The year is 1954, and, in the month of October, Charles Schulz is delivering some of his bestPeanutswork. At this point, Schulz had been publishingPeanutsstrips for four years. While the brand still had a long way to go before it became the biggest,best comic in the world, it was already a staple of newspapers everywhere.
At this point,Schulz had already hit his stride as the writer and artist for Peanuts, even considering that he still had some time to perfect his craft. The cast of characters who readers are most familiar with today - Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, and more - have all mostly appeared and are starting to find their voices as characters. Schulz’s visual gags are not only at their sharpest, but are perfectly topical as fall settles in. Some of the best misadventures of Charlie Brown and friends take place during the fall, as evidenced by some of the bestPeanutsstrips from October 1954.
10Charlie Brown’s Fancy Signals
October 1st, 1954
Football is perhapsCharlie Brown’sfavorite pastime, even though he can never seem to kick one when Lucy is holding it. It’s hard to tell if Charlie was ever actually legitimately good at football, even in the comic strips, but he certainly seems to look like he knows his stuff. That’s enough toimpress Peppermint Patty and Lucy as they watch Charlie call football signals.
This strip actually includes a clever visual gag, because it plays on the idea of calling a football play “fancy.“The fanciness here comes in the font of the calls that Charlie Brown is calling out. It calls attention to the detail of lettering in a comic strip, something that often gets overlooked and isn’t something one may think about while reading, until a gag like this draws attention to it.
9Snoopy Explodes
October 3rd, 1954
Upon discovering that dogs having cold noses is a sign that they’re sick,Charlie Brown convinces Lucy to test this theory on Snoopy. Granted, “convinces” might be a strong word for it, considering that Lucy practically jumps at the chance to touch thesometimes-WWI-era Flying Ace’snose. The plan somewhat backfires when, before she can even touch his nose, Snoopy sneezes her away.
Lucy assumes that the dog has exploded before her very eyes.
On one hand, it does answer their question of whether the dog could be sick. On the other hand,the sneeze is so powerful that it flings Lucy backward, taking Snoopy out of Lucy’s sight to the point that she assumes that the dog has exploded before her very eyes. The visual of a sneeze sending Lucy into a backflip alone, though, is a pretty hilarious sight to behold.
8Solving Problems with Fists
July 10, 2025
This one is for the historical music buffs out there. Then again, Schroeder and his recurring tastes in composers in general is probably for the historical music buffs, ashis love for classical music dominates many of the strips centered around him. In this one, he is reading about Johannes Brahms and Franz Liszt not getting along.
Brahms and Liszt “never getting along well” is actually historically accurate, as Brahms was documented to have once slept during one of Liszt’s performances!
Lucy then ponders out loud:if the two composers disliked each other so much, why didn’t they ever hit each other? While punching each other was probably too frowned upon to do during the 1800s (perhaps even more so today), it’s a valid question to ask for a kid, in all fairness.
7"Why Doesn’t the Whole World Know About This?”
October 16th, 1954
Lucy doesn’t just kick footballs while Charlie Brown has one on the ground, determined to kick it. She has a knack for kicking him while he’s down, but in this instance,Lucy proves just as effective at kicking Charlie Brown while he’s feeling up. In the spirit of making positive conversation, Charlie brings up the fact that he started walking for the first time at the age of nine months old, according to his mother.
Rather than inquire deeper or act the least bit impressed,Lucy practically bites Chuck’s head off, appalled at the gall that he’d declare such a self-congratulatory statement as if the world revolves around him. While Lucy is certainly more ofa friend than a bully to Charlie Brown, when she treats him like this, the reader may think otherwise.
6Lucy Piles the Leaves
October 18th, 1954
This strip isa fun combination of wordplay and visual humor at its finest. It also happens to be a beautifully topical strip catered to the spirit of fall. Peppermint Patty attempts to relay to Lucy the joys of jumping in piles of leaves. The resident tomboy of the group, she would know about the fun of dogpiling onto a set of leaves catered for the October weather, something that Lucy knows nothing about.
