1990-1994: The Return of the Giant Football
1990
There are a series of strips involving Charlie Brown, Peggy Jean, and a football, but since Lucy is not involved I will not write about them here.
35. September 9, 1991
In the first panel, the giant football is back. Charlie Brown precariously holds on to it on the left side while Lucy ascends the right side. She looks to be peering past the football's laces, looking for Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown looks like he is about to fall off. Panel two shows Lucy singing out "Charlie Brownnn!" with three "n"s, an exclamation point, and three eight notes! Lest we get distracted by her enthusiastic singing, we have to note the open book that sits on the ground next to her. Lucy clearly has a plan. She makes the usual proposition to Charlie Brown as he looks at her. The book is visible between them. Charlie Brown does not seem to see it. He tries a sarcastic response. "Congratulate me! You have just nominated me 'most stupid kid of the year" Lucy sets the trap. She holds up the book as she tees up the football. She tells Charlie Brown that she has been reading a book about "holding the ball . . ." She stands, and tells Charlie Brown that the book "tells how to hold it for the kickoff, for field goals, and for extra points . . . ." We have never been told if Lucy and Charlie Brown are pretending that they are in a real football game? Is Charlie Brown imaging the opening kickoff? Is Lucy envisioning a game-winning field goal? We have never been given a scenarios beside Charle Brown running up and kicking the ball. Charle Brown has sometimes said how far he will kick the ball, such as today when he says he is going to kick the "ball all the way to Onaha!" He seems to have given up the dream of kicking it to the moon. Before we reach this moment, we see Charlie Brown walking away from the football; we see that he has fallen for the power of the written word once again. "If someone is reading a book about something, I guess you have to trust her . . ." Has Charlie Brown not learned that this is true? Is he just convincing himself? "Aaugh!" "Wham!" The final panel returns us to a recurring tableau. Charlie Brown lies prone, with lines and asterisks over his head. He looks toward the reader. Lucy stands over him, the book in her right hand, the football in her left. She leans over and says "I wrote the book, Charlie Brown!" Lucy asserts her power. She makes a claim to be the rule-maker. Has she actually written a book that lays out the rules for the football routine? Has she written down her various methods of getting Charlie Brown to run toward the football? Has she codified her justifications and rationalizations for pulling the football away? Has she written the book on Charlie Brown? As readers do not see the pages of the book, we cannot know. Every day, Lucy writes the book.
36. October 11, 1992
The giant football appears again. It has a tooth-bearing grin as it looks toward its left, where we see Charlie Brown's head and neck. He glances to his right. He looks scared. In panel two, he looks toward the left. Lucy must have called him, but we do not see her call. All we get is Charlie Brown asking "Why me?" At the end of his life, the man from the country asks the gatekeeper of "Before the Law" a similar question. "How is it in these many years no one except me has requested entry?" The gatekeeper answers, "Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you." The football is only for you Charlie Brown. Is the football the law itself? Lucy makes her proposition. In a panel that is about a quarter the size of a usual panel, Charlie Brown says "She sounds sincere." As he walks away from the football in the next panel, he continues this thought, "If a person sound sincere, then they must be sincere . . . ." Has Charlie Brown been talking to Linus too much? Lucy has played the sincerity card before. On September 1, 1963, she offers Charlie Brown a handshake and then says "Let's shake on it . . . This proves my sincerity . . ." The same thing that happened in 1963 happens again in 1992. Lucy pulls away the football, but she has only smiled once in the last four years. The smiling football in the opening panel seems even more ominous. Who is enjoying the football routine? Lucy clearly enjoys her punchlines, but these are becoming less frequent. This year, we get the requisite "Wump" followed by three more panels. Lucy is gone, though. Inexplicably, Sally walks in from the left, and asks Charlie Brown, who is now propped up on his elbows with his head still spinning, "You're not in love with Lucy, are you, big brother?" Charlie Brown answers "I should hope not." Sally seems to have been watching. She seems to know about the football routine. She has appeared once before, as one of the figures holding a football in the Kafka-esque final panel of 1983. Has Sally been watching, out of the frame, this whole time? We will see her again in two years, and the answer seems to be yes. Back in 1992, she tells her brother "I've discovered that love makes us do strange things . ." Sally seems to be looking for a parallel in her relationship with Linus in Charlie Brown's relationship with Lucy. Charlie Brown simply replies "So does stupidity" He is sitting up; there are lines around his head. He looks dizzy. The first panel of the smiling football looks more and more ominous. And why has Lucy walked off without offering a final word. Things are getting weird.
