[Week 3] Comic Strips ~ Peanuts

So for the past week or two, I've been reading the Peanuts series by Charles Schulz!

The things that surprised me about these comic strips, since I read the book that had all the first runs from 1950-1952, is that the humor is still very, VERY funny-- at least to me. The humor of the Peanuts strips doesn't depend entirely on either being stereotypically heroic like some other comic strips at the time, and also really doesn't rely on making female characters the butts of jokes.

The best part about the humor of the early Peanuts strips is that their humor comes from the fact that it feels like a real life instance. A dog being annoying for candy or other food he's not supposed to have and constantly showing up the second you open something is incredibly relatable, more so than someone asking if women are people because she forgot her bathing suit.

The other surprising thing that I found from the Peanuts strips is just how much is actually packed into relatively short strips-- most of them only really being 4-5 panels long. The occasional large page of comics was also really nice, and gave me lots of memories of Calvin and Hobbes.

The last thing I'll bring up that surprised me about the Peanuts strips, is how late Lucy really comes into the game of the strips, and the fact that she's so much younger than Charlie. I also had no idea how much backstory the little piano kid, Schroeder, had, and that's only one of the characters that I had no real idea about prior to really reading the old Peanuts strips.