SXSWORLD

Founder Returns to the Roots By Andy Smith quest to stay perpetually stoned, has sold over 40 million copies and been published in 15 languages —impressive for an underground comic that never could have appeared next to The Family Circus (Dolly and Jeffy would have been horrified). Shelton moved to Austin from Houston in 1958. In ince its humble beginning in Austin during the late '60s, Gilbert Shelton's The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic strip, which chronicles the adventures of three ne'er-do-wells on their S Gilbert Shelton: Fabulous Furry Freak 1967, the Vulcan Gas Company, the city's landmark psychedelic club, opened, and Shelton, already an experi- enced artist, was tasked with creating the colorful weekly concert posters, while occasionally working as a bouncer. It was there that he found the inspiration for his comic creations. "One night at the [club's] cinema night there was a double feature, one film with the Marx Brothers and the other with the Three Stooges," he remembers. "I came out thinking, 'I could do something that good.'" His first strip was an advertisement for his short film, Texas Hippies March on the Capitol, but fate intervened: "As it turned out, people liked the advertisement better than the film, so I abandoned my movie-directing career and con- centrated on cartooning from then on." Moving to San Francisco in 1968, Shelton first sold the Freak Brothers to underground weeklies. Though its explicit drug use and protagonists' general bad behavior captured the most attention, the strip also included sharp wit and satire, giving it substance beneath the red-eyed surface. "I was generally in agreement with those left-wing tabloid papers," he explains. "But I thought they were too dull to attract many readers and needed a comic strip." When he had enough pages to make a book, Shelton and three fellow Austin transplants started their own publishing house, Rip Off Press, in 1969. From there, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers became a staple in underground book- stores and headshops, while the strip was later published in "lifestyle" magazines such as High Times and Playboy. Though the popularity of hippie culture later faded into disco and punk, the strip continued through the early '90s as Fat Freddy, Phineas and Freewheelin' Franklin tried to maintain their constant buzz, while the satire also targeted subjects like the military industrial complex and the "war on drugs." Now in 2010, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers may be poised for a return. The recently published The Freak Brothers Omnibus book combines all the trio's adventures in one volume, and Grass Roots, an animated Freak Brothers feature film, is in production (though cur- rently in need of funding). Shelton, who now resides in France, will return to the place of the Freak Brothers creation. "I'm looking forward to visiting Austin, 30 SXSW ORLD / F EBRUAR Y 2010 although with some trepidation. It's been 10 years, and my friends there keep telling me how much it has changed, and no one says for the better. But even 10 years ago it was one of the best, if not the best, restaurant and entertainment city I know of ... You can probably find me at Threadgill's." n SXSW Film Conference presents "A Conversation with Gilbert Shelton," moder- ated by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News. Check my.sxsw.com for details.

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