Comments on: Two Peanuts Anomalies

By: DerikB

DerikB — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:38:25 +0000

Well it’s one of those cases where you’d probably have a third panel to clarify: Charlie Brown flying into the air and losing his clothes again (surely the most likely event in a Peanuts strip).

By: Neil

Neil — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:01:16 +0000

Interesting, I hadn’t considered the alternate (perhaps more unlikely?) readings. I’d suspect there’s a “probability of interpretation” thing with that, but certainly you don’t know for sure in those cases.

I’ve actually been playing a lot with that kind of “action star” substitution, largely inspired because Schulz does it not infrequently. Perhaps I should do a post about that…

By: DerikB

DerikB — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:42:48 +0000

I’ve posted a few times about those types of descriptive texts. The Schulz examples is particularly odd, metonymical in usage.

The two panels you made-up/altered in your post are interesting in that they don’t necessarily read the same. The “Hit” one will generally read as “the batter gets a hit”, but the “Smack” one could be read as “the ball hits the batter.” Perhaps that’s just my interpretation. But I guess it points to how, out of context, these things can be polysemous.

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:55:31 +0000

Oh, no worries, I was mainly curious if you’d had any thoughts about the post… I don’t have the later editions, so I find it interesting he was reusing the convention. Even more interesting that we’d both find it and comment on how unusual it is!

By: DerikB

DerikB — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:54:04 +0000

Hi Neil. I must have seen your post (I read your blog), but I guess I forgot about it between then and when I was reading the Peanuts collection. My memory is real bad.

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:58:02 +0000

Nice ones Derik. Did you see the post I did a few months ago about the batting averages in the impact star? I found it in (I think) a strip around 1961 or so...