The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

Fat Freddy's Cat
Fat Freddy's Cat
Publication information
First appearance	1969
Created by	Gilbert Shelton
In-story information
Species	Tabby cat
Place of origin	San Francisco
Team affiliations	The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
Partnerships	Fat Freddy Freekowtski

*Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers*
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
	The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #1, Feb. 1971 by Gilbert Shelton
Publication information
Publisher	Rip Off Press
Publication date	February 1971 – 1997
No. of issues	14
Creative team
Created by	Gilbert Shelton

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers is an underground comic about a fictional trio of stoner characters, created by the American 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 publications around the United States and in other parts of the world. Later their adventures were published in a series of comic books.

The lives of the Freak Brothers revolve around the procurement and enjoyment of recreational drugs, particularly marijuana. The comics present a critique of the establishment while satirizing the counterculture.^[1]

Fat Freddy's Cat appears in many of the stories, spinning off his own cartoon strip (which appeared as part of the Freak Brothers comic page, in the manner of older comic strip double features) and later some full-length episodes.

An animated TV series adaptation, The Freak Brothers, was released on Tubi on November 14, 2021.

Publication history

The Freak Brothers first appeared in The Rag, an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas, beginning in May 1968.^[2] Their debut was in an advertising flyer for a winter 1968 film short called The Texas Hippies March on the Capitol.^[3] Freak Brothers strips soon became popular and, thanks to the Underground Press Syndicate, were regularly reprinted in underground papers around the United States and in other parts of the world.

The Freak Brothers' first comic book appearance was in Feds 'n' Heads, self-published by Shelton in the spring of 1968 (and later re-issued in multiple printings by Berkeley's the Print Mint).^[4] They also appeared in the first two issues of Jay Lynch's Bijou Funnies. 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.^[5] 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.

A weekly Freak Brothers comic strip was syndicated by Rip Off Press to underground and student publications in the 1970s, along with the related strip Fat Freddy's Cat.^[6] In addition to those strips, 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 and draw the series until 1992, in collaboration with Dave Sheridan (1974 – 1982) and Paul Mavrides (1978 – 1992).

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. Issues #8-10 contained only the long-form story "The Idiots Abroad", which The Comics Journal listed as #44 of the "100 Greatest Comics of the Century."^[7] The UK newspaper The Guardian said of a 2003 reprint of the story that, "The graphic quality is, even in slightly muddy reproduction, astonishing. Depictions of various European cities recall Hergé in their accuracy and detail ... As for the subject matter, considering the dates of composition, it has hardly dated."^[8]

Characters

The Freak Brothers are not siblings. They are a threesome of freaks (similar to, but distinct from, hippies) from San Francisco.

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, from left to right, Phineas, Fat Freddy, and Freewheelin' Franklin

Freewheelin' Franklin Freek, 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. 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 him. He does his best to evade them and is relieved when she does not recognize him. In another strip, when he meets his own (possible) father, the same plot is inverted. Depending on the level of colorization used in the strip in question, Franklin's hair is red, blonde, or light brown.

Phineas T. 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 is 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 bearing more than a passing resemblance to a 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 trio and is most likely to be preoccupied with food. He is moderately overweight, with curly yellow hair and a mustache. His compulsion to eat is the subject of several of the adventures of the group. Fat Freddy frequently gets "burned" during drug transactions; when he does "score" he typically contrives 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 an unexceptional large family in Cleveland. In The Idiots Abroad, Freddy visits the Polish village of Gfatsk, where everybody happens to look like him. He is driven away by an angry mob as soon as they hear the name Freekowtski.

Other recurring characters include:

Dealer McDope, one of the trio's dealers. He is often mentioned in the strips but rarely appears in person. The character was initially created by Dave Sheridan for the Rip Off Press title Mother's Oats Comix.

Hiram "Country" Cowfreak, a hippy who grows vast quantities of marijuana at his isolated farmstead. He is referred to as the Freak Brothers' "cousin".

Norbert the Nark, an inept DEA agent who is continually trying, and failing, to arrest the Freak Brothers.

Tricky Prickears, The star of a comic book within the comic that the Freak Brothers enjoy reading. He is billed as "The Freak Brothers' favorite law enforcement officer" Tricky is a blind, deaf and reactionary detective and the character is a parody of Dick Tracy, to the extent that Shelton drew his stories in a different style, resembling that of Tracy's creator Chester Gould.

Governor Rodney Richpigge, a stereotypically rich, corrupt politician whom the Freak Brothers hold in general contempt. The Governor's son is a cocaine dealer.

