This is the Classic Peanuts comic strip that was reprinted yesterday. It’s originally from December 7, 1960, and I think it’s very funny.
©UFS
I don’t know which book first reprinted this installment, but the next day’s strip appeared in “It’s A Dog’s Life, Charlie Brown” in 1962. The overhead enlargement of what’s being done by the characters is a Schulz device that I particularly enjoy. All of Charlie Brown’s pen/pencil pal gags were done this way, as was Schroeder’s music and Snoopy’s “Dark and Stormy Night” typing.
Schulz not only completely ignored the clichés and conventions of previous comic strips, he created his own wide array of rich and unique cartoon expressions. For example, instead of having characters falling out of the last panel in reaction to the punchline and showing the heels of their shoes, he had the kids flip around in mid-air.
We take these images for granted, because they seem so natural, and there’s a certain comfortable “rightness” about them. Sparky Schulz worked very hard at making it all work so well, and he loved doing it.
Reading Peanuts books on Christmas Days while I was growing up was always an exquisitely enjoyable pleasure. As an adult, reading these same comic strips in The Complete Peanuts collections, I have a greater appreciation for the development of the drawing and the writing and the characters, and they don’t seem childish at all. I guess that’s why some would call it Art.