Drew Friedman is an American cartoonist who was long known for his "stippling"-like style of caricature, employing thousands of pen-marks to simulate the look of a photograph, although in recent years he has switched to painted caricatures. His work has appeared widely, including in Entertainment Weekly and MAD Magazine. Entertainment Weekly (sometimes abbreviated as EW) is a Magazine published by Time Inc Mad is a monthly American Humor Magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952 His painstaking attention to detail, and often photorealistic parodies of Hollywood legends is well known.
Although in recent years Friedman has mostly worked doing caricature illustrations for mainstream publications, he began his career in the '80s doing very dark alternative comics stories, sometimes working solo but often with his brother Josh Alan Friedman writing the scripts. The term "alternative comics" is one of several labels applied to a range of Comics that have appeared since about 1980 in the wake of the Underground comix These stories took various celebrities and character actors of yesteryear and put them in very seedy, absurd, tragi-comic situations. One memorable story followed Bud Abbott and Lou Costello wandering around the urban jungle late at night, encountering whores, junkies and other lowlifes. William Alexander “Bud” Abbott ( October 2, 1895 – April 24, 1974) was an American Actor, producer and Lou Costello (born Louis Francis Cristillo; March 6, 1906 - March 3, 1959) was an American Actor and Comedian Friedman created many strips featuring actor/wrestler Tor Johnson in his well known hulking moron persona from many Ed Wood films. Tor Johnson, born Tor Johansson, ( October 19, 1903 &ndash May 12, 1971) was a Professional wrestler known as Ed Wood redirects here For the film see Ed Wood (film, and for the former British Foreign Secretary see E In one strip, Johnson has a dream where he is walking at night and encounters several other Tor Johnsons. ("Me Tor!" "Me Tor too!") He awakens and telephones his friend Bela Lugosi, demanding to know, "Bela, How many Tor?" The brothers also did many stories about talk-show host Joe Franklin, including one strip, The Incredible Shrinking Joe Franklin, that led Franklin to sue. Béla Lugosi (October 20 1882 &ndash August 16 1956 was an iconic Hungarian stage and film actor best known for his portrayal of Count Dracula in the American Joe Franklin (born Joseph Fortgang on March 9 1926, Bronx New York) is an American radio and television personality
These stories were generally meant to be amusing, although they were extremely dark and a few were simply tragic. Drew Friedman's work won high praise from such notable figures as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who compared him to Goya, and R. Crumb, who wrote, "I wish I had this guy's talent". Kurt Vonnegut Jr (November 11 1922 – April 11 2007 (ˈvɒnəgət was a prolific and genre-bending American Novelist known for works blending Satire, Black Robert Dennis Crumb (born August 30, 1943) often credited simply as R The Friedman brothers were first published in Raw Magazine and went on to be published in Heavy Metal, Weirdo and other comics anthologies from the '80s into the early '90s. Weirdo was a magazine-sized Comics anthology created by Robert Crumb and published by Last Gasp from 1981 to 1993. They published two collections, Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental and Warts and All. In a Comics Journal interview, Drew Friedman complained that he and his brother had both failed to earn a living creating work that took so much time and paid so little, and he stated that Josh had given up comics to become a novelist and musician. The Comics Journal, often abbreviated TCJ, is a US magazine of news and criticism pertaining to Comic books and strips Since then, Drew Friedman has also dropped out of the alternative comics scene and now works pretty much exclusively as a commercial artist.
In 2006, Friedman published Old Jewish Comedians (Fantagraphics Books), a collection of black and white caricatures portraying famous Jewish comics of film and TV in their old age. Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of Alternative comics, classic Comic strip anthologies Magazines Graphic novels A sequel, More Old Jewish Comedians (Fantagraphics Books), was published in 2008.
Friedman was recognized for his work with the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Illustration Award for 2000, and was nominated again in 2002. The National Cartoonists Society is the world's largest organization of professional Cartoonists It presents the Reuben Awards. That organization also awarded Friedman their Magazine Illustration Award for 2000.
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