Peanuts Begins by Charles Schulz for January 31, 2015

Who puts mashed potatoes on a waffle cone anyway?

Like in the commercials.

The gravy center should have tipped her off…

Who are these characters? Did Schulz do away with them later?

I think it’s Violet and Linus.

Patty & Sherman?

Shermy. Never was a Sherman. :-)

Gross…

Shermy is probably right. But Peppermint Patty wasn’t introduced until the 60s, so I still think it’s Violet.

It’s definitely the old Patty. Both she and Shermy gradually faded away from the strip long before “Peppermint” Patty was introduced. I don’t know why Schulz reused the same name for two different characters.

This is Patty and Shermy, who appeared as often as Charlie Brown. At this time, Lucy has not yet appeared. I am not sure if she has been born yet. Her first appearance will be as a bright-eyed toddler, seen in a crib or play pen. Linus is still years away.

And, as has been said, Patty just happens to have the same name as Peppermint Patty. She would not show up until the ’70s.

At this point, we have never seen Snoopy’s house. We are not sure whose dog he is. He seems to spend more time with Shermy and Patty than anyone else.

I love the fact that we’re getting to see how it all started, to watch Schulz develop these characters, to start his own unique dialogue and writing style. Adding this comic to the gocomics family has been one of the best discoveries I have made in here.

Shermy’s last appearance was June 15th 1969, and Patty’s last appearance was November 27th 1997.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Peanuts_characters

Yeah, this kind of reminds me of the early 50s

Hmm. I actually like that idea, putting mashed potatoes on a cone…add some gravy of your choice and we could be onto something here…

Patty’s appearances in the later years were very rare (Violet’s pretty rare, too). It’s fascinating to check out the index of one of the Complete Peanuts collections (I have the first one in my collection and will buy the last one, of course, but the rest I’ve only read from the library. Of course I have close to 50 of the old pocketbook paperbacks……) Since the books have started to be published, every new one I get my hands on, the first thing I always do is look at the index to see just how few times Patty or Violet (or Rerun or Pigpen) would appear. When Schulz planned his last strip, I was hoping that Shermy would appear—he did utter the first lines ever in the strip. (And why some people seem to think he was “Sherman” I’ll never know—not once did anybody ever call him that! Although Peppermint Patty insisted on calling Lucy “Lucille”, so she might’ve called Shermy “Sherman” if their paths had ever crossed…..)

Mashed potatoes! Yum!

This is one strip I never need to magnify. Peanuts remained legible at a tiny size, though I believe Ernie Bushmiller’s “Nancy” can be reduced more and still be understandable.

@SaskSledDogViolet had a pretty powerful (overbearing) personality. My all-time favorite Violet strip was the time she and Lucy got into a duel of insults (at fifty paces, and then forty, and then…..) Linus and Charlie Brown were watching, amazed and appalled. Violet was the clear winner for most of the panels (this was a Sunday strip), but then Lucy beat her at in-fighting. Linus commented, “Nobody beats Lucy at in-fighting!” Patty wasn’t born a straight woman (by no means!) Possibly Shermy was, although one of my favorite strips was Shermy (as the team’s first baseman) telling Charlie Brown that he appeared to have a “neurotic need to lose.” (Whereas the rest of the team was normal.) I still regret that Shermy didn’t make a last-ditch comeback!

I wonder how many months or years we are away from the first “good grief.”