Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Heroes Of The Comics Portraits Of The Pioneering Legends Of Comic Books by Drew Friedman Heroes of the Comics HC (2014 FB) Portraits of the Pioneering Legends of Comic Books comic books. 1st printing. By Drew Friedman. Foreword by Al Jaffee. Portraits of: Max Gaines, Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson, Harry "A" Chesler, Sheldon Mayer, Creig Flessel, Jerry Iger, Will Eisner, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Martin Goodman, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, Jerry Robinson, George Roussos, John Goldwater, Bob Montana, Lev Gleason, Charles Biro, C.C. Beck, William Moulton Marston, Irwin Hasen, Mort Meskin, Syd Shores, Lou Fine, Alex Schomburg, Carmine Infantino, Reed Crandall, Bob Powell, Mac Raboy, Dick Sprang, Wayne Boring, L.B. Cole, Dick Briefer, Basil Wolverton, Jack Cole, Dan Barry, Alfred Harvey, George Carlson, Walt Kelly, Carl Barks, John Stanley, Woody Gelman, Otto Messmer, Gil Kane, Gardner Fox, Boody Rogers, Matt Baker, Lily Renee, Al Hollingsworth, Al Jaffee, Dave Berg, Graham Ingels, Johnny Craig, Al Feldstein, William M. Gaines, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, John Severin, Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Jack Davis, George Evans, Marie Severin, Jack Kamen, Frank Frazetta, Jack Oleck, Ramona Fradon, Al Hartley, Jesse Marsh, Steve Ditko, Ogden Whitney, Joe Kubert, Howard Nostrand, Mort Drucker, Russ Heath, Alex Toth, Bernard Krigstein and Fredric Wertham. DREW FRIEDMAN TURNS HIS KEEN EYE TOWARDS THE GREAT COMIC BOOK ALL-STARS - Featuring approximately 75 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 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, Wood, Wolverton, Frazetta, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, Cole, Ditko, Wertham. it's a Hall of Fame of comic book history from the man BoingBoing.com calls "America's greatest living portrait artist!" Hardcover, 9-in. x 12-in., 160 pages, full color. Cover price $34.99. Customer Testimonials Our customers have some nice things to say about us: Customer Testimonials Mailing List Join our Mailing List for news and sales. We’ve been selling comics since 1961 (our first sale: Fantastic Four #1 at $0.25, see one of our first ads) and on the web since 1996. Copyright © 1996 - 2021 Lone Star Comics Inc. Character images copyright © their respective owners. Heroes Of The Comics: Portraits Of The Pioneering Legends Of Comic Books by Drew Friedman. Superman is commonly perceived to be from the Planet Krypton . In fact, his origins point to a more humble beginning in Cleveland. Jerome Siegel (1914-1996) and Joseph Shuster (1914-1992) were classmates at Cleveland's Glenville HS. The two shy Jewish teens discovered much in common, including a fascination with comic strips and science fiction pulps. Because they had complementary skills (Siegel wrote, Shuster drew), they formed a writer/artist team and pitched ideas to National Allied Publications, who published their first characters, musketeer swashbuckler Henri Duval and supernatural detective Doctor Occult . Their muscular gumshoe Slam Bradley debuted in Detective Comics #1 in 1937. In the mid-1930s they created an invincible crime-fighter with superhuman powers, calling him " The Superman ," but it took several years to develop the character and sell the idea. When the caped crusader debuted as the cover feature in National's Action Comics #1 (June 1938), he was an instant smash, the first superstar superhero. National paid Siegel and Shuster $130 for the character rights, along with a 10-year contract to produce a syndicated newspaper comic version. By cashing that check, Siegel and Shuster forever signed away all rights to Superman . The pair oversaw the Superman comic books and newspaper strip for a decade, earning a decent salary, while National reaped enormous profits —none of which were shared with Jerry and Joe. In 1946, with the looming expiration of their contract, they sued National over rights to Superman . They were eventually awarded $94,000 , though the courts concurred that National had legitimately purchased the character rights along with the first story. Siegel and Shuster were no longer under contract, and National removed their byline from all comic books and newspaper strips. In the early 1950s, Siegel became comic art director for Ziff-Davis, and wrote comics for a number of publishers. He returned to National's successor company DC Comics in 1959 to write (uncredited) Superman stories until the mid-'60s, when he again unsuccessfully sued over the Superman rights. Shuster's career was more quixotic, and he saw little commercial success from a series of cartooning and illustration projects, eventually having to give up drawing due to failing eyesight. In 1975, after the announcement that DC's parent company Warner Communications was producing a multimillion-dollar Superman film, Siegel, who had been working as a file clerk, and the near-blind Shuster, along with artists Neal Adams, Jerry Robinson , and others, launched a PR campaign to protest DC's negligence towards Superman's creators. After mounting public pressure, a shamed Warner awarded the duo $20,000 a year for life and a guarantee that the line "Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster" would be added to all future Superman comics, TV shows, and films. Siegel and Shuster were inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993. Both men would have turned 100 this year. In honor of their legacy, Drew Friedman rendered this portrait of the pair ca. 1939-40 drafting a profile of the Man of Steel . We are offering it here in a very limited edition of twelve (12) artist-signed and -titled fine art prints. A different portrait of Siegel and Shuster (as older men) will appear in Friedman's forthcoming collection, Heroes Of The Comics: Portraits of the Pioneering Legends of Comic Books , along with such Friedman favorites (and fine art print subjects) as Harvey Kurtzman, Wallace Wood, Al Jaffee , and Will Elder . Order online with your credit card. Choose your shipping rate and click the PayPal button to purchase. Orders for multiple prints in any combination will be charged just the single-print flat shipping rate at checkout. to order by personal check or MO. U.S. DOMESTIC via UPS Ground: $25 HAWAII & ALASKA via USPS Priority mail: $30 CANADA via USPS Priority Mail International: $45 INTERNATIONAL via USPS Priority Mail International: $60. Only twelve (12) prints of JERRY SIEGEL & JOE SHUSTER were produced for this edition. Each print is signed in the lower right by the artist, hand-titled in the center, and numbered in the lower left (all beneath the image). We have sold print numbers 1/12 thru 6/12, and are now offering print number 7/12, unframed, for $200 (plus shipping and handling). Prices for remaining prints will increase in $20 increments until the edition is sold out. The image area is 16" high x 11-1/2" wide centered on an untrimmed 19" x 13" sheet. Paper, ink, and production specifications, as well as shipping details, are available on our PRINT SPECS page. The True Heroes of Comic Books, Revealed. Drew Friedman's new book vividly illustrates the men and women behind the early comics boom. Drew Friedman’s previous illustrated books, Old Jewish Comedians and Even More Old Jewish Comedians, were celebrations of the great shtickmeisters of the Borscht Belt and early TV. In his most recent book, Heroes of the Comics , he turns pen and brush to the great early comic- book artists and writers who invented some of the most iconic characters in print and on screen. “Now the creators' faces will finally take the spotlight,” Friedman told me. But jeepers Batman, does this make a book? Actually, what’s surprising is that this collection of 85 mostly unknown faces is as exciting to my eye as most comics are—and the short biographies are nice to have, too. Harvey Kurtzman (Fantagraphics) Friedman is known for adroitly capturing gesture, mood, and psychological nuance in vivid portraits somehow combining elements of caricature and realism. “Someone asked me if any of [the book’s subjects] posed for me, which would have been quite a feat since most are deceased,” he says. “I did depend on good photo ref for the portraits. Many faces I pulled from random photos on the web, then placed them in my own imagined settings.” Each of his portraits feels so alive, it is like being welcomed into each artist’s private world. Friedman has met quite a few of the book's subjects over the years because his father, the author Bruce Jay Friedman, worked as an editor at Magazine Management , the company that ran Marvel comics from the mid-‘50s to the mid-‘60s. Marvel editor Stan Lee’s desk was right next to his. “By the early ‘60s when I was a young kid, my brothers and I would frequently visit my dad up at his office and Stan would always hold court,” Friedman recalls. “He seemed to love kids and took a particular liking to me because I liked to draw. He even proclaimed, ‘Someday, Drew is gonna draw for Marvel!’” Stan Lee (Fantagraphics) Friedman remembers seeing several “nondescript artists sadly wandering around the office,” possibly Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko dropping off their latest Spider-Man and Fantastic Four pages. He also encountered many comic-book legends at the New York comic conventions in the early ‘70s: guys like Bob Kane, Wally Wood, and Bill Everett. In high school he spent a day up at Mad magazine, where he met with publisher William Gaines and editor Al Feldstein. When he attended the School of Visual Arts in the late ‘70s, two of Friedman’s teachers were the comic legends Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner, both of whom are represented in Heroes . Later, when he became a regular contributor to Mad , he met comic greats Dave Berg, Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, and Al Jaffee, who wrote the foreword to this book. Al Jaffee (Fantagraphics) “My criteria for inclusion in the book was basically the cream of the crop as far as artists, writers, editors, and publishers who worked in the early years of comic books,” Friedman says, “covering the first 20 years, from the birth of comics in the mid-‘30s, to the comic book witch hunts in the mid-‘50s, which left in its wake the strictly enforced, self-censoring Comics Code.” He adds that he wanted to include as many women as possible, but prior to World War II very few worked in comics. He consulted with several comics experts, including Paul Levitz, former head of DC comics, who helped him select Lily Renee, Ramona Fradon, and Marie Severin. A curious aspect of the book, Friedman notes, was how ordinary so many of the subjects looked, “as if they could have been accountants or school teachers, people you would never notice in a crowd. Basil Wolverton, George Carlson, and Boody Rogers looked like bookkeepers, yet created some of the wildest and most insanely surreal mainstream comics ever. That was the kind of challenge I enjoy, bringing to life and transforming in many cases poorly lit black-and-white photo ref into a lifelike, full-color portrait.” William M. Gaines (Fantagraphics) Friedman has more fun drawing people when they are older because “there are so many more interesting things going on in their world-weary faces and even in their body language: bold arrogance in some cases and sad resignation