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Patty convinces Lucy to make a pile and give it a try, butLucy misinterprets the meaning behind Patty’s words. She literally piles up a stack of leaves, presumably to jump onto them off-panel. It’s easy to praise Schulz for the visual masterworks he would consistently bring to the table for decades, but his even more impressive use of wordplay and double-entendres can’t be overlooked.
5Resourceful Snoopy
October 19th, 1954
They say that every dog is man’s best friend, and when they’re friendly, dogs are at their most resourceful to their masters. Case in point, when Charlie Brown desperately searches for a bookmark,Snoopy comes to the rescue when he arrives to insert his ear into the bookso that Chuck doesn’t lose his place.
It’s honestlyoddly wholesome to see the Peanuts gang help each other like thisand just be nice to each other, especially to Charlie Brown himself. Maybe that’s an arbitrary way to describe a dynamic between friends, but they can be mean-spirited to each other so often (especially to Charlie) that it’s easy to forget that these characters care for each other with love when needed. This strip features a small gesture, but a hefty example.
4Leaves Fall for the Fall
October 26th, 1954
ThisPeanutsstrip really emphasizesthe importance of panel sequencing in telling a larger story, allwhile simultaneously building to a funnier laugh. If a reader were to look at the first couple of panels and see the surprise in Snoopy’s expression upon a leaf landing on the top of his head, one might think that this is the first sign of fall that Snoopy has seen. The first leaf of the season has officially fallen, or at least so it seems.
The last panel would not be as funny or as clever without the first couple of panels setting up the eventual payoff.
The next couple of panels show thatthis is far from the first leaf of the season, asJoe Cool’s secret identityadds the latest leaf to an entire pile of leaves. The last panel would not be as funny or as clever without the first couple of panels setting up the eventual payoff. It’s a small detail that’s easy to overlook in the grand scheme of how comedy works.
3Spoiling Schroeder’s Effect
October 29th, 1954
Staying with the fall vibes, Halloween has finally arrived. In this strip, Schroeder is showing off his Halloween costume: a simple but classic sheet over his head to be a ghost for All Hallow’s Eve. He is then told that he will probably need a jacket because it will be cold. It’s too bad thatthe jacket over the ghost sheet takes away whatever spooky effecthis original costume would have had.
However, the visual of a jacket tightening up the ghost costume, leaving no room for arms and bulging out the eyes,makes for an outright hilarious visual. Truthfully, the visual of Schroeder’s gyrating ghost in the second panel is funny enough, so the costume was never that scary to begin with, but the jacket makes the joke all the funnier.
2"Hello?”
October 31st, 1954
If Charles Schulz’s approach to writing the averagePeanutscomic has taught readers anything by now, it is thatsometimes, less is truly more. Here is one of Schulz’s funniest Peanuts comics, done with a simple concept and only one word uttered throughout its entirety. Charlie Brown and Schroeder are talking to each other via two tin cans attached to a string. Despite only being about two, maybe three feet away from each other, neither can hear the other - at least not through the can.
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The best visual comes asthe two walk right past each other, still not able to hear the other. Even as the can slips out of Chuck’s hand,the former Mr. Spacemanruns after the can, trying his hardest to talk into it while chasing after it.
1Charlie Brown Needs Security (Blanket)
October 17th, 1954
As Charlie Brown peeps at Linus' signature blanket,he wonders aloud why Linus always carries it. Lucy answers simply that it brings him joy and security. She tries to get Charlie to understand how mesmerizing something like this can be, but he finds the whole notion of a blanket that brings happiness to someone all day just by holding it to be stupid, or so he says at least. Just when it seems like Charlie Brown is one step from being as bad of a hater asLinus' blanket-hating grandmother, he goes to buy the same material that the blanket is made out of.
Interestingly enough, this is a lore-building strip, as it manages to reveal what material - outing flannel - Linus' blanket is made out of, as well as show a rare (albeit incredibly small) glimpse of an adult, something that usually isn’t shown in either thePeanutscomic strips or the cartoons.
Peanuts
Created by Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts is a multimedia franchise that began as a comic strip in the 1950s and eventually expanded to include films and a television series. Peanuts follows the daily adventures of the Peanuts gang, with Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy at the center of them. Aside from the film released in 2015, the franchise also has several Holiday specials that air regularly on U.S. Television during their appropriate seasons.
