The sketchiness and wavering line of later Peanuts has a charm that goes well with the personality of the strip, but let’s never forget that early Peanuts showed great technical ability. We saw that back in the golf strips a couple of days ago, and we see it again here in this wonderful depiction of a rain storm.
The thing that makes it really appealing to me is the darker hatching used to represent obscured scenery in the background. It’s wonderfully suggestive without being too precise. It actually looks better to me this way than the backgrounds that would usually be back there. It must have taken a long time to draw.
Here's some more rain from a few days later, just because I probably wouldn't link to the strip otherwise:
May 2, 1953:
Charlie's face in the first and last panels is not something I'd usually expect from Schulz.
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