Drew Friedman is an American cartoonist and illustrator who first gained renown for his humorous artwork and "stippling"-like style of caricature, employing thousands of pen-marks to simulate the look of a photograph.

Friedman's work has appeared in such periodicals as Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Observer, Esquire, RAW, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Mineshaft, and Mad.

However, he first attracted public attention in the 1980s producing morbid alternative comics stories, sometimes working solo, sometimes with his brother Josh Alan Friedman scripting the panels.

Friedman served as comics editor for the National Lampoon in 1991,[4] introducing the works of Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware to a wider audience.

In 2006, Friedman published Old Jewish Comedians (Fantagraphics Books), a collection of portraits of famous and forgotten Jewish comics of film and TV in their old age, about which Steven Heller, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote: "A festival of drawing virtuosity and fabulous craggy faces... Friedman might very well be the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt.

Describing his illustration style in 2017, Friedman said it might not appeal to "people who find warts, pimples, wrinkles, flop-sweat, jowls, boils, rosacea, nose hairs, ear hairs, drool, baggy eyes, gin blossoms, moles, liver spots, neck waddles, nasal labia folds, crinkles, furrows, creases, puss, pustules, bumps, lumps, yellowing and/or rotting teeth, missing teeth, gums, dentures, saliva, double chins, triple chins, blotches, scars, lumps, zits, five o'clock shadows, folds, bulbous noses, craters, chapped lips, man-boobs, goiters, pock marks, whiteheads, blackheads, rashes, nose leakages, emasculations, calluses, scabs, balding/bald heads, nodules, freckles, protuberances, welts, carbuncles, papules, festers, and Shemp distasteful," adding, "Liver spots are my Ninas.

While there, he took classes from (among others) Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Edward Sorel, Art Spiegelman, Stan Mack and Arnold Roth.

Friedman was recognized for his work with the National Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Illustration Award for 2000, and he was nominated again in 2002 and 2007.