Charles Schulz Peanuts Daily Strip 04-12-62/ Charlie Brown & Linus

Original Peanuts Daily Strip dated 04/12/1962, featuring Charlie Brown and a very rare image depicting Linus in eye glasses. Linus wore glasses for a very short period in the strip's history commencing on 02/05/1962. After the Sunday strip of 09/09/1962, the glasses were not seen again. In an earlier strip of 07/17/1962, Linus had told Charlie Brown that his ophthalmologist said he may not have to wear his glasses all the time, thus explaining their eventual disappearance.

Classic and funny gag with great dialogue. Piece was displayed on loan to the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA as part of the "Laughter is the Best Medicine" Summer 2009 Exhibit. The museum also displays an original pair of early Schulz eye glasses from when Schulz was a boy, same style as that depicted on Linus....the Schulz Museum advises these eyeglasses were likely the original inspiration for the style depicted by the artist on Linus as displayed here.

Schulz' wife Jean Schulz adds to the history of "Linus in Glasses" in her Shulz Museum Blog on 05/15/2014 (reference link with blog context summarized as follows): https://schulzmuseum.org/linuss-glasses-2/

"How Linus came to wear them – Sparky, of course, wore glasses, so it is reasonable to imagine that he might have thought of one of the characters with glasses. Sparky used them for any distance more than about 2 or 3 feet. Even faces at 3 feet might have been blurry, I assume, because Sparky always put his glasses back on when he lifted his head from drawing. I can remember the gesture of his replacing his glasses when he greeted me walking into his studio. Oddly, I can’t remember which hand he used; but I assume his right."

"I suppose we’ll never know exactly why Sparky began drawing glasses on Linus. Whether it was an observation that there always seemed to be one child with glasses, or it might have been the memory of his own glasses when he was small (we have photos in the archives of Sparky about 3 years of age with glasses). Or it may have been a thought that because Linus was the intellectual in the gang, glasses might suit his image."

"I mentioned a cassette tape I was given recently. It was recorded in 1985 by a friend who was interviewing Sparky for a course she was taking toward her Master’s degree in Children’s Literature. In it Sparky explained that he stopped putting glasses on Linus because it interfered with the expression lines he could give him. Compare how Linus looks with the glasses to how he looks without them, and you’ll see how it affects his look."

Regarding this 04/12/1962 Daily Strip specifically, Jean Shulz adds a photo image of the Daily and explains, "In this strip, Charlie Brown plays his customary role of not being sure about anything while Linus’s simplicity wins the discussion."

Great History!!!!