Gilbert Shelton

Biography Early life and education Shelton was born in Dallas, Texas, on May 31, 1940. His father, George Shelton, worked for Firestone, which moved the family around the southeast during the 1940s. They settled in Houston, Texas, where he graduated from Lamar High School. 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. His early cartoons were published in the University of Texas humor magazine The Texas Ranger.

Early career Directly after graduation, Shelton moved to New York City and got a job editing automotive magazines, where he would sneak his drawings into print. Early work of his was published in Warren Publishing's Help! 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. After this, in 1964 and 1965, he spent some time in Cleveland, where his girlfriend Pat Brown (another UT alum) was studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art. 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.

The period of 1965–1968 was an itinerant one for Shelton: he moved to New York to work for the underground paper East Village Other, and to Los Angeles to work for the Los Angeles Free Press. selling over 200,000 total copies by 1980.

In 1969, Shelton co-founded Rip Off Press with three fellow "expatriate" Texans: Fred Todd, Dave Moriaty, and cartoonist Jack Jackson. Shelton used his share (which was the bulk of the money) to finance repeated trips to Europe, and to eventually settle down in France. Meanwhile, the Universal-produced Freak Brothers film never made it to production. They were residents of Barcelona, (Catalonia, Spain) in 1980–1981, and moved to France in 1984. In 1978, the unauthorized pornographic film Up in Flames was released, which "ripped off the Freak Brothers and R. Crumb' Mr. Natural all in one go."

It was reported that Universal's acquisition of the Freak Brothers film rights in 1979 was in order to prevent competition against the Cheech & Chong franchise. Although a script was written, the film was never made. fell through..

Finally, in 2021, an animated series called Freak Brothers featuring the voices of Pete Davidson, John Goodman and Woody Harrelson, premiered on the streaming service Tubi. It was renewed for a second season, which began in June 2023.

Music "Set My Chickens Free" Shelton's strip "Set My Chickens Free," published in issue #1 of the Bijou Funnies comic (1968) has been used in multiple music projects: In 1969, the words were set to music by The Hub City Movers and recorded as "The Chicken Song"; re-released in 1983 as "Set Your Chickens Free". In David Carradine's 1975 album Grasshopper (and 1976 single "Cosmic Joke"), he uses the words in "Chicken Song." In 1994, Merle Haggard used the words in his song "Set My Chickens Free," released on his studio album 1994.

Literature Shelton's "Set My Chickens Free" cartoon was also published on page 128 of Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book (1971), illustrating its third section, "Liberate!"