Gary Friedrich

Gary Friedrich (August 21, 1943 – August 29, 2018) was an American comic book writer best known for his Silver Age stories for Marvel Comics' Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and in the following era, the series The Monster of Frankenstein, as well as for cocreating the supernatural motorcyclist Ghost Rider and the supernatural hero the Son of Satan.

Gary Friedrich was born on August 21, 1943, the son of Jerry and Elsie Friedrich.

Friedrich – no relation to fellow comics writer Mike Friedrich – was the first successful new writer brought into the burgeoning 1960s Marvel after fellow Missourian Roy Thomas.

Succeeding Thomas on Sgt. Fury, Friedrich and the art team of Dick Ayers and John Severin produced a World War II series for the Vietnam years, combining militaristic camaraderie and gung ho humor with a regretful sense of war as a terrible last resort.

The humanistic military drama was noted for its semi-anthological "The" stories, such as "The Medic" and "The Deserter".

Friedrich went on to write a smattering of superhero stories for Marvel, Atlas/Seaboard Comics and Topps Comics, and eventually left the comics industry.

He was born and raised in Jackson, Missouri, where he graduated from Jackson High School in 1961.

He was editor of the high school newspaper and a member of the marching band.

As a teen, he was a friend of future Marvel Comics writer and eventual editor-in-chief Roy Thomas.

Friedrich worked at a record store in Cape Girardeau, Missouri after high school, and in February 1964, obtained a job at Jackson's two weekly newspapers, which were being combined into a single twice-weekly.

When the newspaper ceased publication in late summer 1965, Friedrich began working a union job at a Cape Girardeau factory, installing heating elements in waffle irons.

Roy Thomas, now a Marvel Comics staff writer in New York City, called his friend with the suggestion that freelance work might exist in the newly resurgent medium.

Friedrich took a Greyhound bus the following day, and stayed with Thomas and a fandom friend, Dave Kaler, in Manhattan's East Village.

Shortly afterward, Friedrich and Thomas took an apartment on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.

This was a time of transition between the beat movement and the hippie era, when the Village flourished as a creative mecca.

"The Village was a really neat place to be at that time. We went to the theater that was to become the Fillmore East; it wasn't called that yet, but they were starting to have some rock concerts, like Chuck Berry. ... I began to let my hair grow and become a real New York hippie", he recalled.

After Thomas recommended Friedrich to Charlton Comics editor Dick Giordano, Friedrich began writing romance comics for that low-budget publisher, where many pros got early breaks.

"I did it with a great good sense of humor", Friedrich recalled.

"I wrote things like 'Tears in My Malted' and 'Too Fat to Frug'...."

With anonymous help and input from Thomas, Friedrich also began writing superhero stories, beginning with his backup feature "The Sentinels" (with penciler-inker Sam Grainger) in Peter Cannon ... Thunderbolt #54 (Oct. 1966).

He wrote the feature for two more issues before handing it off.

Friedrich also dialogued the debut and the next three stories of the Blue Beetle, plotted and drawn by Steve Ditko, in Captain Atom #83–86 (Nov. 1966 – June 1967).

Friedrich's last recorded Charlton story was "If I Had Three Wishes", penciled by Ditko, in Ghostly Tales #60 (March 1967).

By this time Friedrich had already begun writing Westerns for Marvel, including issues of Kid Colt, Outlaw; Two-Gun Kid; Rawhide Kid; and his first regular series, the Western Ghost Rider – launched with debut-issue co-plotter Thomas, and running six issues, mostly co-scripted by Friedrich and series penciler Dick Ayers.

Friedrich also contributed to the parody series Not Brand Echh.

He began on Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos with #42 (May 1967) – co-scripted, as was the next issue, by Friedrich's Western partner, Sgt. Fury penciler Ayers.

The next issue, a flashback to the Howlers' first mission, was co-scripted by Friedrich and Thomas.

Following this inauspicious beginning came the first of several Friedrich "The" stories, "The War Lover" (#45, Aug. 1967) – a shaded exploration of a trigger-happy soldier and the line drawn, even in war, between killing and murder.

Daring for the time, when majority public sentiment still supported the undeclared Vietnam War, the story balanced present-day issues while demonstrating that even in what is referred to as "a just war", a larger morality prevails.

Friedrich also launched the 19-issue World War II United States Marines series Capt. Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders (Jan. 1968 – March 1970; changed to Captain Savage and his Battlefield Raiders with #9); and the nine-issue World War II U.S. Army series Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen ( June 1972 – Sept. 1973).

Friedrich settled into the niche of utility writer.

His first regular superhero series for Marvel was The Incredible Hulk vol. 2, for which he wrote a handful of issues starting with #102 (April 1968; the premiere issue, following the Hulk feature in the "split book" Tales to Astonish), as well as the 1968 annual The Incredible Hulk Special #1.

His story for issue #72 (Nov. 1969) was heavily rewritten and partially redrawn due to concerns about possible copyright infringement of the film Casablanca.

Friedrich continued through #83 (Jan. 1971), with the late part of this run having reprint issues between new stories, and again for the even-numbered issues from #94–114 (Jan. 1972 – Nov. 1973).

Issue #100 (July 1972) featured a present-day, fictional reunion gala.

The marriage fell apart, "and even that wasn't a major problem for a while because I was so damn busy and I was either working, drunk, or both", Friedrich said, alluding to the alcoholism from which he began recovering on "New Year's night in 1979".

"I was working about 80 hours a week for $50," he recalled in 2001.

"I wrote, edited, and laid out the entire newspaper. I was the whole editorial staff without any help. It was driving me crazy."

Friedrich had gotten married the year before and by now had a young son, but, "I didn't have time for anything because I was working all the damn time."

In 2011, he lost a federal lawsuit over a claim of ownership in the character Ghost Rider, but in July 2014, three months after an appellate court reversed that decision, the parties said they had reached a settlement.