October 18-23: Towards a classification system of comic jokes

October 18

Did you know that there is a complicated system of categorizing folk and fairy tales? Like, assigning letter and number codes to them, so someone can say something like "Oh, Little Red Riding Hood? That's a 73-B, juvenile travels through woods to relation, who has been replaced by wolf." Strips like this make me want to come up with such a system for jokes. This could be 13-G, kid gets tripped up by minor misunderstanding concerning meaning of word.

October 19

26-Q, part of dog takes on dual-role as inanimate object.

October 20

930-A-IV, smart kid finds clever way to remind friends they are to bring her birthday presents.

October 21

8-W, sight gag causing dog to resemble hand puppet. (Not to be confused with 8-V, dog pushed off table by irate cat. Okay, I'll stop now.)

October 22

It's easy to forget the relative sizes of the Peanuts characters compared to the world around them. The sight of the bathtub behind Patty shows just how young the kids are meant to be. Even in the early days the kids behave more like small adults than children, but the age discrepancy back in 1954 seems almost shocking to me.

October 23

This strip is almost a trope for Schulz at this time; a character gets in the way of Snoopy watching television, or vice-versa, with a sight gag showing the obstructed character restoring his view at the expense of the other.

January 18, 1954:

January 19, 1954:

January 20, 1954:

January 21, 1954:

Let's do a few this time:
January 18: This strip is a callback to December 16, 1953.  Like that earlier strip, Schroeder's legs reveal attention to how they're braced against the fence.  Nowadays it seems weird that a kid would get off of school for his birthday, or that of any random classical composer.  That fence is weird -- it's in both strips.  This must be the edge of Schroeder's yard.  Chagrimace!

Of note for trivia contests: Schroeder's birthday is January 18.

January 19: It would be so easy to derive a political message from this strip.

January 20: This strip is something of a callback to July 2, 1953.  In that strip the kids are saddened by the prospect of being left with a babysitter.  Here, they're gloating at the prospect of the other being left behind.  Gradually, their relationship is evolving.

January 21: I like this one for how the shape of the notes in the last frame fill in the space between the top and the piano.

December 16, 1953: For your calendars

View this strip at gocomics.com.

The old mania shows through.  This obsession with all things Beethoven only grows over time, until it becomes perhaps Schroeder's most endearing characteristic.  I don't think the teacher is going to buy it as an absence excuse though.

According to Wikipedia, we're not actually sure when Ludwig Van Beethoven's birthday is, but it does say that December 16 is our best guess.

Concerning the art:
How about that jacket Charlie Brown is wearing?  Is that leather?  Denim?  Or just (yawn) corduroy?  
Those are some pretty well-thought-out poses for Schroeder on the fence there.  Schulz draws him having to lift himself up to see over the fence, which is exerting, so he braces himself against his feet in a couple of ways.    Very nice!

October 17, 1952: More comics

Some of the titles on the comics have violent names, like they did in the drugstore strip from some months back. Some of the titles are: "Zipp!" "Kill" "Wow!" "Smash" "Hate" "Killer Comix" "Slaughter" "War" "Ha! Ha!"

August 28, 1951: Snoopy's birthday

Should this be considered Snoopy's official birthday? I don't think Schulz planned out his characters' backstories in that much detail, really. Does it seem strange to sing "Happy Birthday" for a dog?

Snoopy is a dog of many emotions: surprise, tearful gratitude, and anticipatory happiness.

February 22, 1951: Violet's birthday

Funny thing about this strip, when he finds out Violet's birthday was last month he says he wishes he had known as he wanted to get her a present.  But they met just fifteen days ago!

This one is just funny, I think.  My first exposure to the characters of Patty and Violet were in compilations that painted them in a pretty negative light, often ganging up to denigrate poor Charlie Brown.  The little girls in the strips I saw almost seemed like different characters.  Though of course they paled beside the magnificent, maleficient Lucy Van Pelt.  

LUCY VAN PELT. Her her name, ye gods, and tremble!

October 30, 1950: The age before white-out

Notice the hasty lettering correction in the second panel!  I also like how it seems to actually turn out to be Charlie Brown's birthday.