THE COMPLETE PEANUTS: 1955–1956

The characters are surprisingly young in this early stage of the strip (Lucy sleeps in a crib; Linus can’t walk), but key patterns are already in place—Linus’s security blanket, Charlie Brown’s kite-flying ineptitude, Lucy and Shroeder’s dance of pursuit and rejection, Pigpen’s dirtiness. Most notably, in December 1956, Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown for the first time. I never approved of that meanness, but otherwise: classic, and awesome.