Charlie Brown

A relatively quiet day in the Sunday comics. Three silent penultimate panels from:

On the FastTrack by Bill Holbrook
Herman (reprint) by Jim Unger
Opus by Berkeley Breathed

Pearls Before Swine is off the watch today. The silent panels show progressive action rather than just being a dumb-stare beat. Filler, yes, but true SPP, not quite.


My favorite running gag in all of comics appears today:

I can never get enough of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. While this one from 1959 is not one of the best, it is only the fourth time Schulz did this to Charlie Brown. Here he's still working out the particulars of the running gag. Notably, Charlie Brown does not yell his traditional "Aaugh!" Instead, its the more verbose and redundant "She did it again!"

We don't need Charlie Brown to tell us that Lucy did it again, we can plainly see that. In fact, knowing that she is going to do it again is the whole pleasure of the joke. Aaugh! much better describes Charlie Brown's frustration and anger at Lucy, himself and his place in the whole rotten world. Schulz would spend the next forty years revising and perfecting this gag.