All the Presidents by Drew Friedman

I still wish Drew Friedman was making comics regularly. Oh, sure, his ultra-detailed stippled style takes an immense amount of time, and I have to imagine it's not great for his health to crane over a drawing table making all of those little boxes for hours on end.

But his comics were something unique, a stew of curdled weird pop-culture and photorealism, all filtered through a unique, funny sensibility - not to mention that magnificent, unparalleled art. His portraits have the same artistic strengths, but the bizarre storytelling of his comics is mostly absent.

The Fun Never Stops! will be probably the last book of Freidman comics; that was almost two decades ago. It now looks like comics is something Friedman did in his early career, mostly the '80s and '90s, before he moved into work that paid better and didn't require the same insane level of back-breaking effort. And, again, I completely understand. My wish is more that the universe isn't different - that comics weren't so remunerative that Friedman had to keep doing them, a few stories a year, and hadn't been seduced by the One Big Head model of drawing.

All the Presidents was right in the middle of Friedman's (still ongoing) One Big Head period, from 2019. It followed the three Old Jewish Comedians books, two books of Heroes of the Comics, and Drew Friedman's Chosen People (covering Jews who were not necessarily comedians, though still largely old). Since then, he's put out Maverix and Lunatix (basically a third Heroes of the Comics, focusing on the underground generation) and the very miscellaneous Schtick Figures.

And Presidents is just what it says it is: full-page headshots, drawn by Friedman in his inimitable, labor-intensive stippled style, of the first forty-five presidents, each opposite a page of their vital statistics. (Just the very basics: dates of birth and death, party, term in office, age at inauguration, and one "fun fact.")

This is possibly the least of the One Big Head Friedman books: most of them, for one thing, have more full-figure portraits throughout, but this is entirely One Big Head. It looks like a review of the money of a slightly sweatier and more disreputable world. Friedman doesn't have a personal connection to most of the Presidents - just JFK on - so it is somewhat a long succession of funny-looking dead guys with various outdated permutations of facial hair and jowls.

It can be amusing to poke through and turn up interesting coincidences - did you know Grant was the youngest President ever at the time? All those 19th century guys looked prematurely old, so it was a surprise to me. But the joys of  Presidents are slighter than the other Friedman books; keep that in mind if you dive in.