Fat Freddy's Cat

Fat Freddy's Cat is a fictional orange Tabby cat, nominally belonging to Fat Freddy.^[9]

While the Cat is usually featured in a small 'topper' strip below a Freak Brothers strip, he has had independent appearances and storylines of his own. His two running jokes are Fat Freddy is too lazy to name him, and he suffers neglect and abuse from the Brothers' lifestyle.

Single line segments appeared in student newspapers in Australia in the 1970s.^[10]^[11]

Fat Freddy's Cat first appeared in 1969 in underground newspapers as a character in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers strip. He soon gained his own small spin-off topper strip, in imitation of the early Krazy Kat strips below The Family Upstairs by George Herriman. Some full-size stories also featured Fat Freddy's Cat.

Many of these strips have been collected in comic book form by Rip Off Press in a series of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers compilations and later The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat, which ran for four small size issues in the 1970s. Fat Freddy's Comics and Stories (one-shot, 1983) also included several stories about the Cat.

The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat were reprinted and expanded (starting over from #1) in six comic book size issues in the 1980s. They included new longer stories about the Cat. A seventh edition was released (in the US only) in 1993. After the demise of the underground newspaper, the Cat continued to appear in various comic books. His last appearance to date was in a 1990 strip reprinted in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #12.

The Cat is much smarter than Freddy, and while sharing many of his preoccupations such as drugs, food, sleep and sex, his stories also feature a fair amount of defecation. Like Garfield (whom he predates) he is laid back, but in his personal habits and outlook he is more like the Freak Brothers. However he tends to regard the Freak Brothers with amused contempt, frequently expressed by defecating in inappropriate and inconvenient places, such as stereo headphones.^[12]^[13]

Like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes he has a fertile imagination. He is apt to tell tall stories to his three "nephews". One storyline features him playing the role of "F. Frederick Skitty", an undercover agent sworn to stop the distribution of "Tee Hee Hee", a drug that turns people into homosexuals. Another story involves a scheme by Fat Freddy to replicate Dick Whittington's success and sell the Cat to the (fictional) small, oil-rich nation of Pootweet to deal with mice.^[14]

The New Zealand band Fat Freddy's Drop, whose debut album won the 2005 Gilles Peterson Worldwide Winners Award, were named after the comic.^[15] The band's debut single was recorded under the influence of LSD that had been printed with blotter art of Fat Freddy's Cat,^[16] and the band liked the name.

The popular 8-bit computer game Jet Set Willy has a room named "We Must Perform a Quirkafleeg" in honour of this strip.

Fat Freddy's Restaurant in Galway, Ireland, described as "Galway's favourite restaurant",^[17] is extensively decked out with arcana and other memorabilia relating to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy's Cat.

The science fiction novel Scam Artists of the Galaxy (2020) contains a location named Fat Freddy's Restaurant with a supercilious mostly orange cat. This novel's sequel, Election Matters: Life on Universityworld (2022), sees the cat and one of its kittens appear.

Fat Freddy's Cat is voiced by Tiffany Haddish in the animated series The Freak Brothers, which debuted in 2020, and is commonly called Kitty by Fat Freddy.^[18] This version of the character is female and is capable of conversing directly with the Freaks whom she once again has a habit of insulting and belittling. She can apparently handle weed much better than them, though this did not prevent her from having the ultimate high that sent them from 1969 to 2020.

Storylines and themes

Drug use is the predominant theme that runs throughout all volumes of this title. The protagonists "live in a state of blissful torpor relieved only by bursts of paranoia or stimulant-induced frenzy."^[19] Marijuana is the most frequently mentioned, but numerous other stimulants and hallucinogens are mentioned as well. Heroin is usually missing from the list. In one adventure, Franklin is shown to turn down an offer of "smack" when hitching a ride.^{[volume & issue needed]}

Food is a recurring subject. These stories most often involve Fat Freddy and his marijuana-induced "munchies" (increased appetite). The squalor engendered by the Brothers' indolence is often highlighted; several strips feature the household's cockroach population, ruled over by a fascist monarchy. Several stories satirize governments, particularly the U.S. government. These stories invariably show politicians and their agents as corrupt, incompetent, or both. The theme of foreign travel is sometimes explored, most notably in the three-part Idiots Abroad series.

It is common for the storylines to begin with an air of realism, but rapidly descend into comic pantomime.

