Don’t miss the launch event for Drew Friedman’s newest book, Maverix and Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comix! He’ll be joined in conversation with Funny Pages writer and director Owen Kline and there will be a book signing following their discussion. Book cover posters will be free to all who purchase tickets–get your tickets here (link)!
About Maverix and Lunatix: Perverted, Insane, Degenerate, Brilliant. Artist Drew Friedman pays tribute to the great underground comix creators from Z (Zap) to A (Arcade).
With the publication of R. Crumb’s debut issue of ZAP in 1968, the Underground Comix revolution exploded, creating a major paradigm shift and blowing the lid off the traditional comic book. Maverix & Lunatix features 101 full page portraits (and more) by a cartooning icon in his own right, Drew Friedman, spotlighting the essential artists, writers, and editors who defined one of the great art and countercultural movements of the 20th century. Featuring R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson, Melinda Gebbie, Art Spiegelman, Vaughn Bode, Trina Robbins, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, Sharon Rudahl, Larry Gonick, Rick Veitch, Joyce Farmer, Justin Green, “Grass” Green, George DiCaprio, Diane Noomin, Harvey Pekar, Robert Williams, Howard Cruse, Dan O’Neill, Spain Rodriguez, Shary Flenniken, Richard Corben, and so many others… all of whom helped to reinvent an entire artistic medium and became icons of underground comix.
Featuring a foreword by Marc Maron (WTF with Marc Maron) and an introduction by historian Patrick Rosenkranz (Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963–1975), each portrait in Maverix & Lunatix is also accompanied by a short biography of its subject by Friedman, making the book both a gorgeous art book and a valuable historical resource.
About Drew Friedman: Drew Friedman’s illustrations and comics have appeared in Art Spiegelman’s RAW, National Lampoon, SPY, MAD, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Village Voice, The Wall St. Journal, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, The Nation, The New Republic, Entertainment Weekly, Reader’s Digest, Air Mail Online and many other publications, as well as art created for the covers of numerous books, CD’s, DVD’s and Prints.
In his New York Times book review of Friedman’s book Old Jewish Comedians, Steven Heller wrote: “A festival of drawing virtuosity and fabulous craggy faces. Drew Friedman might very well be the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt.” The Society of Illustrators hosted a main gallery showing of Friedman’s Old Jewish Comedians illustrations in 2014. The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University held a major exhibition of all of the artwork created for his book All The Presidents in fall, 2019.
Friedman is the author and artist behind 14 books and anthologies, the latest Maverix & Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comix, with a foreword by Marc Maron. A documentary about Friedman’s life and work is in the works.
About Owen Kline: Owen Kline is a New York-based filmmaker, actor, screenwriter and cartoonist, best known for his directorial debut Funny Pages (2022) and his role as Frank Berkman in The Squid And The Whale. Before Funny Pages, Kline directed the delirious Jazzy for Joe (2014) starring the late talk show legend Joe Franklin raising an abandoned baby found on his doorstep.
