Mavrides came to the
San Francisco Bay Area in 1975, and was soon working with San Francisco-based comics creator
Jay Kinney on "Cover-Up Lowdown", originally a weekly
panel cartoon which was collected and published by
Rip Off Press in November 1977. This strip satirized political cover-ups of the day, as well as those of recent history, such as the
assassination of John F. Kennedy. Kinney and Mavrides then collaborated on the political
anthology Anarchy Comics, which was published sporadically by
Last Gasp between 1978 and 1987. Mavrides contributed comics to all four issues of
Anarchy Comics as well as editing the final issue. Mavrides illustrated several stories for
Harvey Pekar in
American Splendor. He also had work in such alternative comics titles as
Young Lust (
Last Gasp),
Real War Stories (
Eclipse Comics), and the
Brought to Light trade paperback (Eclipse). Mavrides was credited as art director for
Grass, a 1999 documentary on
marijuana. He designed the record jacket for
The Nuclear Beauty Parlor. Mavrides is also a collagist, photographer and painter.
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers In 1978, Mavrides joined Gilbert Shelton and
Dave Sheridan to co-produce
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics stories. Together, with Shelton and Mavrides writing, and Mavrides, Sheridan, and Shelton producing the artwork, the three of them produced the comix that were later collected into
Freak Brothers issues #6 & 7. Following Sheridan's death from complications of cancer in 1982, Mavrides became Shelton's steady partner in all further
Freak Brothers material. The two of them embarked on an ambitious project (begun in 1982 and serialized in issues #11 and 12 of the
Rip Off Comix series, but not published in the comics series
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers until 1984): a full color, three-volume story arc entitled "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers in The Idiots Abroad". In 1984, Shelton, who had spent parts of 1980 and 1981 in Europe, moved back to
Europe for good and the
Freak Brothers collaboration became a trans-Atlantic affair. The last full issue of new Freak Brothers material came out in 1992. ==Legal battles==