Gilbert Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers made their first comic book appearance in 1968, in the pages of Feds 'n' Heads, published by Print Mint. Gilbert joined with Fred Todd, Jack Jackson, and Dave Moriaty to found Rip Off Press the following year, but it wasn't until 1971 that the first Freak Brothers comix series title (issue 1, "The Collected Adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers") was published. This issue included many Freak Brothers strips that had originally run in the L.A. Free Press. After that, new issues in the series were published by Rip Off Press yearly through around issue 7 in 1982. Dave Sheridan joined Gilbert Shelton doing Freak Brothers starting with issue #4, and Paul Mavrides (also, like Dave, from Ohio) was added to the team starting with issue #6. Dave passed away in 1982 and Gilbert and Paul continued on, launching the epic 3-issue "Idiots Abroad" story line. These issues (8-10) were originally published in full color, a break from the series' black-and-white roots. They were originally published from 1984-87. In this same period, in 1985, Fred Todd and his wife Kathe, now running Rip Off Press as a Mom 'n' Pop, brought out a compilation of previously uncollected Shelton material under the title Underground Classics #1: Freak Brothers #0. Issue 11, also originally in color, collected the material that had originally appeared in High Times magazine in the mid-70s and later issued in the trade paperback Thoroughly Ripped (1978). Then in 1992 issue 12 came out, a black-and-white comic with all new strips. By this point Gilbert had been living in France fo 7 years and his collaboration with Paul (living in San Francisco) had become too difficult to continue on a regular basis. This was to be the last issue in the series.

Over the years following, the Todds reprinted all the Freak Brothers issues many times. A special "20th Anniversary Edition" of Freak Brothers #1 was issued in 1991, with an inset "seal" on the cover. In the later 90s, the contents of issues 8-11 were digitized and remastered in monochrome, as color reprints had become too costly. Due to changes in printing technology, all of the issues eventually had to be digitized since the original film could no longer be used to create printing plates. Reprints continued through the middle years of the 21st century's first decade, but eventually ceased and individual issues began going out of print. In 2009 the Todds and Gilbert dissolved the corporation and returned the U.S. publication rights to the Freak Brothers to Gilbert. As of 2012 no other publishing company had yet picked up these rights, so that comix issues are continuing to go out of print. All of the material is available in the Freak Brothers Omnibus Book, but if you want a complete set of the comix you must now compile it from a mix of current reprints and older printings from the Collectors' Items category. For easiest selection of a complete set, search on "Freak Brothers" to bring up matches from all categories in which series issues appear.