Drew Friedman will be signing TOO SOON? at the Ocean County Library outdoor Book Fest in New Jersey on Sat., Sept. 25th -- along with John Lennon's former lover May Pang and the editors of THE ONION, among many others!

Saturday, Sept. 25, 11 - 3PM

Ocean County Library Toms River Branch

101 Washington St., Toms River, NJ 08753 

Periodic clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing and possible artist commentary at the sources:

• Drew Friedman illustrates the latest crop of pop stars-cum-reality TV stars for Billboard (with commentary)

• The cover of a new minicomic Miss Lasko-Gross is debuting at SPX (via Facebook)

• From Kevin Huizenga, a new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond strip

• Two more stages in Matthias Lehmann's scratchboard work in progress

• From Jason: a 1996 anthology story page; a lizard lady; an illustration of U2; and three early cartoons

• Steven Weissman drew Courtney Love for The Stranger's Bumbershoot guide; also, "I, Anonymous" (original, as printed), and ice cream roundup

• Two more panels from an upcoming comic by John Hankiewicz 

• Two good ones at the Covered blog: Jeffrey Meyer does Al Columbia's Pim & Francie and Derek Van Gieson does New Mutants #33

• Relatedly, at his Wood Paneled Basement blog Robert Goodin says "The Criterion Collection curated a film festival for this year's All Tomorrow's Parties in New York. Comic artists were asked to create posters for the different movies and I did the one above for Gomorrah."

• Original art, crafts and other good stuff in Dame Darcy's latest blog update

• Drew Weing posts this snippet of a comic story he has in the current issue of the Oxford American; Josh Simmons posts an even less revealing bit of his strip from the same issue

• The latest installment of Tim Lane's Belligerent Piano

• At the Jim Flora art blog: a 1960 tempera sketch, 1991 sketchbook & journal pages

• Debbie Drechsler sketches squirrels and other fauna, plus a heron

• Gabrielle Bell's San Diego adventures continue in part 6 of her Comic-Con Comicumentary

• Mark Kalesniko's AMC Pacer reference sketches for Freeway move to the interior

• Sergio Ponchione presents "Riunione di Condominio" ("Condo Meeting") from the new issue of Linus

• Paul Hornschemeier's latest t-shirt design for his Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop

• Another heartrending Lewis strip from Laura Park 

• Josh Simmons presents his strip from Bound & Gagged; also, "Quacker Alley" isn't credited to Josh but it sure looks like one of his

• From Renee French: scrote face girl, Barry the bird swimming, bunny with twine, a popsicle, and a series of shadowy things

• Dash Shaw's Daily Drawing nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7, plus his animated sitcom pitch — I'd watch it

• Steve Brodner takes on a hero and a villain: Paul Conrad and Pastor Terry Jones respectively

• Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary page 40 — our Dutch-speaking readers may be interested to know that Ectopiary is being translated and serialized at Serieland

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Too Soon? Famous/Infamous Faces 1995-2010
by Drew Friedman

204-page full-color 8.25" x 10.75" hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-357-6

Ordering Info & Previews

"Too Soon?" you ask?

It's a collection of the last 15 years' worth of Drew Friedman's illustrations, caricatures and portraits lampooning the rich, the famous, the infamous, and the never-will-be-famous.

And — promise! — no "Friends."

Too Soon? gathers Friedman's best, most strident and scathing work from some of the most popular publications including Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Blab! and more — yes, even Field & Stream.

Too Soon? casts its net over the entirety of the forced-smiling-celebrity/politico congregation, political animals on one side of the aisle, showbiz beasts on the other... and the sad, innocent victims of their crimes that languish in the middle.

Too Soon? is naturally replete with liver spots, wrinkles, burst capillaries, blood, sweat and tears. No one is spared, no matter which side of the aisle he or she inhabits.

Too Soon? is Friedman's first book of artwork produced in HI-DEF, so be prepared. Drew Friedman's work is always brutally honest, WARTS & ALL.

