Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Meta doghouse

[Peanuts, March 19, 1974. Click for a larger view.]

Some context: Peppermint Patty has refused to go to school. She’s “the only kid in the history of education to have a straight ‘Z’ average,” she says. The final insult: a teacher criticized her lunch: “She said I had too many doughnuts and not enough carrots.” Peppermint Patty is just going to sit atop Snoopy’s doghouse: “He never had any education, and he’s done all right!”

Look carefully at that doghouse: it’s made of one wall and one side of a roof. Charles Schulz did, in earlier years, offer foreshortened views of Snoopy’s home, but the standard view became one wall and one side of a roof. On March 19 and March 20, 1974, Schulz showed the reader a meta doghouse, or guest cottage, a two-dimensional form rendered in three dimensions.

Yesterday’s Peanuts is today’s Peanuts.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard) : Snoopy ceramic tile

comments: 4

Fresca said...

Wow, that's very cool. I didn't know Peanuts got sophisticated like that. I haven't looked at it much since I was a kid.

"Chuck's Guest House" LOL

Michael Leddy said...

It made me do a doubletake. Speaking of sophistication, I wondered if Peppermint Patty was following in the footsteps of Simeon Stylites. Schulz had a lot of religious elements in his strip.

Fresca said...

I do remember that--The Gospel According to Peanuts.

Peppermint Patty has the pluck to be a saint--
she's a real Red Hair Girl (my first doll who was the most audacious).

Michael Leddy said...

Yes, there’s a clear resemblance.