Sunday, October 11, 1953: The CROQUET GAME

This is quite an interesting strip. In addition to carrying an extra title other than just "Peanuts," there are several different jokes competing for space in these eight complex panels.

- Every character appears except for Linus. However, Schroeder's only in the first three (in the third he hiding behind the tree), Shermy's only in two of them, and Snoopy's relegated to one.
- Although the major gag of the strip is Lucy's trying to bounce a croquet ball, the most interesting exchange is between Patty and Charlie Brown, which is a fairly good depiction of the direction Schulz is taking the round-headed kid. Patty's blunt statement is rather shocking; one can imagine her intent is to reassure Charlie Brown that it's not personal, but when put that way how could one take it as anything but?
- Lucy shows greater appreciation for experimental evidence here than she does in many later strips.

January 6, 1952: The First Sunday

And here we have the very first Sunday strip of Peanuts' 49 year run.

Already we see the effects of the unique format requirements of the Sunday edition. The top panels of the strip must not be essential to understanding the whole, since some newspapers don't run those to save space. Since the first panel can't be too important to the story, later Schulz would play around with clever bits of stylized art in the first panel, but here it's just used to extend the lead-up.

The characters look a little funny here, possibly due to their being rendered a bit larger than usual.

Notice, four of the five characters are named in this strip! Could this have been a concession to papers that only ran Peanuts on Sundays?

I like the quotes around "Tag" and "It" in all the panels. Especially "It," I'm going to start using scare quotes around all my pronouns! Not really