The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #1

Trivia · 8 facts

• Issue #1 is formally titled 'The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' and was the first comic book published by Rip Off Press dedicated solely to the Freak Brothers characters.
• All story, cover, and art credits for this issue belong to Gilbert Shelton, who was the sole creative hand on the series at launch — collaborators Dave Sheridan and Paul Mavrides did not join the title until issues #4 and #6, respectively.
• The contents of issue #1 were largely drawn from Freak Brothers strips Shelton had syndicated to the Los Angeles Free Press, making it the first time those strips appeared collected in comic-book form under one cover.
• Fat Freddy's Cat appears in the issue in small 'topper' strips at the bottom of full-page Freak Brothers pages — a format Shelton consciously modeled on the classic newspaper Sunday comic layout (large strip above, smaller related strip below), as seen historically with Krazy Kat.
• The first printing is distinguished by a purple 50¢ cover price and a grey tire on the front cover illustration, plus a printing error on the back cover in which the portion of the American flag that should be blue was incorrectly colored black.
• The issue went through at least 15 documented printings by Rip Off Press, with each printing identifiable by specific variations in cover color, tire color, fence/barrel/boot coloring, and interior paper stock — making printing identification a sub-hobby within underground comix collecting.
• A special '20th Anniversary Edition' of Freak Brothers #1 was issued by Rip Off Press in 1991, featuring an inset commemorative seal on the cover.
• Norbert the Nark — the series' bumbling DEA antagonist — and Tricky Prickears — a blind, deaf Dick Tracy parody drawn by Shelton in a Chester Gould pastiche style — are recurring characters in the Freak Brothers universe who appear across the series beginning in its early strips; Dealer McDope, though often name-checked in the series, was originally a character created by Dave Sheridan for the separate Rip Off Press title Mother's Oats Comix.

Cast · 12 characters

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