"To Fat Freddy, his brain filled with semi-lethal doses of twelve different varieties of dangerous drugs, the ball seems to be floating in at a mere one or two miles per hour, big as a pumpkin."

I must have read that line for the first time maybe twenty-five years ago, when I was a mere lad of seventeen, and somehow I always remembered it. I suppose in certain ways it epitomises Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, who exist in an eternal seventies hippie miasma, largely untouched by the realities of the world around them, and particularly that of drug addiction. It would be no fairer to try to condemn these comics because of the scourge of heroin addiction than it would be to try to blame The Punisher for drive-by shootings. On the contrary, they are all that’s left of a time when drug-taking could be treated lightly, and everyone wanted to turn on, tune in, and drop out…

The three 'brothers' in question, Fat Freddy, Freewheelin' Franklin, and Phineas, owe much of their existence to Sheldon having gone to a double feature in his local cinema in 1967, featuring The Marx Brothers and The three Stooges. "I can do that," he thought to himself, and he was right.

The earlier work in this book shows a writer with a natural comic genius, easily able to craft perfect little gems from the drug-addled world around him. A number of the stories have thank-yous to various friends of his, to whom the incidents involved actually happened, like the story where Fat Freddy comes home one evening and tries to fry a half an apricot he found in a glass in the fridge, thinking it’s an egg. There are discernable differences in character between the three of them, too. Freewheelin' Franklin is the most cynical of the three, and is never seen without his cowboy boots and hat. Phineas, on the contrary, is perhaps the most gullible and earnest, and a committed (though occasionally misguided) political and ecological activist. Fat Freddy just wanted to get wrecked all the time, and is therefore probably the most popular of the three of them, if you don’t count Fat Freddy’s Cat, who went on to have a very popular series of his own. If God is good, they’ll collect all of those together, too.

This long overdue volume reprints, over a massive four hundred and thirty two pages, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers numbers 0, 1-7, and 12, along with Fat Freddy’s Comics & Stories #1, which are all in black and white. The book also contains a thirty-two page colour section, which reprints all the covers from the relevant issues, along with a few other relevant bits and pieces. There is also a brief but fascinating three-page history of the creation and progress of the comic, as well as its publisher, Rip Off Press. A second volume will reprint the remaining issues, which are all in colour.

The first two thirds of this collection is perfect, timeless, wonderful, wonderful stuff. It defines all that was good and funny in underground comics, able to simultaneously criticise society and laugh at the counter culture. It is only as the stories go into the eighties that the Freak Brothers become more and more alienated from their surroundings. It is likely that when I come to reread this volume, which I know I will do, I’ll only go as far as the end of issue 7 before I return it to the shelf. Having said that, you’d be crazy not to buy this timeless classic. It’s as much history as humour, and is going to be around for a long time yet.

Publisher: Knockabout / Rip Off Press
Date: November 2001
Price: £22.99
Format: Pb
ISBN: 086166146X
More Info: Amazon.co.uk


Review originally on The Alien Online