« No wonder psychedelics are threatening to an authoritarian religious hierarchy. You don’t need faith to benefit from a psychedelic experience, let alone a priest or even a shaman to interpret it. What you need is courage to drink the brew, eat the mushroom, or whatever it is, and then to pay attention, and make of it what you will. Suddenly, the tools for direct contact with the transcendent other (whether you call it God or something else) is taken from the hands of an anointed elite and given to the individual seeker. » — Dennis McKenna
Sensing that I’ve been neglecting Underground Comix in our coverage, I thought I’d close out the year with a thematic pairing of a favourite comestible with a beloved cartoonist (and his collaborators).
That’s a pretty fanciful mushroom patch there, boys. I doubt that mushrooms would grow much, if at all, in the blazing prairie sun… let alone that neatly. Artistic licence, then! This is The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers no. 5 (May 1977, Rip Off Press). Cover by Gilbert Shelton and Dave Sheridan.An old girlfriend of mine once echoed Fat Freddy’s bonehead sentiment: “Ew… mushrooms grow in shit!“, presumably unaware of the role manure has always played in agriculture. She went on to marry a succession of Frenchmen, and given their nation’s appreciation of fungi, I hope she was smart enough to not express out loud that bit of… wisdom.
By the way, Phineas is right, as usual. Here’s more info on the relationship between mushrooms and cow flop, and an ‘easy guide to picking‘…
One Pizza With Mushrooms to Go! first saw print in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers no. 4 (November 1975, Rip Off Press). This is Shelton and Sheridan’s original cover art, which fetched a handsome 43,000 dollars and change when it was auctioned off in 2016. Ah, roommates. One again, Fat Freddy undoes Phineas’ careful efforts. This reminder of the importance of sterilisation in mushroom cultivation comes courtesy of Messrs. Shelton and Paul Mavrides. It appeared in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers no. 12 (1992, Rip Off Press).Talk about a roomful of cartooning genius. Meet Mavrides and Shelton and feel your senses reel!
Honestly, it’s been, for many of us, the kind of year when mutant psychedelic fungus overrunning one’s city would come as a pretty good bit of news. Let’s hope for something even better for 2022!
I used to have a B&W french edition of Freddy’s Cat and the War of the Cockroaches… It’s been stolen long time ago so It’s about time I get myself an original version.
Thanks for the cue.
You might want to grab Knockabout’s Fat Freddy’s Cat Omnibus instead and get the whole lot. It’s a beautifully-designed and solidly-bound volume and nearly 400 pages long. Une vraie bonne affaire!
Who's Out There? 
I used to have a B&W french edition of Freddy’s Cat and the War of the Cockroaches… It’s been stolen long time ago so It’s about time I get myself an original version.
Thanks for the cue.
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You might want to grab Knockabout’s Fat Freddy’s Cat Omnibus instead and get the whole lot. It’s a beautifully-designed and solidly-bound volume and nearly 400 pages long. Une vraie bonne affaire!
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I just ordered it, thanks!
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