November 20, 1953: "Aus Der Tiefe"

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

There are certain personality characteristics that Peanuts characters exhibit.  Here is exhibited one that we might call "mischevious."  Snoopy has it definitely, and Lucy might have some of it.  Charlie Brown used to have to, as we see here, but kind of grows out of it.

Yet another reason to love Peanuts: you have just read a strip about the pronunciation of a German particle.  That's not something you'll typically find in Dennis the Menace.

In panel 2, Charlie Brown is sitting on the far end of Schroeder's toy piano.  That thing must be really heavy to avoid being upended.

July 20-21, 1953: Piano interlude

July 20


The first strip comments on the plight of the working artist.

July 21


The second, the artist's quest for respect.

It is easy to see the Schroeder strips as a metaphor for Schulz's own desire to be taken seriously. Maybe this is why he often uses Schroeder as an audience for Charlie Brown's efforts at cartooning, in which we can just as easily imagine Schulz poking fun at himself.

August 7, 1952: Music humor

You know, I get the feeling that real musicians probably crack bad composer puns all the time.

Sunday, May 11, 1952: Schroeder in concert (with backup)

The entire joke here rests in Violet saying "let him play by himself" instead of "let Schroeder."

There are some nice touches in this one. In addition to the musical staffs that Schulz spent so much effort on, and he put a G-clef instead of an S in his name in the first panel. But best of all we have Snoopy in this strip for no story-related reason other than just being cute and funny there on his end of the couch. His reaction in panel 6 is best here, he's just rendered so winningly in that pose, exactly halfway between a dog-like and a human reaction. It's great.