While looking into Kanrom, the company that published the books I reprinted in Happiness is a Rat Fink and Unhappiness is a Dirty Dog, I discovered that wasn’t the last time that company took on Schulz’s work. In 1971, they put out a booklet (which was much of what they published, short staple-bound humor works) called Oh, No! Charlie Green! This parody has the amazingly hilarious concept of having comic strips about kids who  instead of acting adult in how they talk about philosophy and self-insight, are adult about sex. Pure hilarity, as I’m sure you’ll sarcastically agree.

(Just to be clear, I’m not a prude. Good humor can be done with sex, even with underage sex – if someone comes out with a collection of Sharry Flenniken’s “Trots and Bonnie”, I’ll be the first in line to buy it. But things aren’t funny just because they’re sex words coming out of unlikely mouths.)

It’s all pretty weak. The characters – the ever-smoking Charlie Green, his dog Schweinhund, his piano-playing longhaired pal Clydeburn, and his sex-obsessed loudmouth friend Fanny – are shallow parodies, and some of the more minor characters I cannot even be sure which Peanuts characters they’re supposed to be. The work doesn’t try to carry the look of the source material.

But what it lacks in impressiveness and humorous effect, it makes up in sticking with it. There are 45 full four-panel strips here, created by… um… I don’t know who. The book has no creative credits. The work is copyrighted in the name of the publisher. There is something vaguely familiar about the style, perhaps this is early work by someone who later found their groove.

The book is pretty obscure. How obscure? Google finds 6 mentions of the title… but all that is just copies for sale. Just two copies. And one of them is the one that I have sitting beside me. The other? It can be yours for $125 plus shipping. My suggestion: save your money.

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