Friedrich worked at a record store in Cape Girardeau, Missouri after high school, and in February 1964, obtained a job at Jackson's two weekly newspapers, which were being combined into a single twice-weekly. "I was working about 80 hours a week for $50", he recalled in 2001. "I wrote, edited, and laid out the entire newspaper. I was the whole editorial staff without any help. It was driving me crazy". Friedrich had gotten married the year before and by now had a young son, but, "I didn't have time for anything because I was working all the damn time." The marriage fell apart, "and even that wasn't a major problem for a while because I was so damn busy and I was either working, drunk, or both", Friedrich said, alluding to the alcoholism from which he began recovering on "New Year's night in 1979".
When the newspaper ceased publication in late summer 1965, Friedrich began working a union job at a Cape Girardeau factory, installing heating elements in waffle irons. Roy Thomas, now a Marvel Comics staff writer in New York City, called his friend with the suggestion that freelance work might exist in the newly resurgent medium. Friedrich took a Greyhound bus the following day, and stayed with Thomas and a fandom friend, Dave Kaler, in Manhattan's East Village. Shortly afterward, Friedrich and Thomas took an apartment on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.
This was a time of transition between the beat movement and the hippie era, when the Village flourished as a creative mecca. "The Village was a really neat place to be at that time. We went to the theater that was to become the Fillmore East; it wasn't called that yet, but they were starting to have some rock concerts, like Chuck Berry. ... I began to let my hair grow and become a real New York hippie", he recalled, encapsulating the hybrid of blue-collar, Midwestern background with youth-culture progressiveness that combined to give his Sgt. Fury stories a distinctive sensibility.
With the help of Thomas, who recommended Friedrich to Charlton Comics editor Dick Giordano, Friedrich began writing romance comics for that low-budget publisher, where many pros got early breaks. "I did it with a great good sense of humor", Friedrich recalled. "I wrote things like 'Tears in My Malted' and 'Too Fat to Frug'...." With anonymous help and input from Thomas, Friedrich also began writing superhero stories, beginning with his backup feature "The Sentinels" (with penciler-inker Sam Grainger) in Peter Cannon ... Thunderbolt #54 (Oct. 1966; actually the sixth issue, due to the series continuing the numbering of a canceled title). He wrote the feature for two more issues before handing it off. Friedrich also dialogued the debut and the next three stories of the Blue Beetle, plotted and drawn by Steve Ditko, in Captain Atom #83-86 (Nov. 1966 - June 1967). Friedrich's last recorded Charlton story was "If I Had Three Wishes", penciled by Ditko, in Ghostly Tales #60 (March 1967).
Marvel Comics
By this time Friedrich had already begun writing Westerns for Marvel, including issues of Kid Colt, Outlaw; Two-Gun Kid; Rawhide Kid; and his first regular series, the Western Ghost Rider ... launched with debut-issue co-plotter Thomas, and running six issues, mostly co-scripted by Friedrich and series penciler Dick Ayers. Friedrich also contributed to the parody series Not Brand Echh. He began on Sgt. Fury with #42 (May 1967) ... co-scripted, as was the next issue, by Friedrich's Western pardner, Sgt. Fury penciler Ayers. The next issue, a flashback to the Howlers' first mission, was co-scripted by Friedrich and Thomas.
Following this inauspicious beginning came the first of several Friedrich "The" stories, "The War Lover" (#45, Aug. 1967) ... a shaded exploration of a trigger-happy soldier and the line drawn, even in war, between killing and murder. Daring for the time, when majority public sentiment still supported the undeclared Vietnam War, the story balanced present-day issues while demonstrating that even in what is referred to as "a just war", a larger morality prevails. While war comics at this stage were less overtly jingoistic than in the 1950s, Friedrich's allegorical approach was ahead of movies and television as well, occurring years before M*A*S*H would tread similar ground. Friedrich's story also marked the first time since the early Lee-Kirby Furys that such provocative humanism appeared in a full-length tale, rather than in the occasional "very special" short stories that represented the preferred length at rival DC Comics. Friedrich would write several more "The" stories, including "The Assassin", "The Peacemonger", and the unromanticized A.W.O.L. drama "The Deserter" (#75, Feb. 1970), based loosely on the real-life case of WWII Private Eddie Slovik.
