Sunday, February 28, 1954: Willful Little Lucy

Read this strip on gocomics.com.

How much of this is meant to depict Lucy herself being stubborn, and how much just a very young kid rebelling against her parents?  I think often, in Peanuts, cases of the latter evolve over time into cases of the former.  That is, strips intended as general observations end up getting sorted by character, and so the kids accrete characteristics over time and in this way become complex.

In the lead-in panels, Schulz shows Lucy being contented with a word balloon containing a musical note.  I suppose it's meant to represent her humming.  It's not the first time he's done this.

March 27, 1953: Back to the slaughter

This is the first time we've seen Charlie Brown in bed, and also the first time we see him fretting while laying there. Poor kid.

We're establishing Charlie Brown's classic personality here. Most of the time up to now he was, Schulz's own word, kind of a smart-aleck. Here we see him as the sensitive, put-upon type which is more in line with how we remember him.

November 25, 1950: Improbable bedspread

Charlie Brown's bed appears for the first time. Look at how the grid pattern on it sort of slides off the bed.

In this strip Snoopy seems to be more obviously Charlie Brown's dog. It's hard to get a fix on his owner until the character relationships gel a bit.