#drew friedman

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Vampira from The Ed Wood Jr. Players card set. Art by Drew Friedman.

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MOCCA Arts Festival

Announcing the 2023 MoCCA Arts Festival Featured Guests

The Society of Illustrators is proud to share a list of Featured Guests who will appear at the MoCCA Arts Festival, taking place April 1 - 2, 2023 from 11:00AM - 7:00PM on Saturday and 11:00AM - 6:00PM on Sunday. The Exhibitor Hall will be held at Met Pavilion, a spacious venue nestled in the heart of the Chelsea neighborhood, and is within walking distance to many great restaurants and attractions. Programming will be a few steps away at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, located at 133 West 21st Street. 

Maia Kobabe is the author of Gender Queer (Oni Press), a critically acclaimed Young Adult graphic memoir that has also been named a Stonewall Honor book. Gender Queer was also ranked by the American Library Association as the most frequently banned or challenged book in the United States in 2021. Kobabe will talk about eir work in a special spotlight session moderated by Michele Kirichanskaya and will also participate in a panel on comics and censorship hosted by PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman.

In her career, Colleen Doran has written and drawn the long-running creator-owned series A Distant Soil and has worked on titles including Wonder Woman, Amazing Spider-Man, and many others. Her body of work includes a series of collaborations with writer Neil Gaiman which are the subject of the exhibit “Colleen Doran Illustrates Neil Gaiman,” running from March 22nd to July 29th at the Society of Illustrators. She will appear in conversation with Gaiman to discuss their comics collaborations and her overall body of work in a special programming event moderated by exhibition curator Kim Munson.

Barbara Brandon-Croft became the first Black woman to write and draw a nationally syndicated comic strip when Where I’m Coming From debuted in American newspapers in 1991. Featuring a cast of nine women of color commenting insightfully on current events, her groundbreaking comic strip has now been anthologized in a book edition from Drawn and Quarterly. Brandon-Croft will talk about her trailblazing work in a special spotlight session. 

Other featured artists at this year’s festival will include:

Kim Deitch, a pioneering underground comix artist who began publishing comics in the East Village Other in 1967 and whose most recent graphic novel, Reincarnation Stories (Fantagraphics) was published to critical acclaim in 2019. 

Drew Friedman, whose most recent book of portraiture, Maverix and Lunatix (Fantagraphics), celebrates the artists of the underground comix generation

Miriam Katin, whose out-of-print graphic memoir of escaping the Holocaust as a child refugee accompanied by her mother, We Are On Our Own (Drawn & Quarterly), will be republished in a forthcoming paperback edition. 

Toma Vagner, the award-winning illustrator who designed this year’s MoCCA key image and has produced striking graphics for clients including Harry Styles, Google, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The New Yorker. 

Noah Van Sciver, whose body of graphic novels includes Joseph Smith and the Mormons (Abrams ComicArts), Fante Bukowski (Fantagraphics Books), and the forthcoming comic book series Maple Terrace (Uncivilized Books). 

These and other Featured Artists will participate in programming and signings, schedules for which will be announced in the coming days and weeks. A full list of exhibiting artists can be found on the MoCCA Arts website. 

About the Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators and the MoCCA Arts Festival

Founded in 1901, the Society of Illustrators and its Museum of Illustration together comprise America’s longest-standing nonprofit organization dedicated to the art of illustration. The mission of SI/MI is to promote the art and appreciation of illustration and its history and evolving nature through exhibitions and educational programs. 

The MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event, Manhattan’s largest independent comics and cartoon festival, drawing over 7,000 attendees each year. With over 500 exhibiting artists displaying their work, award-winning honorees speaking about their careers and artistic processes and other featured artists conducting demos, lectures and panels, our Festival mission accelerates the advancement of the Society’s broader mission to serve as Manhattan’s singular cultural institution promoting all genres of illustration through exhibitions, programs and art education. 

The Society will continue to release additional information about the Fest in the near future. Tickets are available to purchase online as well as at the door.  The Society is following all state and city safety protocols. Protocols are subject to change, so be sure to check back for the latest information. As of now, face coverings are optional at Metropolitan Pavilion and the Exhibitor Hall. Proof of vaccines, boosters and masks are required to enter SVA buildings and programming. 

To learn more about the Fest, please visit the website.

For media inquiries please contact:

Kate Feirtag

Director of Communications and External Relations

kate@societyillustrators.org

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The great Buster Keaton by the great Drew Friedman

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Artwork by Drew Friedman

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[jerrylewis-thekid]

In Sept 2009, Jerry Lewis invited my wife Kathy and I to be among his personal guests at the annual MDA labor day telethon at the South Point hotel/casino in Las Vegas. I had first spoken with Jerry in 2006 when my book of Old Jewish Comedians was sent to him and he called to tell me how much he enjoyed it. Jerry had also enjoyed a visual tribute I created for the NY Observer, in which I had suggested that the motion picture academy give him a special career Oscar, and he again called me to thank me and requested a large print of the piece to hang in his home. I brought the print along to Las Vegas and presented it to Jerry that weekend, along with a copy he inscribed to me. We were  granted full access to Jerry and the show's backstage rehearsals. Jerry was incredibly generous with his time and couldn't have been kinder to both my wife and I.

Full article here

[dynamoe]

The Ed Wood, Jr. Players Trading Cards, drawn by Drew Friedman

"I did some of them in Heavy Metal originally, and then they were in a Fantagraphics book. Now I’m doing them as cards, only because there’s this big boom in trading cards right now. Also, this book just came out about Wood’s life story [Nightmare of Ecstasy by Rudolph Grey]. It talks about Wood’s fascination with angora, and all that stuff." - Drew Friedman

Did I own these or just see them around a lot? Kitchen Sink Press printed them in 1995 (the year after Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" came out). The WFMU catalog sold these, as did cool indie bookshops and record stores (that also sold Love & Rockets, Hate and Eightball comics).

Many sets up on ebay for sale, not even listed that expensively.

I don't have a collector gene and don't like owning a lot of stuff even if it was exactly in my wheelhouse at the time (Drew Friedman's art, shitty actors from B-movies). I'm going to see if anyone scanned every card and put it online. That's the ideal outcome.

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Drew Friedman

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Comics by Drew Friedman

[travsd]

Drew Friedman in the News

Illustrator Drew Friedman is well known to all those in the Classic Comedy Cult. As the title of one of his better known books reminds us, he’s the guy who draws all the Old Jewish Comedians, warts and all. For the record, though, he has been occasionally known to also draw the Young, the Gentile, and even the Serious. We’ve been excitedly following news of his latest two projects, and thought…

[graphicpolicy]

Gideon Kendall and Doug Latino bring their hardcover Wait It Gets Worse… If We Only Knew to a fresh audience

Gideon Kendall and Doug Latino bring their hardcover Wait It Gets Worse… If We Only Knew to a fresh audience #comics #comicbooks #graphicnovel

After self-publishing their work for the last decade, alternative comics creators Gideon Kendall and Doug Latino bring their visionary series to an unsuspecting audience with the hardcover collection of Wait It Gets Worse… If We Only Knew from Cosmic Lion Productions. Described as ‘Ferris Bueller meets MAD’ – or ‘Timothy Leary meets MAD’ depending on what generation you’re from – Wait It Gets…

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Autographed photo of Swedish professional wrestler and actor Tor Johnson—best known from his appearances in Ed Wood's horror science fiction films of the 1950s (as well as the work of cartoonist Drew Friedman).

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John Waters by Drew Friedman, the New Yorker

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Drew Friedman

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John Lennon Artwork by Drew Friedman

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Heavy Metal magazine, 1983