Author / Kilby

by Kilby

Einige Erdnüsse…

Here are a few Peanuts strips to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the “Tag der Deutschen Einheit“. Even before Schulz invented the incessant running gag about Snoopy being a WWI flying ace, he used German surprisingly often (much more than any other foreign language, Spanish included). The strip shown above was published in 1953; the title mentioned in the second panel is a piece by Bach, called “Sheep May Safely Graze“. The other four strips below are all from a story arc that appeared in March 1979.

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Although the word “Fräulein” is technically correct “textbook” German for “miss”, it has now become severely outdated, and is no longer used in normal German conversation, except occasionally for sarcastic emphasis. The standard German form of address for a woman (spoken or written) is now “Frau“, regardless of marital status; girls (and teenagers) are referred to as “Mädchen“.

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Snoopy should not have addressed Lucy as “Deutscher“, because that is the masculine declination. The correct form would have been: “Sind Sie Deutsche?” Nevertheless, Lucy responding with “…all your arms” seems a little excessive: Snoopy has only two of them, so that “both” would have been sufficient.

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The pronouns in the second frame are “I, You, He, She“, each listed in each of the four German grammatical cases: Nominative, Genitive (possessive), Dative, and Accusative. This is the standard order used in all German grammar textbooks, in which the cases are usually numbered, and thus referred to as the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th “Fall” (“case”). Yes, Germans are notorious for excessive orderliness.

The 15 prepositions in the third frame can be translated into English as: from/out, except/outside(†), at/by, with, after, since, from, to, at/on, on(top), after/behind, in, next to, over, under. German prepositions are normally followed by the term declined in a particular “case”, but some prepositions can take either of two cases, depending on the situation, or possibly even a choice of three different cases (but only in very rare circumstances).

P.S. (†) The second word in the third panel is an error, it should have read “außer” (optionally capitalized as “AUSSER“). Schulz was famous for doing all of his own lettering, and in any case this strip predates the availability of handwritten computer fonts, so the most likely explanation for the missing letter is simply a slip of the pen, or possibly a transmission error from wherever he obtained the text.

P.P.S. I think it would have been funnier if Snoopy’s exclamation in the final panel had been “Ich ergebe mich!!“, but I admit that nobody reading an American newspaper would have understood the joke.

by Kilby

CIDU Bill LXX

In honor of what would have been CIDU Bill‘s 70th birthday, here are a pair of comics that he would never have understood:

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P.S. When I first discovered this strip, I thought that the “60” in the first frame might be a wonderful, serendipitous coincidence, but alas, my math was off by a decade.

by Kilby

What’s in a Shirt?

As these first two strips show, Charlie Brown’s shirt had already become an icon just six months after Peanuts began syndication, and Schulz created a number of gags on the topic.

There is danger in innovation:

Nevertheless, the rewards can be satisfying:

Do clothes make the man?

Mark Parisi frequently uses Peanuts characters in “Off the Mark“, and has produced a number of gags based on Charlie Brown’s shirt.

This one is directly from Parisi’s OtM website, because it predates the archive at GoComics:

Reworking the coloration produces an alternative gag:

As this screenshot from one of the TV specials shows, Schulz was well aware of Charlie Brown’s selection dilemma:

by Kilby

Unbeatable comics!

Boise Ed submitted the French comic “Imbattable” (literally: “unbeatable”), which was suggested to him by a friend, adding: “My French isn’t totally up to this, but … Pascal Jousselin … does some great work with fourth-wall shattering“. Ed intended this strip as a CIHS, but I was astonished to discover that a translated version of “Mister Invincible” had already appeared at CIDU back in August 2021.

March 20th is French Language Day, which seemed an appropriate occasion for these strips to appear in the original version.

The second example is just the first of ten “unbeatable” pages that appeared in an April 2017 review of the first album collection “Justice et légumes frais” (literally: “Justice and Fresh Vegetables”).

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P.S. Try the link if you want to read the other nine pages in the review.

by Kilby

Bonus: Valentine’s Arlo Award

I find it hard to believe that any newspaper editor would have let Get Fuzzy strip this appear in print, even if the relevant expression is a little bit dated:

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The last dialog bubble in the fourth panel is closer to overkill than actually necessary, but it certainly makes it clear that the joke in the third panel was intentional.

This Yuval Robichek comic was submitted as a “choice half-Arlo”, but in Bill’s day it would never have appeared on the primary CIDU site: he would have banned it to his separate “Arlo” page. (But since it is a web comic, it wouldn’t qualify for an Arlo “award”.)

by Kilby

Making an Impression

Usual John submitted this Lockhorns comic as a CIDU, asking: “Why would you get a “W” imprint from charging the net? Also, is there some significance to the doctor’s name, ‘H. Blog’ ?“

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The word “charging” probably was supposed to mean that Leroy hit something that left an impression, but just like Usual John, I cannot think of anything on a basketball court (let alone a net) that would produce such a mark. In addition, even if there were something that would have done so, the image of the “W” (from the Wilson logo) should have been reflected:

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P.S. I also wonder whether there was a particular reason that the authors chose “Wilson” (instead of “Adidas”, “Nike”, or “Puma”).

by Kilby

The Sound of Synchronous Silence

Darren submitted this same-day pair, commenting: “Two separate one-panels with a riff on mimes and the right to remain silent.” — they just don’t come more synchronous than this!

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Darren added: “Although in the Loose Parts [on the left], I’m wondering what made him give in. Has the mime just been standing in one spot for over a week or something?“