Though autobiographical elements had appeared earlier in the work of underground cartoonists such as Crumb, Spain, and Kim Deitch, "Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary" has gained credit as the first important work of autobiographical comics in English. To Charles Hatfield "Binky Brown" is "the ur-example of confessional literature in comics"; for Paul Gravett Green was "the first neurotic visionary to unburden his uncensored psychological troubles"; Douglas Wolk declared Green and his work "ahead of the memoirist curve"; Art Spiegelman declared: "What the Brontë sisters did for Gothic romance, what Tolkien did for sword-and-sorcery, Justin Green did for confessionary, autobiographical "; and "Publishers Weekly" called the work the "Rosetta Stone of autobiographical comics".