Gary Friedrich, best known as the co-creator of the motorcycle-riding Ghost Rider character for Marvel, has died at the age of 75. He had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease and that presumably was the cause of death. In 2010, we honored Gary with the Will Eisner Comic Industry Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Writing.
Gary was born in Jackson, Missouri in 1943 where as a teenager, he became a friend of Roy Thomas. The two of them met while working at the Palace Theatre in Jackson and bonded over their mutual love of comics. After Roy moved to New York and became an assistant editor for Marvel, he helped his friend follow much the same career path. Gary got into writing romance comic books for Charlton and then Roy brought him over to Marvel. Basically, as Roy kept getting moved up to more important jobs, Gary inherited the ones Roy had previously done or would have done. He was the longtime writer of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and did shorter runs on dozens of other comics including Hulk, X-Men, Not Brand Echh, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Captain America…and the list goes on and on. He also launched their comic, Son of Satan.
Self-admitted problems with drinking ended his work for Marvel and while he did freelance for Skywald and for Martin Goodman's short-lived Atlas line of the seventies and the short-lived Topps line in the eighties, he never found anything stable. A growing deafness in both ears (and the onslaught of the Parkinson's) further limited his employment prospects. He got involved in some messy legal battles with Marvel over the Ghost Rider character and while matters were eventually settled, they were not settled to Gary's complete satisfaction.
He was a writer of considerable talent and he deserved a better career than he had. So sorry to hear of his passing.