Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers - Characters

Characters

The Freak Brothers are not siblings. They are a threesome of freaks (similar to but distinct from the more well-known hippies) from San Francisco. Their names are Phineas Freakears, Fat Freddy Freekowtski and Freewheelin' Franklin (whose surname has not been revealed so far). The trio are anti-heroes, ingesting or smoking large quantities of drugs and consistently defying authority. They are lazy (several storylines revolve around the "horror" of one of the brothers having to find work) and unreliable — particularly in the case of Fat Freddy.

The three Freak Brothers have very different personalities:

• Freewheelin' Franklin, although laid-back, is the most street-smart of the trio. Apparently he has always been on the streets and it appears that he is several years older than the others. He is certainly old enough to be troubled at times by impotence. In one story he reveals that he grew up in an orphanage and never knew his parents. Tall and skinny, he has a big bulbous nose, a waterfall mustache and a ponytail. He wears cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. In one strip, he runs into an ex-girlfriend who has a child that bears a striking resemblance to himself. He does his best to evade them and is relieved when she doesn't recognize him. He is thus unburdened of any parental obligation. In another strip, when he meets his own (possible) father, the same story line is inverted. Like father, like son.... Depending on the light, or perhaps the use of dye, his hair is red, blonde, or light brown.

• Phineas Phreak is the intellectual and idealist of the group. He has enough mastery of chemistry to create new drugs and takes an avid interest in politics. Of the three, he is the most committed to social change and environmental issues. He hails from Texas and while his mother is relaxed and open-minded, his father is a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society. He is the hairiest of the brothers - tall and skinny with a thick bush of black hair, a beard, a nose that bears more than a passing resemblance to a marijuana joint and glasses. He is the stereotypical left-wing radical, bearing a superficial resemblance to Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin.

• Fat Freddy Freekowtski is the least intelligent of the brothers and is most likely to be preoccupied with food. He is fat, or at least plump, with curly yellow hair. His compulsion to eat is the subject of several of the adventures of the group. Fat Freddy regularly gets "burned" during drug transactions and when he does "score" he usually manages to lose the drugs in various ways, such as by dumping them out of a shopping bag in front of a cooling fan, which then blows them out the window onto a police car. Fat Freddy comes from a large, quite ordinary family in Cleveland. In The Idiots Abroad, Freddy visits the Polish village of Gfatsk, where everybody happens to look like him. Nevertheless, he is driven away by an angry mob as soon as they hear the name Freekowtski.

Other recurring characters include:

• Fat Freddy's Cat appears mainly in his own, separate strip at the bottom of the one-page Freak Brothers strips (getting his start just as Krazy Kat did). He also has several multi-page stories devoted to him. Many of his strips parallel a storyline in the corresponding Freak Brothers story, and often have themes of a scatological nature. The cat is sometimes known as "Fat Freddy Scat" and has used the alias "F. Frederic Skitty". He has several "nephews" who refer to him as "Uncle F." and sometimes finds himself confronting an organized army of cockroaches or a huge tribe of mice who share the apartment with the Freak Brothers. He is far smarter than his owner (whom he frequently refers to as "the obese one") and regards the Freak Brothers with amused contempt. He is also the subject of several spin-off collections of stories.
• Norbert the Nark, an inept DEA agent who is continually trying, and failing, to arrest the Freak Brothers.
• Hiram "Country" Cowfreak, a hippy who grows vast quantities of marijuana at his isolated farmstead. He is referred to as the Freak Brothers' "cousin".
• Dealer McDope, one of the trio's dealers. He is often name-checked in the magazines but rarely appears "in person". The character was initially created by Dave Sheridan for the Rip Off Press title Mother's Oats Comix.
• Tricky Prickears, a blind and deaf detective, sometimes billed as "The Freak Brothers' favorite law enforcement officer" (a parody of Dick Tracy).
• Governor Rodney Richpigge, A stereotypical rich, corrupt politician whom the Freak Brothers hold in general contempt. The Governor's son is a cocaine dealer.