Green's short comics pieces appeared in various titles and anthologies including Art Spiegelman's and Bill Griffith's anthologies "Arcade" and "Young Lust". But in 1972, he was overwhelmed by an urgent desire to tell the story of his personal anxieties. "Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary" is a solo comic book that details Green's struggle with a form of OCD known as scrupulosity, within the framework of growing up Catholic in 1950s Chicago. Intense graphic depiction of personal torment had never appeared in comic book form before, and it had a profound effect on other cartoonists and the future direction of comics as literature. Green's roommate at the time, Art Spiegelman, was so inspired by "Binky Brown" that he thought he'd try his own memoir-type story, a strip he called "Maus" which some years later became the seed of "Maus".