Heroes Of The Comics Hardcover by Drew Friedman

Product Details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics (2014-09-07)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 184 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781606997314
• Item Weight: 567.0 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

This collects Drew Friedman’s portraits of famous and not-so-famous cartoonists: the men and women who created superheroes, Mad magazine, and much more.

Featuring over 80 full-color portraits of the pioneering legends of American comic books, including publishers, editors and artists from the industry’s birth in the ’30s, through the brilliant artists and writers of behind EC Comics in the ’50s. All lovingly rendered and chosen by Drew Friedman, a cartooning legend in his own right. Featuring subjects popular and obscure, men and women, as well as several pioneering African-American artists. Each subject features a short essay by Friedman, who grew up knowing many of the subjects included (as the son of writer Bruce Jay Friedman), including Stan Lee, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Bill Gaines. More names you might recognize: Barks, Crumb, Wood, Wolverton, Frazetta, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, Cole, Ditko, Werthem… it’s a Hall of Fame of comic book history from the man BoingBoing.com call “America’s greatest living portrait artist!”

About the Author

Drew Friedman's work has appeared in The New York Times, Mad, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. He is the author of several collections of comics and cartooning, including All the Presidents, Maverix and Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comix, Old Jewish Comedians, and Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental. He resides in Pennsylvania with his wife and collaborator, Kathy Bidus, and their beagles.

Al Jaffee (1919-2023) had attended the High School Of Music & Art alongside Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman, but only made his first contributions to MAD during Kurtzman’s early magazine-format issues. He would go on to become the most consistent contributor in the magazine’s history, and created the Fold-In feature in 1964, continuing to devise and paint it until his retirement in 2019. Jaffee also remained part of the core team for Trump and Humbug.