Gilbert Shelton – Underground Comix legend to tell his story at Galway Cartoon Festival 2025

Gilbert Shelton, a legend and a true pioneer in the world of comics, is coming to Galway Cartoon Festival 2025 to tell tales from his remarkable life. Check out where you can meet him right here...

The 85-year-old from Dallas, Texas, is the creator of the iconic characters The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy’s Cat, and stands alongside Robert Crumb as one of the major figures in the Underground Comix movement of the 1960s.

Shelton will give a public talk about his life, work, and inspirations in PorterShed a Dó, Market Street, at 2pm on Saturday 4th October, with underground British cartoonist Hunt Emerson. Shelton will also be in Sub City, Corbett Court Shopping Centre, on Sunday 5th October from 5pm to 6pm, to meet fans and sign copies of his work.

Part of the general counter-cultural movement in the USA in the 1960s, Underground Comix were independently produced titles that critiqued and satirised society, often through outrageous humour and depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications. Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers is a prime example.

Shelton first came to prominence in the early 1960s with his superhero parody Wonder Wart-Hog, but he sealed his legend when, in 1968, he created the characters of Freewheelin' Franklin Freek, Phineas T. Phreak, and Fat Freddy Freekowtski.

In The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Shelton’s mix of social satire, druggie humour, and affectionate spoofing of the hippie counterculture he was part of left no doubt that Underground Comix were a breed apart, intended for an adult readership. His work, like that of Crumb's, has extended through subsequent generations, with its influence being most keenly felt in the later alternative comics movement.

During Galway Cartoon Festival, let your Freak Flag fly high and proud, and take a chance to meet a living legend of comics when he visits our city this October. Admission to both the talk and signing is free. For more information, see galwaycartoonfestival.ie.