American comic book writer Michael Fleisher, best known for his work on Spectre and Jonah Hex, sadly passed away on February 2, 2018 at the age of 75.
Born in November 1942 and raised in New York City, Fleisher grew up with a passion for writing, particularly writing Westerns. As his parents were divorced, Fleisher would spend Saturdays with his father watching Western movie double features. “I saw two Westerns ever Saturday for years,” Fleisher remarked in 2010. “So it wasn’t very hard to write Westerns at all.” This childhood passion would later inspire his work on DC Comics’ Jonah Hex character, beginning in 1974 in Weird Western Tales. For more than a dozen years, Fleisher wrote for the character’s self-titled comic. Fleisher letter penned a sequel series, which saw Jonah Hex transported into a postapocalyptic setting, between 1985 and 1987.
In his earlier career, Fleisher wrote three volumes of The Encyclopedia of Comic Books Heroes. He later co-wrote the supernatural story “Death at Castle Dunbar” in DC’s Secrets of Sinister House #5 with Lynn Marron in 1972. Working alongside Maxene Fabe, Fleisher also co-wrote supernatural stories for House of Mystery and House of Secrets. Fleisher went on to collaborate with Russell Carley on seven stories for those titles as well as Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion. While writing his Jonah Hex series, Fleisher also scripted Steve Ditko’s Shade, the Changing Man series between 1977 and 1978. During the early 1980s, Fleisher made several contributions to the Batman mythos, including reintroducing the Crime Doctor in Detective Comics #494, co-creating the Electrocutioner in Batman #331 and writing the origin of the Penguin in The Best of DC #10.
Along with his various other contributions to DC, Fleisher worked as an associate editor under Joe Orlando on the series Plop! and the superhero anthology series Adventure Comics. Outside of DC, