Heroes Of The Comics: Portraits Of The Pioneering Legends Of Comic Books (Heroes of the Comic Books) Hardcover – September 7, 2014

A wonderful book! Great short bios on the Heroes of the Comics and beautiful accompanying portraits! I thoroughly enjoyed and could not put this book down. Great comics history! I would really like to see a 3rd edition!

Drew Friedman hits it out of the park again with this book.As a kid growing up and reading Mad magazine and tons of comic books, I was never aware of the peoplewho actually drew, wrote, and published the comics that helped shaped who I am today.Friedman captures my true heroes' portraits with a sweet and nostalgic tone - it's not just the faces that stand out,but the backgrounds are amazing as well. Drew loves his subjects and it shows.I wish I could tell every single person in this book how I feel about them - I've had the honor of telling Al Jaffee how much I love him.However, Drew has done it for me for all the others with these wonderful portraits.

Drew Friedman's portraits of the men and women who helped create and build the modern comics industry are more than just illustrations. They show the depths of the heroes--and in some cases villains--behind these characters who grew to be much larger than the writers and artists themselves. At times, as with the case with his portraits with Jack Kirby and Bill Finger, one is haunted by men who found themselves displaced from the iconic worlds they created. We see the slyness in Bob Kane, and the showmanship of Stan Lee. Accompanied by comprehensive text for each person, this is a must for anyone interested in the history of sequential art.

Friedman's art and facts about comic book legends is a mush have for any cartoon fan.

I own several of Mr. Friedman's other books and I love them, but this one isn't nearly as good; the artwork isn't real detailed and the large-page format detracts from the work.

Great artwork by Drew Friedman and interesting bios of comic book creators.

Great Art! Great Profiles! This book is a treat from start to finish.

Another stellar effort by Drew Friedman. His love of his industry is readily apparent. Can't recommend it enough!

Drew Friedman's portrait drawings, at once hyper-realistic and slightly "off", have been appearing in alternative comics and US humour magazines for over 30 years now, and a once sort-of-underground figure is now a celebrated, almost mainstream artist. That said, this volume - portraits, like it says there, of 75 pioneers of American comic books - screams "niche audience".If you feel you're part of that niche audience - and it's something you'll know without any ifs or buts - then you will adore this book. It's a beautiful artefact (as you'd expect from Fantagraphics), solidly hardbound and elegantly designed. The paper quality is superb, the printing sharp and the tabloid size does justice to the artwork. Open it at random and each spread will have a portrait on the right and a brief biographical sketch to the left, informative without going over the top with information.The portraits themselves, which are based on photos but somehow reinterpret them whilst being highly realistic, are astonishing. Friedman once commented on his portraits of old-time entertainers that he liked drawing them because their faces dated from a time before good nutrition, modern healthcare and widespread cosmetic dentistry made everyone blandly attractive, so they were far more diverse and interesting to draw than modern American faces. By restricting his subjects to creators who entered the field before the introduction of the Comics Code in 1955 (and no-one really entered it again for about ten years after that), he's working with faces of similar vintage and character. And he's got a lot to work with.The subjects are artists, writers and publishers and undeniably represent the giants of the field from the pre-Code era, though a good number of them continued to be active in the field for decades afterwards. Plus, as a bonus, the book ends with a portrait of comics' favourite panto vilain, Frederic "Boo! He's behind you!" Wertham, the psychiatrist whose messianic hatred of comics and appallingly unscientific "research" helped to bring the industry to its knees in 1954. Friedman's portrait perfectly captures the arrogance and complacency of this destructive, if arguably well-intentioned, charlatan.And there's the rub. Friedman produces portraits which not only capture the likenesses of their subjects but something of either their personalities or how Friedman feels about them. This seems to be due to the "offness" of his drawing: he typically draws the heads out of proportion with the bodies, a standard caricaturist device but one that's unsettling with such an otherwise realistic style, and there's often something slightly, and deliberately, weird going on with the eyes. However it's done, the effects are startling. Some of them just make you laugh out loud on looking at them (Carmine Infantino, L.B. Cole, Mort Drucker, Reed Crandall). Those which place EC artists in settings reminiscent of their stories (Graham Ingels emerging from a coffin in a graveyard, Bernie Krigstein on a deserted subway platform), impress with their wit. Matt Baker is the handsomest guy here, and boy, doesn't he know it.My favourites are those which seem to convey what we know about these folks' personalities. Marie Severin, highly respectable but impish. Her "peer" at DC, Ramona Fradon, an amiable free spirit. Alex Toth, one of those guys who could start a fight in an empty room, looking like he's about to do just that. Will Eisner, surrounded by pimpled fans, glowing with robust self-regard. Gil Kane, who reinvented himself as the industry's intellectual, also glowing with robust self-regard, but of a loftier kind. Harvey Kurtzman, equal parts genius and idiot. Bill Everett and Wallace Wood, both demon-haunted. Jack Cole, who, Fall fans take note, actually DID write "Plastic Man", looks exactly like the man who drew that insane comic and other, equally, insane horror and crime comics before taking his own life. There's C.C, Beck, every inch the man who spent most of his latter years telling anyone who'd listen, to say nothing of those who just got stuck in the same room with the old coot, that the only comics that were any good were those he'd drawn. Sometimes, you can tell Friedman doesn't like the people he's drawing. He clearly thinks Bob Kane and Stan Lee are snake-oil salesmen (you won't catch me arguing). Others, he clearly admires enormously. Bill Finger and Jack Kirby come to mind here (that's the King on the book's cover, where of course he should be, in full cosmic visionary mode). And here's Joe Kubert looking like a Biblical prophet, and Siegel and Shuster, the way they should look if they ever find their way onto postage stamps or banknotes.Some are just downright surprising. Who knew John Stanley looked like James Dean, that Walt Kelly looked like Oliver Hardy, or that Ogden Whitney resembled the love-child of Richard Osman and the Hulk's old foe The Leader?Only one indvidual resists Friedman's penetrating insights. Not surprisingly, it's the notoriously reclusive Steve Ditko. There are very few photos of Ditko and Friedman works from the most celebrated one. It's a good reproduction, but it gives nothing away about its subject. Given Ditko's insistence on privacy and that his work speaks for itself, it may be that's deliberate.Oh, and the picture of Bob Powell is more horrifying than any of Powell's horror art. The focal point in that picture is not Powell's face. Let's leave it at that.I've had this book for three days now and I keep on going back to it, it gives so much pleasure. If it's for you - and, as noted, you'll know this already - I'd imagine you will very much feel the same way.

