As a boy, the Beano was my comic of choice, with occasional forays into the Beezer, the Topper, and the Dandy. Later, Warlord would come along, a now largely forgotten boys’ comic featuring stories centred around Lord Peter Flint (codename “Warlord”), Union Jack Jackson and Bomber Braddock (I would write to the comic for its free pack to become a “Warlord agent” with a badge and everything). By the eighties, all grown up, I had pretty much done with comics, but one notable exception came along in the guise of the series of underground comics written and drawn by Gilbert Shelton and featuring the “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers”.
The Freak Brothers were a trio of hippie stoners whose lives revolved around the procurement of recreational drugs and whose chaotic lives led them on various adventures. First appearing in 1968 in the underground counterculture newspaper The Rag, published in Austin, Texas, the characters were emblematic of the blooming hippie culture of the late sixties and soon would graduate to a dedicated comic book of their own: Shelton co-founded Rip Off Press in 1969 and published 13 issues of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic between 1971 and 1997 (so no, it was no weekly comic, it was issued as and when Shelton finished his latest piece). How they came onto my radar, I’m not entirely certain, though I was possibly drawn by the vibrant and promising covers:
The “brothers” (who were not actually siblings) consisted of Fat Freddy (overweight, yellow curly hair, moustache), Freewheelin’ Franklin (tall, skinny, bulbous nose, Mexican moustache, cowboy hat, ponytail) and Phineas Phreak (bushy black hair, joint-shaped nose). They live in San Francisco (where else?) and their adventures often serve to foil Norbert the Nark, the inept DEA agent who is continually trying, and failing, to arrest them. Meanwhile, a bonus comic strip at the foot of the page featured feline anti-hero, Fat Freddy’s Cat (which spawned its own spin-off comic series).
With drug use being the dominant theme, the stories are very much in line with the shenanigans of contemporaneous on-screen homologues Cheech and Chong. Far be it from me to confess some kind of fraternity with law-breaking drug-takers conspicuously failing to be model citizens but what can I say, I’m a cultural observer! Shelton’s comics are richly humorous and brilliantly drawn, even if very much of their time. They must have clicked with a whole generation of boomers for whom, as Freewheelin’ Franklin said, “Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope”.