37. October 3, 1993
Once again we start with the giant football. Lucy is atop it, her arms stretched over the top of the ball. She smiles, as if she has climbed a mountain. While the football dwarves her, she seems to control it. In panel two, she points the football to the right as she calls out "Over here!" Charlie Brown appears, and listens with his hand to his chin as Lucy prefaces her normal proposition by saying "This is a brand new ball, Charlie Brown!" Like usual, Charlie Brown falls for any line Lucy offers. As he walks away he says "A brand new ball! Wow!" As he runs toward the football he says "This is a real treat!" Lucy pulls the football away and watches Charlie Brown land with a hard "Wump" that causes his whole body to vibrate. Lucy looks completely indifferent to Charlie Brown's pain. In the final panel, Charlie Brown lies prone and looks out toward the reader. Lucy continues to kneel. She looks not at Charlie Brown but at the football. "It suddenly occurred to me that if I let you kick it, it wouldn't be new anymore." Neither of them should be surprised. There should be no sudden occurrence. We are back on November 15, 1952 and Lucy's very first reason for pulling the football away. When toddler Lucy pulled that football away from Charlie Brown she meant it when she said she did not want her new football to get dirty. Whether she remembers 1952 or not, 1993 gives us a different Lucy and a different Charlie Brown. 1952 was two kids playing. 1993 is a choreographed scene, burdened by the past. Time is running out; the power of routine holds on.
38. October 16, 1994
1994 starts with Lucy breaking the routine, seemingly out of impatience. Instead of waiting outside with the football and calling to Charlie Brown, Lucy, football under her arm, rings his doorbell. Sally answers the door. Lucy holds out the football as Sally says "What's up?" Lucy offers her proposition to Sally to give to Charlie Brown. "Tell you brother to come out . . . Tell him I'll hold the ball, and he can come running up and kick it . ." Sally looks perplexed, but she does what Lucy asks. Sally finds Charlie Brown sitting in his bean bag chair. He looks back over his shoulder as Sally says "She's here again . . Why does she think you're dumb enough to be fooled again?" Charlie Brown says nothing. In the next panel, we see Lucy walking on the lawn, followed by Charlie Brown a few steps behind on the porch. Sally, a few steps behind him, sticks her head out the door and says "You don't really believe my brother is that naive, do you? Neither Lucy nor Charlie Brown say anything. They do not even turn back to look. Sally steps onto the porch and the point of view remains with her. She call out "How often do you think you can fool someone with the same trick?!" In the next panel Sally puts her hands to her mouth as we hear an "Aaugh!" with the speech bubble coming from the left of the panel. The next panel gives us a "Wump!" as Sally jumps into the air. We have reached the point where an exclamation and the sound of a body hitting the ground tell us all we need to know. Next, we see a dizzy Charlie Brown walk past Sally, a curling line and an asterisk over his head. He goes inside, and Sally offers the punchline to no one "Pretty often, huh?" What was Charlie Brown doing when Lucy rang the doorbell. Often, one sitting in a beanbag chair in Peanuts is watching tv. The right side of the panel is cut off, though, so we cannot know what Charlie Brown is doing in the beanbag chair. The way he walks silently past his sister strongly implies that he is returning to the beanbag chair and continuing to do whatever he had been doing before the football routine interrupted. He probably has a headache, but he seems otherwise unaffected by what has just happened. Likewise, we neither see nor hear Lucy in the final five panels. We do not know how she reacts when she pulls away the football. She has nothing to say. Routine goes on for the sake of routine.
But there is something strange about Sally appearing in two of the first four 1990s strips. In the series of strips from 1979, Linus offers commentary about the football routine. And, as noted above, Sally, Woodstock, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie all hold footballs in 1983. 1992 and 1994, though, provide the most commentary by another character about the football routine. Sally seems somewhat indignant, as she asks the questions that Charlie Brown has stopped asking.
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