Classic Freak Brothers stories include:

Grass Roots: The Brothers find a year's supply of cocaine and move to the country with the proceeds. They snort it all in two days. The Brothers are joined by a trio of hippie women who join them in their misadventures: the dilapidated farmhouse, Freddy's run in with a hillbilly moonshiner, the rumor of gold on the property, and Phineas running for sheriff.^[20]
Chariot of the Globs: Fat Freddy's Cat is abducted by aliens.^[21]
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers in the 21st Century: The Brothers experience life in the future.
Knock 'em Dead: The Brothers form a punk band.
The 7th Voyage of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: A Mexican Odyssey: The Brothers holiday in Mexico, are thrown in jail and escape with the help of shaman Don Longjuan, in an oblique parody of the Carlos Castaneda books.^[21]
The Idiots Abroad: The Brothers are split up attempting to travel to Colombia hoping to score cheap dope down there, yet none of them manages to reach Bogotá; Fat Freddy accidentally joins a group of nuclear terrorists in Scotland before disrupting the International Workers' Day military parade in Moscow, USSR and being subsequently sold to slavery in Africa; Franklin is almost killed by a native apocalyptic South American cult before joining a group of pirates; while Phineas ends up in Mecca and becomes the world's richest man after founding a new religion.^[22]

Film and TV adaptations

In 1978, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers appeared in the full-length pornographic film Up in Flames. The story involves the brothers' attempts to raise cash to make their rent deadline (the trio being in danger of being evicted from their apartment). Fat Freddy gains employment at a local food store run by graphic artist Robert Crumb's character Mr. Natural.^[23]

In 1979, Universal Studios paid Shelton and Rip Off Press $250,000 for the rights to make a live-action Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers film. Shelton received the bulk of the money, which enabled him to live part-time in Europe. Meanwhile, the Universal-produced Freak Brothers film never made it to the production stage.^[6]

In 2006, the company Grass Roots Films began production on a feature-length clay animation film based on the series, called Grass Roots, co-produced by German distribution company X Filme. In 2013, work on the film stopped.

An animated television series adaptation titled The Freak Brothers, based on the characters and set in modern San Francisco, was released on Tubi on November 14, 2021.^[24] The series was preceded on May 6, 2020, by a mini-episode titled "Kentucky Fried Freaks".^[25] The series features Woody Harrelson, Pete Davidson, John Goodman, and Tiffany Haddish as voice actors for the three Freaks and the cat respectively.^[26] Courtney Solomon and Mark Canton serve as executive producers, with Jeffrey Scott Edell serving as Co-Executive Producer, alongside Adam DeVine and Blake Anderson who also provide voice acting.^[27] The series is animated by Pure Imagination Studios and Starburns Industries studio, which also worked on Rick and Morty. In May 2022, the series was renewed for a second season.^[28] The series will be released on digital on April 17, 2023 by Lionsgate.^[29]

In popular culture

Fat Freddy's Drop, formed in the late 1990s, is a Wellington, New Zealand, band that took its name from the Freak Brothers comics. According to the band, individual doses of a certain type of LSD popular in Wellington at that time had the image of Fat Freddy's Cat printed on it. Dropping — common slang for taking LSD — Fat Freddies became the inspiration for the band's name.^[30]

Director Paul Thomas Anderson said the look of Joaquin Phoenix's lead character, Larry "Doc" Sportello, in Anderson's 2014 adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel Inherent Vice, was based in part on Freewheelin' Franklin Freek:

"[T]here's this documentary on Daniel Ellsberg, called The Most Dangerous Man in America. There's a great picture of a buddy of his who has this great set of glasses, a floppy hat and these mutton chops. I took a still frame from that and I sent it to [Phoenix], along with the omnibus collection of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic, by Gilbert Shelton—and that's probably the most we really talked about [Phoenix's portrayal of the character]".^[31]

Sports

The ultra supporters of Serie B Italian football (soccer) team Ternana Calcio, from the Italian Umbrian city of Terni are called "The Freak Brothers". Like many Italians ultras, they are linked with the political left.^[32]

Places

Fat Freddy's Restaurant, in Galway, Ireland, has arcana and other memorabilia relating to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy's Cat.^[33] There is also an inn in Olongapo, Philippines, called "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Stagger Inn".^{[citation needed]}

Science

At the Le Havre Normandy University, Claire Bowen analysed the timeless appeal and current relevance of the Freak Brothers comics in the American couter culture of the 1970s^[34] Chiara Polli at the University of Messina conducted semiotic studies of a selection of Italian translations of the Freak Brothers Comics, using isotopies as a key tool in the analysis of comics in translation.^[35]

Bibliography