Au moment de cette évaluation, soit pas encore un mois après sa parution, cet ouvrage de type "coffee table" compte chez amazon.com 31 évaluations pour un nombre moyen d'étoiles de 5 !L'auteur en est l'illustrateur quinquagénaire newyorkais Drew Friedman, selon moi peu connu en France, mais qui a été publié Outre-Atlantique dans un grand nombre de revues "cool", de Raw au New Yorker, en passant par Rolling Stone (c'est là que je me souviens avoir vu de ses dessins) Heavy Metal, Mad ou le National Lampoon.Si ses débuts professionnels relèvent du comic book indépendant, Friedman est depuis un trentaine d'années connu pour réaliser des portaits peints en couleurs de personnages célèbres, comme d'après photographie, sans véritable caricature, mais avec une légère exagération de la taille de la tête des personnages et avec parfois quelques détails amusants. Faits pour être publiés en pleine page, Ces portraits donnent lieu à des recueils plus ou moins thématiques, comme dans le cas de cet ouvrage qui cible les dessinateurs, scénaristes et autres acteurs importants du Golden Age des comic books.Chaque personnage se voit accorder par Friedman deux pages, celle de gauche avec une notice biographique succincte et celle de droite qui présente un portrait de ce personnage. Les deux pages sont signées Friedman, qui livre ses sources en fin d'ouvrage. 84 auteurs figurent dans cet opus, dont seulement 4 femmes et uniquement 2 dessinateurs Africains-Américains. La plupart est à l'origine de, ou a été employé par, ces ateliers de type "sweatshop" créés au moment de la "comic book craze" du début des années 1940, chez Martin Goodman ou chez Will Eisner en particulier. Le roi Jack Kirby figure en couverture, pensif ou recueilli sur fond d'énergie cosmique.C'est souvent la même histoire pour tous, avec le choc du milieu des années 1950, lié à la défiance du public américain vis-à-vis des comic books que le psychiatre Wertham (il a son entrée dans ce livre !) et les auditions au Sénat ont confortée. La crise et le "Comic Code" qui en ont résulté ont mis à mal bien des carrières ! Bob Kane prend une sacrée dégelée ! Steve Ditko a droit en revanche à une longue appréciation. Après avoir lu sa bio, je vais chercher des dessins de Lou Fine. Carl Barks (1901-2000) a véritablement traversé l'ensemble du XXè siècle.Le vétéran Al Jaffee donne le mot d'introduction, et Drew Friedman lui-même livre des éléments biographiques le concernant, principalement s'agissant de sa découverte des comic books et sa connaissance personnelle d'un grand nombre d'entre eux.Les spécialistes dont je ne suis pas pourront peut-être noter qu'il manque certains personnages importants. D'autres pourront trouver que telle notice est un peu "courte", comme c'est mon cas pour celle de Russ Heath. J'observe également que Friedman a souvent des difficultés à représenter les mains des personnages. Mais, dans l'ensemble, le "fan" de comic books appréciera d'avoir sous la main une bio et un visage pour tous ces noms. Une présentation alphabétique, ou au moins une table alphabétique aurait été un plus. Il reste également à consacrer le même travail aux auteurs uniquement de comic strips, absents de cet ouvrage (sauf citation ça et là de la trinité Foster, Caniff, Hogarth), ou bien de poursuivre avec les auteurs de comic books révélés au moment du Silver Age !

Una aproximación a figuras relevantes del cómic a modo de diccionario particular de Drew Friedman.No sabía nada de él, sus retratos son geniales y los textos son concisos pero despiertan la curiosidad por los autores; sobre todo, para los que no somos muy eruditos en el tema.

The quality of the research, and the prose it supports, is up to the standard set by Friedman's art - which is to say that it's fantastic!

Wahre Helden der Comics. Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen! Das gezeichnete Portrait des Künstlers und die kurze, einseitige, Biografie. Empfehlenswert für Comicliebhaber, die sich für die Helden hinter der Kulisse interessieren.