Too Soon? is in fact not TOO SOON — it's about time.

Praise for Drew Friedman:

"I'm grateful to Drew Friedman for every new piece of his vast, riveting panorama of the jacked-up, hellbent American spectacle: comic and horrific, loving and appalled, obsessive and devil-may-care, brilliant and vulgar, familiar and uncanny. He's our William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson and George Grosz all wrapped into one." – Kurt Andersen, host of NPR's "Studio 360"

"I would like Drew Friedman to draw me, but I’m scared of what he’d uncover, what he’d reveal about my inner nature that I’d rather not see. Because that’s what he does—he’s not a mere caricaturist, he’s a ridiculously talented artist who’s practically an x-ray machine. One that makes you laugh your balls off.” – Chip Kidd, author of The Cheese Monkeys

"Friedman's liver-spots-'n'-wrinkles style of cartoon realism is completely mesmerizing..." – Entertainment Weekly

"The Thomas Nast of our time." – Slate

"Friedman distorts the images we've grown comfortable with, skewering the way we've let addicts and half-wits become our national idols..." – The Onion

"Friedman remains the finest, most excruciatingly mordant, somehow most humane caricaturist going". – Booklist

"Of low artistic quality." – Rush Limbaugh, big fat idiot.

Bonus Savings: To celebrate the release of this latest collection, we're offering Drew Friedman's previous books, including Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental, Warts and All, Old Jewish Comedians, More Old Jewish Comedians and The Fun Never Stops!, for at least 20% OFF for a limited time!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "The real reason to read Lucky in Love, of course, is DeStefano's art, which is intensely expressive and cartoony, among his best work, with fabulous panel designs, wonderful grotesque characters, and amazing energy throughout." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Review: "The Book of Mr. Natural by the legendary and infamous... R. Crumb is a gorgeous mini-coffee table comic book published by Fantagraphic Books. [...] This book is for Mr. Natural’s legions of cult followers, 60’s believers, as well as new and younger readers who can hack the raunchy non-PC wisdom the guru ejaculates." – Phil Semler, San Francisco Book Review

• Review: "Culled from the output of postcard self-publisher and Wisconsin native Norman Pettingill, this triumphant collection of outsider art offers an insider view of a world that most viewers of the work probably won’t enter. Pettingill’s concern was with the insular existence of backwoods hunters, from their lodges to their excursions, pulling humor from the grotesque and bawdy elements in a style that mixes the works of cartoonists like Basil Wolverton and Harvey Kurtzman, and the sweeping tapestries of Hieronymous Bosch. Satire abounds, but no matter how ugly it gets, it’s never vicious — this weirdness is all part of the landscape of Pettingill’s life." – John E. Mitchell, North Adams Transcript

• Interview: Comic Book Resources' Shaun Manning has a thought-provoking chat with our own Kim Thompson about his translation projects, including our recent Jacques Tardi books and the upcoming Milo Manara collections for Dark Horse: "Generally, my core belief is that you have to betray the source material to remain faithful. The Italians have the phrase, 'Traduttori, Traditori,' meaning, 'translators, traitors,' which most would read as an insult but I read as sound advice."

• Interview in the Future: Drew Friedman will be the guest on Bob Andelman's Mr. Media show on BlogTalkRadio on October 4 at 11 AM (not sure what time zone) — start prepping your questions for the call-in session!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions will spill over into tomorrow because I have to take off to see John Porcellino & Noah Van Sciver...

