Fury, Friedrich and the art team of Dick Ayers and John Severin produced a World War II series for the Vietnam years, combining militaristic camaraderie and gung ho humor with a regretful sense of war as a terrible last resort.

In 2011, he lost a federal lawsuit over a claim of ownership in the character Ghost Rider, but in July 2014, three months after an appellate court reversed that decision, the parties said they had reached a settlement.

[2] 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.

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,[4] alluding to the alcoholism from which he began recovering on "New Year's night in 1979".

[5] 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.

"I wrote things like 'Tears in My Malted' and 'Too Fat to Frug'...."[6] 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).

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).

[8] His story for issue #72 (Nov. 1969) was heavily rewritten and partially redrawn due to concerns about possible copyright infringement of the film Casablanca.

[11] 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.

[15] As one critic wrote of issue #4: "Unmatched by anything else he'd written at Marvel, Friedrich's script ... had reached a point that perfectly captured the 19th-century cadences of Shelley's prose and lifted the strip far above any past or, so far, future attempt to adapt the character to comics".

[note 1] Friedrich recalled in 2009 that Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee "had some idea that he wanted a character called Son of Satan.

"[18] In the mid-1970s, he also wrote the majority of the seven-page Captain Britain stories in the character's namesake Marvel UK weekly comic book following the departure of original writer Chris Claremont.

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.

[2] Additionally, Friedrich freelanced for the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard Comics, where he wrote the crime comic Police Action #2-3 (April and June 1975) and the feature "Son of Dracula" in Fright #1 (June 1975), and scripted the sole story of the character Man-Monster, co-plotted by Tony Isabella and penciller Rich Buckler, in Tales of Evil #3 (July 1975).

[1][20] In 1993, Friedrich scripted Topps Comics' Jack Kirby-created Bombast #1 (April 1993), where he teamed once more with plotter Roy Thomas and Sgt.

Anyway, when Gary Friedrich started writing Daredevil, he said, 'Instead of Stunt-Master, I'd like to make the villain a really weird motorcycle-riding character called Ghost Rider.'

I said, 'Yeah, Gary, there's only one thing wrong with it,' and he kind of looked at me weird, because we were old friends from Missouri, and I said, 'That's too good an idea to be just a villain in Daredevil.

I had this idea for the skull-head, something like Elvis' 1968 special jumpsuit, and so forth, and Ploog put the fire on the head, just because he thought it looked nice.

[27] U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled that Marvel Entertainment owned the character, saying Friedrich gave up any ownership claim when he signed checks containing language relinquishing all rights.

[28] Marvel countersued[29][30] with the parties reaching a settlement in which Marvel dropped the suit in exchange for Friedrich paying $17,000 in damages, ceasing to sell Ghost Rider-related items of his own creation and ceasing to promote himself as the creator of the character for financial gain.

[31] On June 11, 2013, Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Denny Chin overturned the original decision, calling the contract language "ambiguous" and sending the case back to trial.