August 2017

 

	Gilbert Shelton: The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

The past is a foreign country, even if you happen to be born there. It's hard to review the Freak Brothers without reviewing the Sixties.

But let's start with the comic. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers are hippies who share a crappy apartment in a crappy town, and their only aim in life is to stay high permanently, on as many substances as possible. Fat Freddy is dumb and always hungry; Phineas is mechanical-minded and idealistic; Freewheelin' Franklin is smart and jaded.

The Freaks generally start in their apartment, minding their own business, and then either something happens (the drugs run out and they need to get more, or they get evicted, or Fat Freddy falls in love), or they decide to try something for fun (go to Disneyland, wire up a full-size remote-controlled car, buy a waterbed, set up anti-narc traps). Hijinks ensue.

The one thing they can rely on is their motto: “Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.”

Among the underground cartoonists, Robert Crumb is better known, but Shelton is far funnier— also far less uneven. Crumb is a satirist who wants to tell you something about his own dark id, and maybe yours. Though he's younger than Shelton, he comes off somehow as a square at heart. Shelton seems to plunge right into the lifestyle of the urban hippie and just wants to tell you funny stories. The Freak Brothers would nod at Fritz the Cat if they met him in the street, but they aren't bullshit artists like Fritz; they don't aspire to be anything other than what they are. (Curiously, both Shelton and Crumb are also musicians and both eventually moved to France.)

There are resonances with our own dystopian times— a ludicrous right-wing government, sexism and racism, an unending war, a resurgent left. But the differences are even more striking.

• Shelton's counterculture is almost completely irresponsible. The Freaks just want to get high and have fun. Their politics are ultra-left, but they don't do anything about them.
• The '60s city was almost irredeemably grim: a wasteland of crime, garbage, and decay. It would be hard to imagine that in fifty years the perceived problem with America's cities would be that they were too expensive.
• The Freaks (and Crumb) take for granted knowledge of and sympathy for Maoism, anarchism, and left-wing terror. There's a renewal of socialism today, but by the Freaks' standards it's gone all respectable— it's far closer to Ted Kennedy than to Che Guevara.
• Grim as things feel right now, the left's goals are within reach in a way the Freaks could only dream of. Nixon won in 1972 by a 61% landslide; Trump lost the popular vote, with 46%. Both parties in the '60s were ideological mish-mashes; today's polarized environment means that the Democrats are actually far more liberal than ever before. And today's reactionaries are so desperate and mean largely because they realize they're losing in the long run.
• The Vietnam War affected and radicalized people far more than the war in Afghanistan… frankly because of the disappearance of the draft.
• By today's standards, Shelton— and the '60s counterculture as a whole— are themselves sexist, and only barely evolved on race and sexuality. Girls only appear as sex objects, and Shelton isn't above using a few rape jokes.

The Left is apt to think of the '60s, if it thinks of them at all, as some kind of renaissance of creativity and free-thinking, before the “neoliberals” took over. But the actual counterculture was a minority movement, widely despised, and full of things that proved to be embarrassing dead ends— the preoccupation with drugs, the sexism, the flirtation with “revolutionary” violence that only delegitimized radicalism.

Oops, I've probably made the Freak Brothers sound way heavier than they are. All this stuff is background, and Shelton is purposely exaggerating the irresponsiblity of his characters. He even has a story about how the Freaks are real people he's set up in a house so he can write stories about them, and it turns out they stripped the entire house down to the foundations to get money for drugs.

I feel I should add a warning, though. I think the Freak Brother are hilarious, but then I've been reading them for years, and though the Freaks would consider me a hopeless square, I get '60s humor— I'm a native of that country. (Ah, if only I had a record player, so I could play my Firesign Theater albums again.) I can't guarantee you'll enjoy it.

 

	Ryan North and Erica Henderson: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Now let's look at what the kids are up to these days. Judging from Squirrel Girl, they're studying at college, making friends, and whupping Dr. Doom and Galactus.

I was surprised to learn that Squirrel Girl actually has a long history. Her first appearance, in 1991, is reprinted in the first TPB. It's a silly but pleasant story where SG (at fourteen) tries to become Iron Man's partner, and they end up defeating Dr. Doom together.

But her newfound glory comes from North & Henderson's comic. There's a trend today toward comics that combine a female hero with light comedy, and I am totally digging them. SG is most similar to Bandette, in that she is irrepressible, has a high self-regard, and yet seems only more adorable for it.

Squirrel Girl has, well, the power of squirrels. She's super-strong and agile— there is an explanation for how this relates to squirrels that I forget, but the takeaway is: super-strength. She has a big tail and wears a squirrel-themed outfit. She can talk to squirrels and use them as minions. Does that not sound super-useful? Because it's super-useful. If nothing else, supervillains designing their mega-scary outfits and lairs rarely count on being overwhelmed by hundreds of squirrels.

But she's as apt to use brains and charm to outwit her enemies as trying to beat them up. This could go all twee, but the danger is averted here: if she talks a villain down, she does have some convincing patter.

Ryan, like SG, is goofy, smart, relentlessly positive, and really hard to dislike. His Dinosaur Comics has been running since 2003, with the exact same art each day. He made a choose-your-own-adventure video game about Hamlet which is even more amusing.

Henderson's art is a perfect match: cartoony by Big Comics standards, but totally up for an urban vista or a view of Galactus if the plot requires it. Her depiction of Squirrel Girl herself is particularly smart. She's cute, but also a little goofy-looking, and a little on the pudgy side. As Henderson explains, “I like to draw heartier super ladies, if their powers are mostly physical, because I feel like I shouldn't be able to take down a superhero by sitting on her.”

SG is comedy, and not exactly deep. But sometimes you don't rebel by providing caustic satire, you rebel by providing an alternative, positive image. We don't need our comics to be grimdark— we can read the news for that.