Sunday, June 3, 2012
June 6-11, 1955: Great Composers of the American West
A running theme in Peanuts in the early days is Charlie Brown being dismayed at some obviously false notion one of his friends has come up with, and their refusal to see sense regardless of all other matters. Up until now it's been Lucy who's been Chuck's opponent in this, but sometimes Schroeder sneaks in there as well in his uncritical idolization of Ludwig Van Beethoven. Later on a variety of other characters fill this role, and their notions take on differing levels of actuality. The most-remembered example of this, of course, is Linus' fixation on the Great Pumpkin, which became one of the trademarks of the strip.
June 7
The humor in this sequence comes not just from Charlie Brown's reaction, but the incongruity of seeing a fur hat on the head of Schroeder's bust.
June 8
Sometimes Peanuts' comedy is kind of like a mathematical formula that could be solved for a number of different variables. Character personalities, and cultural signifiers like Beethoven and Davy Crockett, are what realize the jokes.
Schroeder is singing the refrain from the famous song "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," written by George Bruns and Thomas W. Blackburn, written to publicize the Disney movie Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier. The song made the Billboard charts on March 26, 1955 and the strip was published June 6, so it was floating around the cultural mindspace at the time. Come to think of it, this explains some of the other Davy Crockett references in the strip. Here you go:
Incidentally, there is another, more recent, alternate-reality version of that song, written by They Might Be Giants:
June 9
Charles Schulz was from Minnesota, and although he moved around a bit (to Colorado and later to California), it typically expresses a midwestern kind of humor, self-deprecating and wry. For more, turn on A Prairie Home Companion on your local NPR station, or alternatively go get some Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVDs. Go on, I'll wait. (No I won't.)
June 10
Lucy's brand of evil is currently directly only towards her brother. It takes some time to fester and flower into the true breadth of its malevolence.
June 11
At the time Schulz's first son Monte would have been about four. I don't know if this is the title of a real book or one that Schulz made up for the strip.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Sunday, June 5, 1955: What's this? A piece of candy.
That's a good drawing of dismay on Charlie Brown's face in the next-to-last panel.
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It's been slow going here due to interference from other projects. The blog's not dead quite yet though.
Friday, April 20, 2012
May 29-June 4, 1955: Ol' Aerial Ears
May 30
Pinky Lee was the star of a children's TV show in 1954 and 1955. His catchphrase was "You make me so mad!" The Wikipedia page on him notes that he collapsed on-air later in 1955, which the audience of children had assumed was part of his goofy act. This basically ended Pinky's role on the show, although contrary to rumors at the time he didn't die until 1993.
June 1
By my reckoning, this is the first time Linus has ever had an attack due to the absense of his blanket. Lucy's attitude towards her brother's flannel dependence varies from warmly supportive to fierce antagonism.
June 2
June 4
He still COULD have licket Crockett, he just had something else to do.
June 5
Snoopy powers demonstrated: prehensile ears & improved auditory reception.
Monday, April 2, 2012
May 22-28, 1955: Scenes from an Illustrated Childhood
Shades of Calvin and his bicycle here. And a scribble of ire!
A character displaying affection, love, tolerance, pleasure, joy? These things are not funny. Conan! What is funny in life?
Lucy turns into quite the feminist later on, this attitude turns out to be fairly atypical of her.
It's possible to miss it if you just glance at the strip, but the joke here is that Lucy is missing one skate, which is the one that Snoopy's riding.
Violet and her mud pies again. Old habits die hard. Y'know, I don't remember if we've ever seen any of the Peanuts kids eat one of those mud pies. I'd assume that they're just playing, but that look of distaste on Charlie Brown's face implies that he at least has considered eating one of the things. I guess kids had stronger immune systems back then.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
May 16-17, 19-20, 1955: Lucy and the Clover
Charlie Brown's pose in the last panel is not the kind of thing he'd be seen doing in later years of the strip. There's still something of the old, more confident Charlie Brown still around.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
May 9-14, 1955: That's the way it goes
Even Snoopy's vaunted candy-detection abilities have their limits. Serif Z! Also, a serif'd "sigh," in lowercase.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
May 2-7, 1955: Lucy the Environmentalist
This isn't the first time Lucy has responded to a direct refutation of her beliefs with a non-sequitur counterattack. Lucy's not the sort to waste too much time on introspection.
Comic images from gocomics.com.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
April 25-30, 1955: I'm Well Read
Somewhat uncharacteristically, Pig-Pen gets angry at the way people refer to him here. It's a bit difficult, through all the grime, to read his expressions of ire. I'm not quite sure I get this strip though -- I sense there's something about it, maybe some context from the time, that I'm missing. I'm not actually sure the girls are judging his appearance, although if they're not then why would Schulz use Pig-Pen here?
I think Schulz spelled it "SKWEEK" in the third panel just to mix things up a bit. We get another funny drawing of Snoopy here, who is already the most plastic of the Peanuts characters.
My favorite thing about this strip is the slight irregularity in Snoopy's jaw in the third panel, indicating Snoopy chewing. Lucy's mouth seems to be missing in the first panel.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
April 18-23, 1955: Watson come here, I need groceries
More of Pig-Pen's philosophy, which could be regarded either as kind of profund or as indicative of the lengths he'll go through to excuse his willful messiness.
Fun with halftone! It definitely is possible to get mad at someone who's really neat, if they're still marking up the wall, although I suppose the Van Pelt folks could just tell people it's wallpaper. Really freaky wallpaper.
Lucy believe, if you're losing on one front, just open up another.
Snoopy has the advantage of having a flatter head. It'd be a lot harder for Charlie Brown to balance like that. By the way, this strip demonstrates well how much Snoopy's body shape has changed. He still has a little ways to go before he starts to balloon out.
You can't please all the people all the time. There's kind of a Betty-and-Veronica thing going on between Patty and Violet here.
Charlie Brown's rather pleased with himself in the second panel.
I never got much use out of tin can telephones as a kid, beans or not. I figured out much later that they really depend on the string between cans to be pulled tight, which it obviously isn't here. Anyway the matter is moot, as the first panel makes it clear that whoever it is Charlie Brown is talking to is standing right off panel, well within earshot.
Tin can telephones have passed into the lore of kid life, as something that children make to amuse themselves, even though I imagine in this age of cell phones and casual texting that this type of playground technology is hardly ever put into practice anymore. This hasn't stopped the things from soaking into our culture -- an episode of the My Little Pony cartoon (don't laugh) used one in a scene, and that "Kids Next Door" cartoon from some years back used them as an essential communications tool for its weird kind of tree fort tech.
Monday, February 6, 2012
April 11-16, 1955: Phooey to you Schroeder
Charlie Brown doesn't have nearly the fixation on D. Crockett as Schroeder does on Beethoven, but his embarrassment makes the strip.
At first this seems like another joke on the size of C.B.'s head, but really any of the characters could see around that thin tree. The angry look on Lucy's face is adorable.
There are a handful of strips that establish that Schroeder isn't simply a child prodigy, but actually has a music career. Lucy's general apathy towards music makes her choice of crush an odd one; Schroeder doesn't actually have much personality other than his music.
The first line drive Charlie Brown ever dodged (although it looks more like it bowled him over, dodging is how it's described in later strips).
This is more of a Lucy kind of strip, but neither her right field position nor her incompetence at baseball have been firmly established yet.
For some reason, I can easily imagine one of Thurber's dogs in Snoopy's place here.