I’m not puzzled in the least with the art work in panel #3.
The artist has organized black, geometric and dark shapes — or at least — created pictorial continuums and discontinuities in each panel of the strip at purely nonverbal levels of our perception.
I find it to be consistently clever as nonvebal messages.
Since following the verbal & nonverbal levels of continuity since last autumn, I’m not surprized by the verbal expressions of confusion by other followers of the strip.
My primary interests are the artwork.
Sometimes, the artwork and the verbal content work very well.
Today’s PEANUTS strip is an example of a fine rendering of both registers of verbal and nonverbal information.
I remain very impressed with the Art Work in the strip — I mean the nonverbal stuff — like the triangular shapes, and diagonal geometries and the general rendering of all the players in the scenes.
You’ve jogged my ancient memory banks and I think I know the strip you have presented re: SPIKE’s typical animosity and Sluggo’s reaction is to faint when SPIKE doesn’t act like an angry thug towards him.
The nonverbal/pictorial structures astonish me!