The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Free Comic Book Day

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

Free Comic Book Day, May 2023

If, 40 years ago you had told me that in the future there would be a 'Free Comic Book Day', and that the popular underground title 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' would be one of those free comics that anyone could come in and pick up, I would not have believed you.

And yet, here we are. One of the titles participating in the May 2023 Free Comic Book Day is a sampler of Freak Brothers comics from the 1970s up to the present day. I'm sure Gilbert Shelton, the Freak Brothers' creator, who is alive and well on the verge of his 83rd birthday, is pleased to see his stuff now become a part of the culture, as opposed to the counterculture.

Fantagraphics is using this sampler to promote their ongoing series of collected reprints of the Freak Brothers comics. Four books, out of a planned seven volumes, have been issued so far.

While the occasional nudity that appeared in the Freak Brothers is absent in this sampler, the vinateg stoner is well accounted humor for. It's sign of the times that stuff that would have scandalized parents - had it been handed out in 1973 - now is regarded as banal. Also front and center is the political satire that Shelton made intrinsic to the Freak milieu. 

My local comic shop had plenty of copies of this Free Comic Book Day sampler available. I of course recommend getting a copy (if you haven't done so already). It's a jolt of nostalgia for Baby Boomers, and for the younger people, a portal into long ago times and places that are well worth experiencing.