For 13 years, from 1969 to 1982, it went on like that—Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy in their usual poses, trading off with racier and racier covers (mod, bawdy, psychedelic, photo-realist) by Wolinski, Cabu and others showing half-dressed women being fondled or chased by men or animals. By the time Wolinski took the editor's reins (from 1970 until 1981), Charlie Mensuel's covers had the look of a girlie magazine. Snoopy and his friends were fish out of water.

Charlie Mensuel/BDoubliees.com

The coup de disgrace, for me at least, was the cover Wolinski drew in 1970, shortly before becoming the editor of Charlie Mensuel. He took Snoopy's doghouse (talk about sacrilege!) and put a reclining woman on top of it with her slip hiked up and a big smile on her face. Sticking out of the doghouse he drew a nearly naked man with a goofy grin gazing up at his paramour. It's as if Snoopy's doghouse had been turned into, well, a kind of cathouse. Good grief!

Then, as if nothing had happened, Snoopy and his friends continued to appear for the next dozen years in Charlie Mensuel. Imagine that: little Linus with his blanket, cheek by jowl with photos of bare-breasted women. Schulz's last cover, on April 1, 1982, shows Snoopy with his dukes up, looking ferocious. Had Schulz finally figured out what publication he'd been in for the last dozen years? Or is it possible that he didn't ever know his comics were in Charlie? How in the world could such a culture clash have occurred month after month without anyone, especially Schulz, raising a brow?

In the late 1960s and 70s Schulz had a squeaky clean image. He didn't drink. He taught Sunday school. His bestseller was “Happiness Is a Warm Puppy.” In the 1950s he tithed his salary to the Church of God. In the 1940s his mother told Sparky (that was his nickname) that his cartoons weren't “smutty” enough. Apparently Schulz just didn't like to draw that sort of thing; he thought it was kind of cheap. In 1992, during an interview with Gary Groth (which appears in The Complete Peanuts, 1950-52), Sparky explained his problem with underground comics:

They all use the same vulgar expressions and things … They draw the same dirty pictures, with the same dirty expressions and pretty soon, they're all alike. What's so great about that? I admit that some of them are good – Crumb is good—but that has never interested me … [W]hat I'm doing is infinitely more difficult … I'm drawing something that is good, but is clean and decent and I'm not bothering anybody and I'm not hurting anybody.

It's possible that Schulz didn't know his work was in Charlie Mensuel. Until the mid 1970s, he didn’t control the licensing of his work; it was all handled by United Features Syndicate. But after 1974, when he did get control, his work continued to appear in Charlie Mensuel for another decade, begging the question of how much Schulz knew about the tone of the French magazine that carried his characters like mascots.