Friedrich continued through #83 (Jan. 1971), with the late part of this run having reprint issues between new stories, and again for the even-numbered issues from #94-114 (Jan. 1972 - Nov. 1973). Issue #100 (July 1972) featured a present-day, fictional reunion gala.
Friedrich also launched the far shorter-lived, 19-issue United States Marines series Capt. Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders (changed to Captain Savage and his Battlefield Raiders with #9), running Jan. 1968 to March 1970; and the nine-issue U.S. Army series Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen, running June 1972 to September 1973.
These brief efforts proved more pedestrian than his Sgt. Fury work, and Friedrich settled into the niche of utility writer. His first regular superhero series for Marvel was The Incredible Hulk, for which he wrote a handful of issues starting with #102 (April 1968; the premiere issue, following the Hulk feature in the "split book" Tales to Astonish), as well as the 1968 Hulk annual. The series would not, however, launch him as Thomas' natural successor on Marvel's flagship titles, which went to such later hires as Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart, Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. Friedrich mostly would be assigned titles in transition or facing cancellation, including, variously, [[Uncanny X-Men|[Uncanny] X-Men]]; Captain America; Captain Marvel; Daredevil; Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.; and the "Black Widow" feature in Amazing Adventures. He was also given many non-superhero features, including such Westerns as The Gunhawks.
During this time, Friedrich also wrote prose stories for the line of men's magazines owned by Marvel's then-publisher, Martin Goodman.
Friedrich was the co-creator and initial writer of Marvel's motorcycle-demon Ghost Rider, and later teamed with that character's first artist, Mike Ploog, on Marvel's Monster of Frankenstein ... the first five issues of which (Jan.-Oct. 1973) contained a relatively faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel.
Later career
Friedrich's other work includes writing for the Skywald line of black-and-white horror-comics magazines. For that company he created Hell-Rider ... a Vietnam-vet vigilante motorcyclist with a flame-thrower-equipped bike ... in a namesake two-issue series (July-Aug. to Sept.-Oct. 1971). The following year, Friedrich worked with Thomas on the similarly motorcycle-mounted Ghost Rider.
Additionally, Friedrich freelanced for the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard Comics, where he co-created the character Man-Monster with Rich Buckler and Mike Vosburg in Tales of Evil #3 (July 1975). He also wrote the third and final issue of Morlock 2001, with the very rare art team of Steve Ditko and Bernie Wrightson; the third and final issue of The Brute; and the fourth and final issue of IronJaw before eventually leaving the comics industry to return to Missouri, , where he found work as a courier.
In early 1977, as his alcoholism was progressing to a crisis point, Friedrich's sole comics work was writing the seven-page Captain Britain stories in the character's namesake Marvel UK weekly comic book. He would be published in comics just once more as of 2007, scripting Topps Comics' Jack Kirby-created Bombast #1 (April 1993), where he reteamed with plotter Roy Thomas and Sgt. Fury artists Dick Ayers and John Severin.
In the 2000s, Friedrich expressed public disagreement about the genesis of the supernatural Ghost Rider. In 2001, Roy Thomas claimed that:
Friedrich responded:
On April 4, 2007, Friedrich filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court - Southern District of Illinois, against Marvel Enterprises, Sony Pictures, Columbia TriStar Motion Pictures, Relativity Media, Crystal Sky Pictures, Michael DeLuca Productions, Hasbro and Take-Two Interactive, alleging his copyrights to the Ghost Rider character have been exploited and utilized in a "joint venture and conspiracy". The lawsuit states that the film rights and merchandising reverted from Marvel to him in 2001. The case was transferred to the federal New York State Southern District Court on February 14, 2008.
