Sunday, April 18, 1954: Who needs peppermint?

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Here we have one of the more interesting questions about the Peanuts strip.  Schulz and Peanuts makes the claim, if I remember it correctly, that the two Pattys, the original and the "Peppermint" variety, were based on the same person.  At first that assumption seems laughable, despite the two sharing the same name, but think.  Besides this strip, every physical contest we've seen Patty in (marbles, mostly, and mostly against Charlie Brown), she's won.  And their times in the strip don't intersect very much; one wanes right when the other waxes.

Oh well.  Idle speculation aside, I think this strip has a hilarious final panel.  I don't know of any other strip that would think to end it so understatedly, or half as effectively.

One weird thing though: look at the backgrounds of the last two panels.  They're completely different!

November 16, 1953: You'll like it because it mentions Shubert!

Read this strip at gocomics.com.

Another of the "Charlie Brown: Budding Cartoonist" series.  In these strips Schulz pokes fun at his own pretensions, but they also show how engaged he was with his craft.

One thing I really like about all these is that, for all of C.B.'s faults as a cartoonist, he at least knows enough to work large.  Held edgeways, that sheet of paper is as tall as he is, sans head.

September 28, 1953: Things haven't changed that much since then

People ridiculing things they don't understandd! If you want the modern-day version of this, just turn on Fox News.

Charlie Brown shows strange insight into the motivation behind his own behavior. That's kind of creepy.

September 9, 1953: Hearing marshmallows

Part of the fun of the character is that Snoopy is both a person and not, and Schulz can decide for himself which he is more like. When one is expected and the other provided, there is humor in that moment.

This is a weird place in the development of Snoopy's visual development. He's thicker here than in the years to come. He gets longer and leaner for a while, but afterwards seems to pull back a bit into the "balloon animal" shape of the later years of the strip.

I might have missed one or two, but this is the first time I can recall seeing a single, serif Z representing sleep. Such Zs become an important part of the strip's comic language.

May 14-16, 1953: Comics, and the foundation of "Happiness Is"

This is mostly notable because it's Schulz engaging in more metacommentary about comics.



One of the more insipid trends in Peanuts is those cloying "Happiness Is..." pictures. I actually don't think they were ever that prevalent in the comics; I think they were used more in books and merchandising. Still, this is a step in that direction. It is also the first instance, to my eyes, of Charlie Brown bemoaning his fate in the recognized Charlie Brown manner.



I think that would actually be a funny strip, in a New Yorker kind of way. (Which means other people probably wouldn't think it'd be a funny strip.)