• Review: "Oh, the things men do to torture themselves. [Catalog No. 439:] Burlesque Paraphernalia and Side Degree Specialties and Costumes is an amazing flashback to a time before the Internet, television, radio, movies and pretty much every other form of entertainment. [...] This book is chock full of some of the funniest and most sadistic devices ever dreamed up by the human mind. It’s almost as if the guy from the Saw movies had wanted to get laughs instead of frights — and fans of current outrage cinema may be happily startled to find something actually called 'The Human Centipede' in its pages." – Siobhan Greene, Fangoria

• Review: "Peppermint Patty is the cover girl for the latest volume of Charles Schulz’ classic [The Complete Peanuts], a fitting designation for an era that saw her emerge as one of the three most important characters of the strip. [...] It’s amazing that nearly thirty years into the strip, Schulz was still trying new things and finding new inspiration from old characters." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

• Review: "It's an odd little notion, the idea that you've lived a better, fuller life for having killed people. That's probably a somewhat unfair aspect of Drew Weing's good-natured, lushly drawn storybook (that's the term the comic practically demands I use) Set to Sea — a tale of a big lummox of a poet whose lackluster verses about life on the open sea are given new verve when he's shanghai'd into service on an actual ship — for me to seize on. After all, Weing's bigfooted style and inviting rather than intimidating illustrative chops place him squarely in the adventure-comics tradition of Carl Barks and Jeff Smith." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Review: "Freed from the burden of making a 'serious' work, Anderson delves into some grim and gritty pulp material, and you can feel his relish and delight coming off the page. [Sand & Fury: A Scream Queen Adventure] basically deals with the story of a murdered woman who comes back from the dead as a banshee and eventually seeks revenge against her killer, who in turn may be a supernatural demon himself. It sounds like a Jim Balent comic, but Anderson creates a lovely noir atmosphere here, full of blood, sex and other nasty goings-on that never once becomes camp. It’s a nice, effective little horror comic." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Plug: The Venture Bros. co-creator Jackson Publick writes: "Venture alumnus, super-pal and yiddish-loving Italian-American Stephen DeStefano premiered his new graphic novel, Lucky in Love at the San Diego Comic Con, and I was fortunate enough to snag a copy. Now it's your turn. Go buy one."

• Interview: Graphic NYC 's Christopher Irving talks to Michael Kupperman. Irving on Tales Designed to Thrizzle: "Toss comic book art from the '40s and '50s into a blender with the dirty brand of humor that runs rampant in underground comics, and give it the pacing and spontaneity of skit comedy, and you get Kupperman’s distinctive Tales Designed to Thrizzle. Kupperman’s slick art has the polish and stiffness of old advertising art, creating a posed disconnect that adds a layer of absurdism to his offbeat stories." Sample Kupperman quote: "What I’m doing is more along the lines of sketch comedy. I grew up with Monty Python and SCTV, and those shows had a profound influence on me, through the writing and tone. My comic is humor for childish adults. I think I’m actually going to start putting that on the cover. It’s stuff that makes me laugh and part of my working method is to make stuff that will make others laugh as well."

• Profile: "One hundred-plus years after the newspaper comic strip was born in San Francisco, a reader might well ask: Who was the greatest comic artist of all time? Some scholars say the question was settled in 1924 by New York arts critic Gilbert Seldes, whose book on the American cultural scene, The 7 Lively Arts, devoted an entire chapter to a reclusive cartoonist in the Hollywood Hills named George Herriman and his avant-garde comic strip, Krazy Kat." – Anthony Mostrom, The Los Angeles Times (via The Comics Reporter)

• Profile: Katharine Zarrella of Interview magazine talks to Robert Pollard about his collage art and current exhibit thereof in New York City: "A handful of ex-bandmates are on Pollard's guest list, but what do they think of his artwork? 'It seems a lot of them dig it. I think secretly, and sometimes openly, my peers respect the insanity.'"

