Fred Mertz

Drew Friedman brought this Fred Mertz to comics pages in 1986, right in the thick of the Copper Age, through Malibu's offbeat anthology Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental — a title that practically winks at you from the shelf. Sharing the page with Lucy Ricardo, Ethel Mertz, and Ricky Ricardo, Fred turns up across both that series and I Love Lucy material, keeping very familiar company indeed. With just four appearances in the catalog, this is a niche find for collectors who love the intersection of classic American pop culture and the underground-inflected comics sensibility Friedman brought to everything he touched. A small but characterful corner of comics history worth a second look.