Gilbert Shelton (born May 31, 1940, Houston, Texas) is an American cartoonist and underground comix artist. Events 1279 BC - Rameses II (The Great (19th dynasty becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. Year 1940 ( MCMXL) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full 1940 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing Cartoons Traditionally much of this work was and still is humorous and is intended primarily for entertainment purposes Underground comics (or comix) are Small press or self-published Comic books that began to appear in the US in the late 1960s He is the creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, Wonder Wart-Hog, Not Quite Dead and the cover art to The Grateful Dead's 1978 album Shakedown Street. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers are a trio of underground comic strip characters created by the U Fat Freddy's Cat is a fictional orange tomcat nominally belonging to Fat Freddy Freekowtski one of the Freak Brothers a trio of Hippies who are featured in Gilbert Not Quite Dead is an underground Comic book series by Gilbert Shelton and Pic, published in France by the magazine Flag Shakedown Street is the tenth Studio album by the Grateful Dead.
He graduated from Lamar High School in Houston. He attended Washington and Lee University, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin where he received his bachelor's degree in the social sciences in 1961. Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts college in Lexington Virginia, USA Texas A&M University, often called A&M or TAMU, is a Coeducational public Research University located in College Station His early cartoons were published in the University of Texas' humor magazine The Texas Ranger.
Directly after graduating, Shelton moved to New York City and got a job editing automotive magazines where he would sneak his drawings into print. The City of New York The idea for the character of Wonder Wart-Hog, a porcine parody of Superman, came to him in 1961. Superman is a fictional Comic book Superhero widely considered to be one of the most recognized of such characters and an American Cultural icon The following year, Shelton moved back to Texas to enroll in graduate school and get a student deferment from the draft. Texas ( is a state geographically located in the South Central United States and is also known as the Lone Star State. Conscription (also known as the draft, the call-up or national service) is a general term for involuntary labor demanded by some established authority The first two Wonder Wart-Hog stories appeared in Bacchanal, a short-lived college humor magazine, in the spring of 1962. He then became editor of The Texas Ranger and published more Wonder Wart-Hog stories.
After switching from graduate school to art school (where he befriended singer Janis Joplin) for two years, he was finally drafted, but army doctors declared him medically unfit after he admitted to taking psychedelic drugs. Janis Lyn Joplin ( January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer songwriter and music arranger from Modern psychedelia For "psychedelics" see Psychedelic drug. After this, in 1964 and 1965 he spent some time in Cleveland, where his girlfriend at the time was going to the Cleveland Art Institute. Cleveland is a City in the US state of Ohio and the County seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state He applied for a job at the Cleveland-based American Greeting Card Company (where a fellow underground comic artist Robert Crumb had worked) but was turned down. Underground comics (or comix) are Small press or self-published Comic books that began to appear in the US in the late 1960s Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943) often credited simply as R
Around this time Shelton became art director for the Vulcan Gas Company, a rock music venue in Austin, Texas, where he worked with Jim Franklin. The Vulcan Gas Company, (usually called simply The Vulcan) was the first successful psychedelic Music venue in Austin Texas. A music venue is any location regularly used for a Concert or Musical performance Jim Franklin (born 1943 is an artist best known for his poster art created for the Armadillo World Headquarters, a former Austin Texas He created a number of posters in the style of contemporary California poster artists such as Victor Moscoso and Rick Griffin. Victor Moscoso (born 1936 is an American Illustrator and Comic book artist, especially noted for his work in the late 1960s as a designer of Psychedelic Richard Alden Griffin ( June 18, 1944 - August 18, 1991) was an American Artist and one of the leading designers of After a year of this, he moved to San Francisco in the summer of 1968 hoping that being closer to the action would enable him to do more posterwork; as it turned out, he finally got his break in the alternative comix business. The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth most populous city
That same year, Millar Publishing Company, who had been publishing regular Wonder Wart-Hog stories since 1966, published two issues of Wonder Wart-Hog Quarterly. 140,000 copies of each were printed, but distributors did not pick up the magazine and only 40,000 of each were sold.
After a strip named Feds 'n' Heads (published by Print Mint), Gilbert created his most famous strip, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers in 1968, and Fat Freddy's Cat in 1969, when he also co-founded Rip Off Press. Rip Off Press, Inc is a seminal publishing company that specializes in adult-themed literature and Graphic novels mostly in a specific comic book format known as
Shelton currently lives in Paris, France. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. His most recent work, in collaboration with French cartoonist Pic, is Not Quite Dead, which appeared in Rip Off Comix #25 and in five Not Quite Dead comic books. In addition to a new Wonder Wart-Hog story in Zap Comix #15 (2005), his Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers are currently being turned into a stop-motion animated film. Zap Comix is the best-known of the Underground comics that emerged as part of the youth Counterculture of the late 1960s
See also
- Gilbert Shelton has collaborated with Gerhard Seyfried.
Resources
- "Gilbert Shelton Interviewed by Frank Stack". The Comics Journal. Retrieved Sep. 23, 2004.
External links
- Freak Bros. movie on Ain't It Cool News
- Video Interview with Gilbert Shelton on oc-tv.net
- Rip Off Press, Inc., publishers of the Freak Brothers comics in the U.S.A.
- Knockabout Comics, publishers of the Freak Brothers comics in the U.K.
- Freaknet, a popular Freak Brothers fan site.
- The Hog of Steel, a complete bibliography of Wonder Wart-Hog.
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