Gary Friedrich, 1943-2018

Comics writer Gary Friedrich, who co-created the 1970s demonic biker anti-hero Ghost Rider, and Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, died on the 30th August, at the age of 75, of complications arising from Parkinson’s disease.
Born in Jackson, Missouri, on 21 August 1943, he attended Jackson High School, where he was editor of the high school newspaper, and became friends with future Marvel writer and editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, who was in college at the time. After working at local newspapers post-graduation, at Thomas’s suggestion, moved to New York to work in comics, beginning with romance scripts for Charlton Comics, and scripted the second Blue Beetle’s debut in 1967’s Captain Atom 83-86, over Steve Ditko’s plot. He began working for Marvel, on their Western and War lines – Kid Colt, Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid, Sgt Fury, and the Western iteration of Ghost Rider.
In 1971, inspired by the cult film Easy Rider, Friedrich scripted the short-lived series Hell-Rider for Warren-imitators Skywald. The ‘Cycling Superhero!’, whose black & white comics magazine was not subject to the Comics Code Authority, featured more mature aspects such as nudity, violence which was (by the standards of the time) excessive, and drug-related themes. A back-up for Hell-Rider, ‘The Butterfly’, presented a largely unremembered milestone, the first black super-heroine in comics.
Although Hell-Rider failed, lasting only two issues, Friedrich applied a lot of the ideas to the 1972 revamp of Ghost Rider, which featured the contemporary interpretation of the ‘Wandering Cowboy’ – a motorcycling anti-hero – with a supernatural overlay, as stunt-rider Johnny Blaze made a deal with the Devil to save his loved ones, becoming the demonic flame-headed anti-hero. Ghost Rider’s original series ran for more than eighty issues, and has been the subject of multiple comics revivals, as well as two feature films.
Friedrich’s other best-remembered creation is Daimon Hellstrom, aka the Son of Satan, another demonic anti-hero tapping into the then-popular horror zeitgeist in the wake of the Exorcist and similar films. Now known mainly as ‘Hellstrom’, after his Satanic parentage was retconned away, this character too remains a recurring figure in the Marvel Universe.
Friedrich left comics in 1978 and returned to Missouri, where he spent many years as a driver & courier, returning to comics briefly in 1993, at the behest of his old friend Roy Thomas, to write the Jack Kirby-illustrated title Bombast for Topps Comics.
In more recent times, Friedrich became best known for a protracted lawsuit against Marvel Comics over the ownership of the Ghost Rider character, which reportedly ended ‘amicably’ in 2013 for an undisclosed sum.
Gary Friedrich is survived by his second wife, Jean, and their daughter Leslie.