'Dealer McDope Does the Snowshovel Shuffle' (Rip Off Comix #4, November 1978).
Dave Sheridan was a U.S. underground cartoonist, best remembered as co-writer and artist on Gilbert Shelton's 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' between 1974 and 1978, and again from 1981 until 1982. As a solo artist, he created the underground comix 'Dealer McDope' (1969) and 'The Leather Nun' (1973). He was additionally notable for making a portrait of Ernie Anderson's television Ghoulardi character, which went on to have a life of its own. Sheridan's career was unfortunately cut short due to his early death.
Early life and career
Born in 1943 in Cleveland, Ohio, David Sheridan grew up in the suburb of Euclid. His father was an editorial cartoonist for The Cleveland News, who often brought home paper for his children to draw on. Like many U.S. teenagers in the 1950s, Sheridan was strongly influenced by the iconoclastic satirical magazine Mad Magazine. Further inspiration came from Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and the Cleveland radio personality Pete "Mad Daddy" Myers, as well as early TV and rock 'n' roll. As a teenager, he spent a lot of time at D. Poo's Tool and Die Works, a Cleveland bar/music venue in an old industrial building known as The Flats. While joining Cleveland's emerging hippie counterculture, Sheridan became friends with artist like Gilbert Shelton, Tom Pope and Fred Schrier, as well as the comedian Don Novello. As a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Sheridan used a technique called the "Cleveland Crosshatch", a style of detailed line art that later became one of his trademarks in the underground cartoon field. After his studies, he fulfilled his military service in Ethiopia.
Dave Sheridan's Ghoulardi drawing.
Ghoulardi drawing
Earlier on, right after graduation from high school, Sheridan had made his first mark on pop culture with a portrait he made of TV host Ernie Anderson as his "Ghoulardi" persona. In this spooky host role, Anderson presented horror movies on the TV show 'Shock Theater' (1963-1966) on WJW-TV 8, an affiliate of CBS in Cleveland, Ohio. Sheridan copied Ghoulardi's face from a publicity photo, but revised it to look more like a 1930s Universal horror movie poster. Sheridan's sketch portrait of Ghoulardi was used for promotion purposes, and remained popular even when the show went off the air. When Anderson's son, producer Paul Thomas Anderson (of 'Boogie Nights' and 'There Will Be Blood' fame), founded The Ghoulardi Film Company, he repurposed Sheridan's drawing as its official logo.
'Side Show with Arnold E. Diddlegrit' (Balloon Vendor Comix #1, 1971).
Underground art
In the mid-1960s, Sheridan followed the stream of hippies who travelled to San Francisco, where his underground comix and cartoons were picked up by magazines like The Berkeley Barb, High Times, Ramparts and Hugh Hefner's Playboy. In his hometown Cleveland, he worked for the underground newspaper Great Swamp Erie da da Boom, edited by Steve Ferguson. In 1969, Sheridan's friends Gilbert Shelton, Jaxon, Dave Moriarty and Fred Todd established the independent publishing company Rip Off Press, intended to distribute their comics. As a cartoonist, Sheridan appeared in several Rip Off Press titles. Under the collective pseudonym Overland Vegetable Stagecoach, Sheridan and Fred Schrier drew several one-shot underground comix, seeing their work published in The Balloon Vendor (Rip Off Press, 1971), Meef Comix (The Print Mint, 1972-1973) and Mother Oats Comix (Rip Off Press, 1970-1976). Together with Schrier, he also made the time travel parody comic 'Time Twisted Tales' (1979-1981), published in Rip Off Comix.
Starting in June 1972, Sheridan served as art editor of Rip Off's cultural magazine The Rip Off Review of Western Culture, with articles, interviews and columns but deliberately as few ads as possible, to remain independent. However, before the end of the year was reached, the magazine had already folded.
'The Doings of Dealer McDope' (1969).
