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Rip Off Press
Rip Off Press Inc. is a comic book mail order retailer and distributor, better known as the former publisher of adult-themed series like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Rip Off Comix, as well as many other seminal publications from the underground comix era. Founded in 1969 in San Francisco by four friends from Austin, Texas — cartoonists Gilbert Shelton and Jack Jackson, and Fred Todd and Dave Moriaty — Rip Off Press is now run in Auburn, California, by Todd.
Rip Off Press is notable for being the first company to publish the fourth edition of the Principia Discordia, a Discordian religious text written by Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley. It was also an early publisher of a booklet on drug manufacturing, Psychedelic Chemistry.
In January 17, 1969, the company was founded in San Francisco by four Texans: Fred Todd, Dave Moriaty, and cartoonists Gilbert Shelton and Jack Jackson. The initial plan was to print rock band promotional posters on an old press and do comics on the side — in some ways the company was formed as a sort of cartoonists' cooperative, as an alternative publishing venue to other Bay Area publishers like Apex Novelties and Print Mint. The four men purchased a used Davidson 233 offset printing press and set up shop in the same space as Apex Novelties, located on the third-floor ballroom of the former Mowry's Opera House, at 633 Laguna Street in Hayes Valley.
The first comics Rip Off Press published, in 1969, were R. Crumb's Big Ass Comics (June '69), a reprint of Jaxon's God Nose (originally published in 1964), Jaxon's Happy Endings Comics (August '69), and the first issue of Fred Schrier and Dave Sheridan's Mother's Oats Comix (October '69).
After a fire almost destroyed the opera house in late 1969, Rip Off moved to the decaying former headquarters of the Family Dog psychedelic rock music promotion collective (which Jaxon had been a member of starting in 1966). Rip Off Press was located at 1250 17th Street in San Francisco from 1970 until 1985.
By 1972, the poster printing business had faded away and the company had become a publishing house. Other works the company published during this period included comics by Frank Stack, Sheridan (all co-published with Gary Arlington's San Francisco Comic Book Company), The Rip Off Review of Western Culture omnibus, and Shelton's The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. The company also published a board game, Feds 'N' Heads, that was based on Shelton's 1968 identically named comic.
As the underground comix market began to peter out in the early 1970s, Rip Off Press shifted its focus to other cartoonists and other comics. By this point, Rip Off Press co-founders Moriaty and Jackson had gone back to Texas, leaving the running of the company to Shelton and Todd.
The company started a syndication service, managed by Shelton, that sold weekly content to alternative newspapers and student publications. Each Friday, the company sent out a distribution sheet with the strips it was selling, by such cartoonists as Shelton, Joel Beck, Dave Sheridan, Ted Richards, Bill Griffith, and Harry Driggs (as R. Diggs). The Rip Off Press Syndicate, never really a profitable operation, was discontinued by 1979. (Griffith's Zippy, which had debuted in 1976 as a weekly strip with Rip Off's syndicate, was picked up for daily syndication in 1986 by King Features Syndicate.) Much of the material produced for the syndicate was eventually published in the company's long-running anthology Rip Off Comix, which had debuted in 1977.
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Rip Off Press
Rip Off Press Inc. is a comic book mail order retailer and distributor, better known as the former publisher of adult-themed series like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Rip Off Comix, as well as many other seminal publications from the underground comix era. Founded in 1969 in San Francisco by four friends from Austin, Texas — cartoonists Gilbert Shelton and Jack Jackson, and Fred Todd and Dave Moriaty — Rip Off Press is now run in Auburn, California, by Todd.
Rip Off Press is notable for being the first company to publish the fourth edition of the Principia Discordia, a Discordian religious text written by Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley. It was also an early publisher of a booklet on drug manufacturing, Psychedelic Chemistry.
In January 17, 1969, the company was founded in San Francisco by four Texans: Fred Todd, Dave Moriaty, and cartoonists Gilbert Shelton and Jack Jackson. The initial plan was to print rock band promotional posters on an old press and do comics on the side — in some ways the company was formed as a sort of cartoonists' cooperative, as an alternative publishing venue to other Bay Area publishers like Apex Novelties and Print Mint. The four men purchased a used Davidson 233 offset printing press and set up shop in the same space as Apex Novelties, located on the third-floor ballroom of the former Mowry's Opera House, at 633 Laguna Street in Hayes Valley.
The first comics Rip Off Press published, in 1969, were R. Crumb's Big Ass Comics (June '69), a reprint of Jaxon's God Nose (originally published in 1964), Jaxon's Happy Endings Comics (August '69), and the first issue of Fred Schrier and Dave Sheridan's Mother's Oats Comix (October '69).
After a fire almost destroyed the opera house in late 1969, Rip Off moved to the decaying former headquarters of the Family Dog psychedelic rock music promotion collective (which Jaxon had been a member of starting in 1966). Rip Off Press was located at 1250 17th Street in San Francisco from 1970 until 1985.
By 1972, the poster printing business had faded away and the company had become a publishing house. Other works the company published during this period included comics by Frank Stack, Sheridan (all co-published with Gary Arlington's San Francisco Comic Book Company), The Rip Off Review of Western Culture omnibus, and Shelton's The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. The company also published a board game, Feds 'N' Heads, that was based on Shelton's 1968 identically named comic.
As the underground comix market began to peter out in the early 1970s, Rip Off Press shifted its focus to other cartoonists and other comics. By this point, Rip Off Press co-founders Moriaty and Jackson had gone back to Texas, leaving the running of the company to Shelton and Todd.
The company started a syndication service, managed by Shelton, that sold weekly content to alternative newspapers and student publications. Each Friday, the company sent out a distribution sheet with the strips it was selling, by such cartoonists as Shelton, Joel Beck, Dave Sheridan, Ted Richards, Bill Griffith, and Harry Driggs (as R. Diggs). The Rip Off Press Syndicate, never really a profitable operation, was discontinued by 1979. (Griffith's Zippy, which had debuted in 1976 as a weekly strip with Rip Off's syndicate, was picked up for daily syndication in 1986 by King Features Syndicate.) Much of the material produced for the syndicate was eventually published in the company's long-running anthology Rip Off Comix, which had debuted in 1977.