Fifty years ago, underground cartoonists Gilbert Shelton (ZAP Comix, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) and Ted Richards (Air Pirates, The Forty Year Old Hippie) combined their talents to create a more-or-less accurate summary of the founding of the United States of America as it was never taught in school! With Shelton's degree in history, Richards' experience as an army brat turned Air Force enlistee, and their combined skills at both slapstick and satire, they crafted "A Revised History Of The American Revolution," combining high strategic points with the perspective of regular grunts and citizens.
Give Me Liberty! was originally serialized in alternative newspapers through 1975-76 and now, for only the second time in 250 years, Fantagraphics Underground brings this lost classic back to print. Printed at close to original tabloid size and packed with a wealth of incredibly rare additional material, this is an early contender for best archival comics release of 2025.
Hallgren, Gary: - Gary Hallgren was invited to be a founding member of the Air Pirates just months after his first published comic, and was brought in to help complete the collected Give Me Liberty! A Revised History Of The American Revolution after the untimely death of Willy Murphy. Halgren sustained a career in commercial and magazine illustration over many decades, before becoming a contributor to the legacy newspaper strip Hagar The Horrible in 2015. His role on the series has gradually expanded to being the full artist on the venerable Viking.
Murphy, Willy: - "Willy Murphy (1936 - 1976) was an American underground cartoonist, who poked fun at fellow hippies and contemporary American culture throughout the 1970s with characters often borrowed from real life. His signature character was Arnold Peck the Human Wreck, "a mid-30s beanpole with wry observations about his own life and the community around him." He contributed to such seminal underground anthologies as Arcade, Bijou Funnies, San Francisco Comic Book, as well as the National Lampoon."
Richards, Ted: - Ted Richards was one of the most important figures of the underground comix movement. Through the 1970s, he created his own Dopin' Dan, E.Z. Wolf and The Forty Year Old Hippie strips for the Rip Off Press Syndicate, and collaborated closely with Murphy and Gilbert Shelton on Give Me Liberty! A Revised History Of The American Revolution. At the same time, he was one of the prime movers in the Air Pirates collective, embroiled in an eight-year lawsuit from Disney over two parody comics from 1971. Following the suit, Richards left comics for a long career in Silicon Valley. He died of lung cancer in April 2023.
Shelton, Gilbert: - Gilbert Shelton (b. 1940, Dallas, Texas), a founding father of the underground comix movement, is the creator of the iconic comix characters The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, and Wonder Wart-Hog. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2012. He has been known to sing and play piano for the Blum Brothers, a Paris-based rhythm and blues group. He lives in Paris, France, with his wife and an ever-changing number of cats.