Dealer McDope and The Leather Nun
In his underground comix, Dave Sheridan reflected the lifestyle of philosophies of the drug-fuelled hippie counterculture. His most notable characters were Dealer McDope and the Leather Nun. Dealer McDope is a drug dealer who made his first appearance in Mother Oats Comix (October 1969). In many of his stories, he conjures up elaborate schemes to either buy or sell marijuana, LSD, cocaine or other substances, leading to daft, unpredictable narratives. In 1971, The Print Mint released a board game built around the character, the 'Dealer McDope Dealing Game'. The initial plan was to let Gilbert Shelton design it and use his signature characters the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, but he had already created a similar board game, Feds 'n' Heads, for a supplement to the September 1971 issue of Hugh Hefner's Playboy. So instead, Sheridan was commissioned, since his Dealer McDope had already been given regular guest appearances in 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers'. When in 1972 the California Marijuana Initiative (Proposition 19) was introduced to legalize marijuana, activists used Dealer McDope as their mascot. Predictably, the proposition was rejected by a vast majority of voters.
'Tales from the Leather Nun'.
Sheridan's other character, the Leather Nun, originated from the 1973 Last Gasp comic book 'Tales From The Leather Nun', a collection of blasphemous comics by Sheridan, as well as Roger Brand, Robert Crumb, Jaxon, Spain Rodriguez and Pat Ryan. Sheridan's story opens the book and is also the longest. It features a Roman Catholic priest being ordered by The Pope to find an ancient manuscript in possession of the Leather Nun, a Roman Catholic nun with a love for S&M. The character was Sheridan's retribution for the traumas of his own religious upbringing, particularly the knuckle-beating nuns in his school.
Cover art by Dave Sheridan.
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
In 1974, Shelton began assisting Gilbert Shelton on his signature series 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' and its spin-off 'Fat Freddy's Cat'. Earlier, Shelton had already worked with co-contributors, namely Joe E. Brown, Jr, Bill Killeen and Tony Bell. Sheridan joined in from the fourth volume of 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers', easily recognizable by his detailed, atmospheric background art, which he personally belittled as "consistently over drawn graphics". He also helped out with some of the scripts. In 1978, Sheridan left and was succeeded by Paul Mavrides, but he rejoined the team in the early 1980s. In total, Sheridan worked on 45 'Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' stories.
'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' by Shelton & Sheridan (1977).
Graphic contributions and commercial art
When in 1974 the final issue of Jay Lynch's Bijou Funnies was released, several underground comix artists drew spoofs of each others' series, done in the style of Harvey Kurtzman's comic strip parodies in Mad Magazine. Sheridan drew a parody of Lynch's signature duo 'Nard 'n' Pat'. Apart from comics, Sheridan and Pat Ryan also designed labels for cannabis products, under the fictional brand The California Homegrowers Association. He was additionally a productive album cover designer, drawing the sleeves for Carl Oglesby's 'Going To Damascus' (1971), John Bassette's 'Weed and Wine' (1972) and John Lee Hooker's 'Free Beer and Chicken' (1974), as well as 'Father Guido Sarducci Live at St. Douglas Convent' (1980), a comedy album by his friend Don Novello. Among his other clients in the music industry were Pink Floyd, Jimmy Buffett and Capitol Records.
Rare ad for Pink Floyd's 1971 album 'Meddle'.
Recognition
In 1978, Gilbert Shelton and Dave Sheridan shared an Inkpot Award for their work on 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers'. This was the only award Sheridan ever received during his lifetime.
Final years and death
In the early 1970s, Sheridan moved to California's Marin County, where he lived in Fairfax, with frequent excursions to San Anselmo and San Rafael. Together with his friends he formed the Artista Collective, wearing their own jackets and forming a softball team. He was a lively soul, enjoying a good drink and a fine joint, while even brewing his own beer.
Working on the popular adventures of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and having full creative input in the stories, Sheridan seemed ahead of a bright future. In 1981, he got married and his wife was soon pregnant. However, a year later, in early March 1982, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was hospitalized, but there he accidentally fell and had a head injury that landed him in a coma from which he never awoke. Four days after his first day in hospital, he passed away from a brain haemorrhage. He was only 38. Sheridan never lived to see his daughter, who was born a week later. According to his wishes, the late comic artist received a sea burial. His death was mourned by his surviving collaborators, Gilbert Shelton and Paul Mavrides, who, to find escapism, decided to make an ambitious 'Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' epic, spread over three volumes, nowadays regarded as a masterpiece, 'The Idiots Abroad'.
A compilation book of Sheridan's 'Dealer McDope' was released posthumously in 1985 by Rip Off Press. In 2018, Fantagraphics released 'Dave Sheridan: Life with Dealer McDope, the Leather Nun, and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers', a book collecting his best work, edited by Mark Burstein.
Dave Sheridan.