scowl for the role.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Sunday, January 19, 1955: Nervous energy
Read this strip at gocomics.com.
Charlie Brown started out very slightly antisocial. Now he's moved into obsessive compulsive disorder. He's shown some signs of depression, but it hasn't really set in yet. The market isn't yet large enough to support five cent psychiatrist booths, but it's coming.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
January 10-15, 1955: Lucy is hard on toys
A disturbing insight into Lucy's attitude towards property.
For some reason this strip reminds me of that disco version of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
That's kind of hyperbolic. Lucy didn't even know what a metronome was before Monday!
Girls in Peanuts tend to be rather more rough-and-tumble than in other strips. Lucy, of course, eventually gets to where she won't think twice about returning a slug in the jaw for an insult. "Peppermint" Patty won't even be arriving on the scene for many years yet.
When someone tells you to close your eyes, yeah, it's usually a good idea not to if you can get away with it. Anyway, why doesn't Violet just rummage through her candy bag facing the other way?
An enthusiastic speech by Schroeder, boldly staking his claim as the neighborhood artist.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
January 3-8, 1955: It snow problem
Snoopy vs. the Yard: Snowflakes
This is the first sign of strife between Lucy and Linus concerning Linus' blanket. Still, Linus' holding onto a security blanket hasn't been presented in anything other than positive terms otherwise -- this seems to be more Lucy selfishly claiming Linus' property as her own than shame or anger that he's carrying it around.
Lucy might have just a touch of OCD....
It is funny when a character defines a trait so completely that it causes extraordinary things to occur. Pig-Pen seems quite pleased by his accomplishment, and even the snowman itself seems happier than average.
Lucy's mood continues to sour. Although Linus hasn't spoken much yet, we can already see their relative ages beginning to approach each other.
It's like, the snow might all melt tomorrow, so might as well get your snowman quota for the year out of the way now.
It's becoming harder to find insightful things to say about every strip, and it was never the purpose of the blog to re-publish every strip anyway, so it is probable that soon we'll go back to only notable strips, of which there are still a good number at this point.
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