Drew's Fans (6)

Drew Friedman

Author profile

born

The United States

gender

male

website

http://www.drewfriedmanart.com

genre

Comics & Graphic Novels, Humor, Arts & Photography

About this author

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Although in recent years Friedman has mostly worked doing caricature illustrations for mainstream publications, he first attracted public attention in the 1980s producing morbid alternative comics stories, sometimes working solo but often with his brother Josh Alan Friedman writing the scripts. These stories portrayed celebrities and character actors of yesteryear in seedy, absurd, tragi-comic situations. One memorable story followed Bud Abbott and Lou Costello wandering the urban jungle at night, encountering whores, junkies and other lowlifes. Friedman created strips featuring actor/wrestler Tor Johnson in his iconic hulking moron persona from Ed Wood, Jr. films. The brothers also wrote stories about talk-show host Joe Franklin, including...more Although in recent years Friedman has mostly worked doing caricature illustrations for mainstream publications, he first attracted public attention in the 1980s producing morbid alternative comics stories, sometimes working solo but often with his brother Josh Alan Friedman writing the scripts. These stories portrayed celebrities and character actors of yesteryear in seedy, absurd, tragi-comic situations. One memorable story followed Bud Abbott and Lou Costello wandering the urban jungle at night, encountering whores, junkies and other lowlifes. Friedman created strips featuring actor/wrestler Tor Johnson in his iconic hulking moron persona from Ed Wood, Jr. films. The brothers also wrote stories about talk-show host Joe Franklin, including one strip, written by Drew, for Heavy Metal magazine, The Incredible Shrinking Joe Franklin, that prompted Franklin to sue for $40 million. The suit was later dismissed.[citation needed] These stories were generally meant to be amusing, although they were extremely dark and a few were tragic. Drew Friedman's work won high praise from such notable figures as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who compared him to Goya,[citation needed] and R. Crumb, who wrote, "I wish I had this guy's talent".[citation needed]

The Friedman brothers were first published in RAW Magazine. Working with and without his brother, Drew's comics were published in Heavy Metal, Weirdo, High Times, National Lampoon, and other comics anthologies from the '80s into the early '90s. The brothers published two collections, Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental and Warts and All. In a Comics Journal interview, Drew Friedman lamented that he and his brother had failed to earn a living creating work that was time- and labor-intensive yet earned little. Josh gave up comics to become a journalist and a musician.[citation needed]

Beginning in 1986, Drew illustrated a monthly feature, "Private Lives of Public Figures," for (the now-defunct) SPY magazine; these illustrations were compiled in a book published by St. Martin's Press in 1992. He also provided illustrations for Howard Stern's two best-selling books, Private Parts and Miss America. Friedman served as comics editor for the National Lampoon in 1991,[citation needed] introducing the works of (among others) Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware to a wider audience. Since 1994 he has provided regular front-page illustrations for the New York Observer.

In 2006, Friedman published Old Jewish Comedians (Fantagraphics Books), a collection of portraits of famous and forgotten Jewish comics of film and TV in their old age, about which Steven Heller, in the New York Times Book Review, wrote: "A festival of drawing virtuosity and fabulous craggy faces, . . . Friedman might very well be the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt."[2] A sequel, More Old Jewish Comedians (Fantagraphics Books), was published in 2008. A collection of newer work, The Fun Never Stops! was published by Fantagraphics in 2007, containing many comics co-written by his frequent collaborator and wife, K. Bidus. Booklist listed it as One of the Ten Best Comics Collections of 2007.[citation needed]

He is the son of author/satirist Bruce Jay Friedman.(less)

combine editions
Books by Drew Friedman

Average rating: 4.42 · 88 ratings · 7 reviews · 10 distinct works

	Warts and All by Drew Friedman, Josh Alan Friedman, Kurt Vonnegut (Foreword) 4.24 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 1990 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Old Jewish Comedians by Drew Friedman, Monte Beauchamp (Editor), Leonard Maltin (Introduction) 4.18 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 2006	My rating:
	The Fun Never Stops!: An Anthology of Comic Art, 1991-2006 by Drew Friedman, Daniel Clowes (Foreword by), Ben Schwartz (Introduction) 4.25 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2007	My rating:
	Any Similiarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental 4.76 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 1989 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Drew Friedman's Sideshow Freaks by Drew Friedman, Penn Jillette (Foreword by) 4.40 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2010	My rating:
	More Old Jewish Comedians by Drew Friedman, Monte Beauchamp (Editor), Larry Gelbart (Foreword by) 3.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2008	My rating:
	Private Lives Of Public Figures 4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings	My rating:
	Too Soon?: Famous/Infamous Faces, 1995-2010 by Drew Friedman, Jimmy Kimmel (Foreword) 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2010	My rating:
	Even More Old Jewish Comedians by Drew Friedman, Jeffrey Ross (Introduction) 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2011	My rating:
	The Best Comics of the Decade, 1980-1990 Volume One by Kim Thompson (Editor, Introduction), Gary Groth (Editor, Introduction), Josh Alan Friedman (Contributor) 4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1990	My rating: