Sister Kathie Lee-Semple McPherson

Sister Kathie Lee

"SCANDALOUS" the new musical about the life of the 1920's and 30's evangelist and media celebrity Aimee Semple McPherson is poised to open on Broadway, with the book and lyrics  by the bewildering TV personality Kathie Lee Gifford. So when Ed Johnson, the design director at the NY Observer asked me to create a cover image to run with their interview with Ms. Gifford and an article about the show, morphing Kathie Lee into "Sister Aimee" made the most sense to me. 

Sister Aimee sermonizing to an admirer

Read the full Observer article here: 

http://observer.com/2012/10/praise-be-kathie-lee-delightfully-ditzy-daytime-queen-puts-the-fun-back-in-fundamentalism-with-preacher-feature-scandalous/

My rough sketch placed in the layout

the finished cover

MAD' LY YOURS...

To help celebrate MAD Magazine's 60th anniversary this year...

... I've been fortunate in receiving several personalized drawings from some of the legendary cartoonists (the "Usual gang of Idiots") who've worked for MAD over the years, including the above drawing by the great Harvey Kurtzman, the creator of MAD. This drawing is from 1980 (where I was most likely the main instigator in the weekly chaos that ensued during his class at the School of Visual Arts. Harvey privately thanked me on several occasions for keeping the class "lively') and was used in the class publication Kar-Tunz, before Harvey's personal inscription was added. 

Read all about my memories of Harvey Kurtzman and his SVA class here:

http://www.tcj.com/seriously-funny/

Jack Davis sent me this inscribed drawing recently as a thank you for interviewing him last year at the Brooklyn Comics festival and for writing a tribute to him for the recent anthology of his work from Fantagraphics:

http://drewfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/12/one-only-jack-davis.html

Sergio Aragonas drew this for me during my 1974 visit to the MAD offices. Read about it here:

http://drewfriedman.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-visit-to-mad-magazine.html

In 1990, Don Martin and I struck up a phone friendship. I sent "Mad's Maddest Artist" a copy of my new book, "Warts & all", co-written by my brother Josh, and this was the thank-you drawing I received in return.