in others. Young faces and bodies just don’t convey that to me.” Will Eisner (Fantagraphics) World-weary is how to describe the portrait of Dr. Fredric Wertham, the final entry in Heroes , who was the artists’ anti-hero and comic-book industry pariah. “I thought that would be an interesting and bittersweet touch,” Friedman says, and he's right. The book winds down with the U.S. Senate hearings on comic books and juvenile delinquency—hearings that were influenced by Wertham's book, Seduction of the Innocent, which called for the purging crime and horror comics. “I captured him at the end of his life, in bed alone, perhaps reflective. As I write in his short biography in the book, he seemed to be oddly embracing comic books later in his life, even writing a book about comic book ‘fanzines,’ perhaps as a sort of penance for helping to put so many publishers and creators out of business and being so vilified by comics fans over the years.” Despite the fact that comics have seeded American culture with cash-cow properties that continue to sell movies, video games, and more, Friedman rails that the business side of the medium had little regard for the art or the artists. No early comic-book creator grew rich, and the really good artists who stood out were more concerned about improving and creating quality work rather than making lots of money. “Jack Kirby, perhaps the most legendary artist to ever work in comic books, who basically created the Marvel template still used to this day, was paid modestly throughout his career,” Friedman says. “Many syndicated artists like Al Capp and Walt Kelly were smart enough to hold onto their copyrights, but [that's rare] in comic books, where you have the sad textbook example of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, who signed away all their rights to their character Superman in 1938 for $130 to National Periodical comics. They both made a decent salary for the next decade working on the comic books and syndicated strip, while the men who ran National grew rich.” Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (Fantagraphics) Comic artists led pretty sedentary lives, which Friedman reflects so well in his psychologically charged portraits. His drawings highlight the paradox of the comics artist and the art—the creators seem ordinary and their creations are extraordinary. “Many of my portraits depict the artists sitting at their drawing boards because that’s how I think of them first, alone, creating their work.” D R E W • F R I E D M A N. Yeah, I know, just what the planet needs, yet another Blog. But this one is the OFFICIAL Blog of Illustration-ist, cartoonist, humor- mongerist, greasy Stooge-Shemp Howard-enthusiast, Danny Thomas glass coffee table ponderist Drew Friedman! Happier now? Thursday, June 12, 2014. Drew Friedman's "Heroes of the Comics" early comic book company logos, the endpapers design for the book. the cover featuring a contemplative Jack Kirby, designed by Jesse Marinoff Reyes. the book was designed by Keeli McCarthy and edited by Eric Reynolds. some of the portraits included in the book: the full illustration of cover subject Jack ("King") Kirby Harvey Kurtzman, the brilliant creator of MAD and my cartoon instructor at the School of Visual Arts for three years. the great EC comics and science fiction artist Wally Wood. legendary comic book and Cracked magazine artist John Severin. early comics artist/editor/writer and longtime Mad contributer Al Jaffee, who wrote the foreword to the book. the two creators of Superman, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster. pioneering black comic book artist Alvin Hollingsworth. two preliminary sketches, the full color finishes will be included in the book: DREW FRIEDMAN’S HEROES OF THE COMICS. Closeout Price! . Recommended. Foreword by Al Jaffee. 75 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 to EC Comics. Each subject features a short essay by Friedman, who grew up knowing many of these, including ladies Ramona Fradon and Lily Renee. Stan Lee, Kurtzman, Eisner, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Gaines, Barks, Crumb, Wood, Wolverton, Frazetta, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, L.B. Cole, Ditko … a Hall of Fame of comic book history from “America’s greatest living portrait artist!” Fantagraphics, 2014. Out of Print. Email when stock available. Description Additional information Reviews (0) Description. 75 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 to EC Comics. Each subject features a short essay by Friedman, who grew up knowing many of these, including ladies Ramona Fradon and Lily Renee. Stan Lee, Kurtzman, Eisner, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Gaines, Barks, Crumb, Wood, Wolverton, Frazetta, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, L.B. Cole, Ditko … a Hall of Fame of comic book history from “America’s greatest living portrait artist!” 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. Drew is the son of writer Bruce Jay Friedman. “I stand in awe of Drew Friedman’s technique and the certain flavor of sad old America he captures.”–R. Crumb. “A festival of drawing virtuosity and fabulous craggy faces. Drew Friedman might very well be the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt.”–The New York Times Book Review. “Drew Friedman isn’t just a brilliant artist. He takes you to a place. He takes you back in time. He makes you smell the stale cigarettes and cold brisket and you say, thank you for the pleasure.”–Sarah Silverman. “Fabulous… sensational… on the nose. He really gets their attitude.”–The Los Angeles Times. “A book that just begs to be shared. If you can look at them without smiling, you have no heart.”–USA Today.