Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers are a trio of underground comic strip characters created by the U.S. artist Gilbert Shelton. The Freak Brothers first appeared in The Rag, an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas, beginning in May 1968; and were regularly reprinted in underground papers around the United States and in other parts of the world.

Their first comic book appearance was in Feds 'n' Heads, published by Berkeley's Print Mint in 1968. In 1969 Shelton and three friends from Texas founded Rip Off Press in San Francisco, which took over publication of all subsequent Freak Brothers comics. The first compilation of their adventures, The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, had its first printing in 1971 and has been continually in print ever since. In addition to underground and college weekly newspapers, new adventures appeared in magazines such as Playboy, High Times, and Rip Off Comix; these too were collected in comic book form. Shelton continued to write the series until 1992, in collaboration with Dave Sheridan (1974–1982) and Paul Mavrides (since 1978). The work enjoys a sizable cult following and the magazines are widely available in comic stores.

The lives of the Freak Brothers rotate around the procurement and enjoyment of recreational drugs, particularly marijuana. None of them has the slightest concern about gainful employment and the only use for money is to procure food and drugs without getting "burned" by unscrupulous dealers or busted by the police. Other storylines involve Fat Freddy's Cat and occasionally a military empire of cockroaches in the kitchen. The stories often satirize the establishment and right-wing politics.

The majority of the comic books consist of one or more multi-page stories together with a number of one-page strips. Many of the latter have a one-row skit featuring Fat Freddy's Cat at the bottom of the page. Some of the titles also contain a small number of strips featuring completely unrelated characters.

In 1972, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers appeared in the full-length XXX-rated adult film Up in Flames. The story involved the brothers' attempts to raise cash to make their rent deadline (the trio being in danger of being evicted from their apartment). The film also featured Robert Crumb's character Mr. Natural as the owner of a health food store, where Fat Freddy attempts to gain employment.

In 2011 the comic was being adapted into a clay animation movie entitled Grass Roots.