• Profile: "One of the most serious gaps that this blog has not yet filled is as follows: having been scandalously silent of the great art of Drew Friedman, one of the most popular and recognizable contemporary American illustrators, a genius capable of combining, with previously unpublished results, a technique of hyper-realistic depiction with the strong sense of the grotesque that characterizes the creative temperament." – Lucca Boschi, Il Sole 24 Ore (translated from Italian)

• Events: At AOL's TV Squad, Aaron Broverman recaps Blake Bell's presentation "Steve Ditko & Bill Everett: Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Daredevil & Beyond" at Fan Expo in Toronto, "a panel I expect will be one of the hidden gems of the weekend"

At his blog, Drew Friedman wishes Robert Crumb a happy 67th birthday with a selection of his favorite Crumb work and his cover illustration for The Life & Times of R. Crumb. Happy birthday Bob, and congratulations for picking up the Harvey Award for Best Artist over the weekend.

Too Soon? Famous/Infamous Faces 1995-2010
by Drew Friedman

204-page full-color 8.25" x 10.75" hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-357-6

Ships in: September 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

"Too Soon?" you ask?

It's a collection of the last 15 years' worth of Drew Friedman's illustrations, caricatures and portraits lampooning the rich, the famous, the infamous, and the never-will-be-famous.

And — promise! — no "Friends."

Too Soon? gathers Friedman's best, most strident and scathing work from some of the most popular publications including Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Blab! and more — yes, even Field & Stream.

Too Soon? casts its net over the entirety of the forced-smiling-celebrity/politico congregation, political animals on one side of the aisle, showbiz beasts on the other... and the sad, innocent victims of their crimes that languish in the middle.

Too Soon? is naturally replete with liver spots, wrinkles, burst capillaries, blood, sweat and tears. No one is spared, no matter which side of the aisle he or she inhabits.

Too Soon? is Friedman's first book of artwork produced in HI-DEF, so be prepared. Drew Friedman's work is always brutally honest, WARTS & ALL.

Too Soon? is in fact not TOO SOON — it's about time.

Praise for Drew Friedman:

"I'm grateful to Drew Friedman for every new piece of his vast, riveting panorama of the jacked-up, hellbent American spectacle: comic and horrific, loving and appalled, obsessive and devil-may-care, brilliant and vulgar, familiar and uncanny. He's our William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson and George Grosz all wrapped into one." – Kurt Andersen, host of NPR's "Studio 360"

"I would like Drew Friedman to draw me, but I’m scared of what he’d uncover, what he’d reveal about my inner nature that I’d rather not see. Because that’s what he does—he’s not a mere caricaturist, he’s a ridiculously talented artist who’s practically an x-ray machine. One that makes you laugh your balls off.” – Chip Kidd, author of The Cheese Monkeys

"Friedman's liver-spots-'n'-wrinkles style of cartoon realism is completely mesmerizing..." – Entertainment Weekly

"The Thomas Nast of our time." – Slate

"Friedman distorts the images we've grown comfortable with, skewering the way we've let addicts and half-wits become our national idols..." – The Onion

"Friedman remains the finest, most excruciatingly mordant, somehow most humane caricaturist going". – Booklist

"Of low artistic quality." – Rush Limbaugh, big fat idiot.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 15-page PDF excerpt (4.1 MB).

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Bonus Savings: To celebrate the release of this latest collection, we're offering Drew Friedman's previous books, including Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental, Warts and All, Old Jewish Comedians, More Old Jewish Comedians and The Fun Never Stops!, for at least 20% OFF for a limited time!

Periodic clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• On Facebook Esther Pearl Watson gave this glimpse at her new work-in-progress graphic novel, a "Lady Rambo" style action-adventure!

• A self-portrait circa late-1990s and another uncollected strip by Jason; also, he's blogging about the films of Audrey Hepburn, beginning with Funny Face

• Jim Woodring presents "A matinee from CONGRESS OF THE ANIMALS"

• Drew Friedman recounts an evening at Mickey & Val Rooney's variety show

• Sergio Ponchione did the album cover & interior art for the debut album by Orangeproject

• Noah Van Sciver gives another glimpse at his book-in-progress The Hypo

• Deepest, sincerest condolences to Laura Park on the loss of her beloved and handsome cat Lewis

