He was a regular in Zap for the balance of the 1960s until appearing in his own three-issue title, originally co-published by the San Francisco Comic Book Company and Apex Novelties.

After a ten-year hiatus, Mr. Natural returned in the pages of Crumb's solo series, Hup (Last Gasp), and then after another gap, in Mystic Funnies #1 (Alex Wood, 1997).

He is endlessly being accosted by would-be disciples seeking the truth (among them such long-running Crumb characters as Flakey Foont and Shuman the Human).

He typically regards them with amused condescension and a certain grudging affection, although his patience often wears thin and he takes sadistic pleasure in making them feel like idiots.

[9] According to a biography written and illustrated by Crumb, "Fred Natural" had been a jazz musician and then faith healer in the 1920s,[10] which would mean that he was "born" in the early years of the 20th century, and by the time of his first encounters (set in the San Francisco area) in the 1960s, was a 60-year-old man.

However, in Crumb's illustration of the 1920s faith healer, Fred Natural looks approximately fifty, which would make him one hundred years old in the earliest Flakey Foont encounters.

Mr. Natural's own father is featured in a 1973 Zap story, where he is represented as a rugged frontier type living in a rundown tenement-style apartment building.

[11] In the "biography", "Fred Natural" leaves America and travels for many years in Asia, which is where he picks up his unique combination of wisdom and chicanery.

[12] He returns to the U.S during the Beat era of the 1960s, and is drawn to the San Francisco Bay area by nubile girls and people willing to listen and pay for his improvisational spirituality.

[13] In the film Comic Book Confidential, Crumb says that he was inspired to draw the character when he heard then radio DJ David Rubenstein jokingly calling himself "Mr.

A Martin Rowson cartoon in the July 24, 2008, edition of The Guardian featured the recently arrested Radovan Karadžić in the guise of Mr.

[17] Mr. Natural makes a cameo in Disney film Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, as one of the toons operating on Main Street's hidden black market.