D R E W • F R I E D M A N: April 2018

Friday, April 27, 2018

together chewing gum

In the mid-seventies, attempting to reach an older demographic, Topps chewing gum created "together" chewing gum, targeting young, me-generation couples on the go. Clearly someone at Topps had a hunch that a "tingling" cinnamon chewing gum would be just the aphrodisiac young couples desired. The product was tested but ultimately not released.

Several designs were created, here ar two from my collection:

together in a wheat field

together romping on the beach

back of together

Thanks to Mark Newgarden

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

The Book of WEIRDO Cover

The Book of WEIRDO is a massive retrospective edited by Jon B. Cooke, paying tribute to R. Crumb's legendary comics and graphics magazine from the 1980's and early 90's. Crumb was WEIRDO"s first editor, followed by Peter Bagge and finally Aline Kominsky-Crumb. R. Crumb created each one of WEIRDO's 28 covers. Some of my earliest comic strip work appeared in the early issues of WEIRDO.

I created the cover art and border to the upcoming book, and the logo and lettering was lovingly rendered by David Coulson. I also wrote the book's foreword. The Book of WEIRDO will contain extensive interviews and tributes to the magazine with many of the magazines original contributers as well as many of it's admirers, and much, much more. EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about WEIRDO!

The book will be published by Last Gasp in May 2019.

the cover (click to enlarge)

key to who's who in the border

my initial cover sketch

finished art

Monday, April 9, 2018

Some Funny Re-Casting On The Way To The Forum...

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened on Broadway in 1963 starring Zero Mostel, who also starred in the 1966 Richard Lester film version.

The show has been revived many times over the years with various stars in the lead role, among them Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg and recently Frank

Ferrante.

Here are some of the other stars and casts of broadway, touring and lesser-known productions of the show...

Thanks to John Wendler and to Tor Lier, John Schrank, Frank Santopadre and James Mulholland