• Josh Simmons puts a Quacker between two Buns; also, Flexi-Quacker

• From Renee French: thumbnails, guys with mitts, something shadowy with maybe a bunny

• Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary page 37

• John Kerschbaum's Cartoon Boy wraps up his current adventure — mmm, that's good denouement

• Matthias Lehmann updates his blog with nearly a dozen recent illustrations

• Steven Weissman takes another crack at that "Truman Capote" strip

• Oh Frank Santoro. His latest cut-n-paste job is decidedly NSFW. "Marvel Team-Up" indeed

• Welcome to Dame Darcy's dollhouse — this and more in her latest blog update

• Drew Weing's Set to Sea pages 124 & 125

• Illustrated border and hand-lettering by Richard Sala for a written piece by Nick Tosches, 1996

• An untitled Jim Flora painting from 1964

• A new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond strip by Kevin Huizenga 

• Send Jim Blanchard your address and he'll happily send you one of these old postcards

• Sexual harrassment and chocolate figure in part 3 of Gabrielle Bell's "Comic-Con Comicumentary"

• Mark Kalesniko's third variation on "Tina in a Polka-Dot Dress"

• Steve Brodner presents a rejected New Yorker illustration

• Our Talented Staff Dept: office manager Stephanie Hayes is now posting flora & fauna sketches at The Gentleman Scientist

Mark your calendar! 

FANTAGRAPHICS & DESERT ISLAND PRESENT:

AN EVENING WITH DREW FRIEDMAN AND HIS NEW BOOK,

TOO SOON?

Friday, Oct. 8th, 7-9PM

Desert Island, 540 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY 

Featuring a Q&A with Drew Friedman, conducted by WFMU's Dave the Spazz! 

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Originally serialized in the late ‘90s, this cartwheeling shaggy-dog story begins, like a lot of metafiction, with the semblance of reality... But by the time a frog demon reanimates a 19th-century French peasant whose brains it has eaten, it’s fairly clear that Deitch is making stuff up. The fun of [The Search for Smilin' Ed] is the way it constantly darts back and forth across the line between genuine show-business lore (a favorite Deitch theme) and delirious whole-cloth invention. ... Deitch’s artwork... is... utterly confident, building on the stylistic gestures of both the underground-comics scene that launched his career and the classic animation that inspired his talking-animal characters." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "Some of the best comics of the last couple of decades are Jim Woodring’s wordless Frank stories. Dreamlike, idyllic and mind bendingly horrific visions are rendered with immaculate penwork and pacing. This tidy, near 200 page collection of black and white stories [The Portable Frank] is sufficient to put a permanent dent in your brain pan." – M. Ace, Irregular Orbit

• Review: "Fantagraphics cycles back to the first three years of Herriman’s Sunday Krazy Kat strips [in Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918]. I do enjoy these early years of the kat kronikles — a bit more lyrical, a bit more varied, a bit less centered on the kat/mouse/cop routine. Yes, you need it. Of course." – M. Ace, Irregular Orbit

• Interview: In virtue of the Criterion Collection release of Crumb on DVD and Blu-ray, The A.V. Club talks to director Terry Zwigoff: "And I said, 'What did you think of it?' And he said, 'It was mortifying.' I said, 'Is it a bad film?' And he said, 'No, but I’m looking at myself in a mirror, so what am I supposed to say? Is it good? Is it bad? I just don’t want to look at it.' Something like that."

• Interview: Kliph Nesteroff's conversation with Drew Friedman (previously transcribed at WFMU's Beware of the Blog) is now available as an audio download from the Inkstuds podcast

• Panel: The Comics Journal presents video of the "International Comics and Graphic Novels" panel at Comic-Con International last month, with Moto Hagio, Émile Bravo and others — part 1 is embedded above, with 4 additional parts at TCJ.com

• Commentary: Noah Berlatsky takes his whack at Popeye in the critical roundtable at The Hooded Utilitarian