One of my all time favorite Peanuts panels is from the late 70s. Sally has corralled Snoopy first into helping her scare away bullies at the playground (“Speak softly and carry a beagle,”) and then into terrorizing innocents at the playground (“Speak loudly and carry a beagle.”) In this strip, Sally is stomping off to force some kid out of the sandbox. She thinks Snoopy is right behind her, ready to bark ferociously and run the kid off. But Snoopy, unbeknownst to Sally, suddenly perks up his ears and stares off frame. “My old flame!” he declares, and disappears. Sally’s left to the tender mercies of her unterrorized peers (“How can you speak softly and cary a beagle without a beagle!”) As for Snoopy and his flame…your guess is as good as mine. Was Snoopy just wandering off into one of his own fantasy scenarios? Did he really see a girl beagle from his youth? It’s a mystery. Schulz never followed up on the storyline. Snoopy disappeared from the panel, from the strip, and from the story.
Tag Archives: one-panel criticism
One-Panelist Criticism: Likewise
If you’ve seen the tcj.com homepage recently, you know that we’ve been joined here by a spanking new blog called The Panelists, featuring Derik Badman, Charles Hatfield, Jared Gardner, Alex Boney, Craig Fischer and Isaac Cates (my apologies if I forgot anyone!)
To kick off their blog, The Panelists are doing a round-robin where each of them look at one panel from a comic of their choosing. It seemed like a fun idea, so I thought I’d
So here we go.
