#peanuts comics

There are lots of great strips I just don't have room to comment on. I strongly encourage everybody to read along at the official GoComics page or by purchasing the Fantagraphics hardcover collections.

June 2, 1961

This one’s kind of interesting because it's actually the second strip in this format. Here's the first one, which I didn't post at the time because I didn't think it would matter:

In the first strip Lucy isn't able to join Linus because of a dentist appointment, implying that chaperoning her brother was a daily occurrence. Now in this one we see her sending him off but not having any specific reason, implying that over the past week (perhaps by her own design) this has now become the norm. It’s a wonderfully subtle bit of character development that can only be done in this specific kind of long-running newspaper strip.

June 4, 1961

Lucy, please. We call it "Generalized Anxiety Disorder" now.

June 5, 1961

Why on earth would you take your cat out of the house? Not needing to do that is the main benefit of having one.

Also Frieda’s family must be insanely good pet owners (current situation aside) because that is a chill AF cat. I don’t know how much you know about cats but they don’t usually tolerate being pawned off to strangers like that.

June 6, 1961

See?? Dude just loves being held and dgaf about the details. A very good cat.

Also bonus points to Schulz for accurately capturing the "I have no idea how to hold a cat" cat-holding technique.

June 10, 1961

No that's a different Peanuts character.

June 11, 1961

Lucy have you stopped to consider that you might be the reason Linus has Phantophobia?

Though I will say, training your brother to read your finger movements and then translate them on the fly into sung musical notes is a genuinely impressive accomplishment. You may not like her methods, but the girl gets results.

June 25, 1961

He hasn’t perfected the technique yet, but he’ll get there.

June 26, 1961

I can’t help but notice that all of these things except the Roman empire still exist. Curious.

There are lots of great strips I just don't have room to comment on. I strongly encourage everybody to read along at the official GoComics page or by purchasing the Fantagraphics hardcover collections.

May 4, 1961

I remember people making this exact same complaint when I was a kid in the 90s. I’m starting to think that kids never actually made lemonade stands but we all convinced ourselves they did because we liked the mental image.

May 6, 1961

I audibly laughed at that first panel. This kid’s a god damned machine.

May 9, 1961

For some reason I didn't connect Charlie Brown's clapback to the bowling games at first so I thought he was implying her dad was out cheating on her mom.

Still kind of read it that way, tbh.

May 11, 1961

Because hyperfixations are a key symptom of autism. Trust me on this, I make a Peanuts blog.

May 14, 1961

It’s funnier when you realize she broke into Charlie Brown’s back yard to do this.

May 24, 1961

I already knew about Frieda’s cat but I had no idea Schulz made such a big deal out of her getting him beforehand. 

Also that is a janky looking cat. I can see why Faron didn’t stick around for long.

May 28, 1961

The lyrics are a bit different, but I THINK this is the song he’s singing here:

The video says it was released in July of 1961 (two months after this strip came out) but I’m guessing it was on the radio for a while before it got released on vinyl. 

A very strange choice for a 5 year old. You’re weird, Linus.

May 31, 1961

Oh hi Sally! I kind of forgot you existed for a hot minute there.