Gary Friedrich

Gary Friedrich (/ˈfriːdrɪk/; 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.

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. 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.

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

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).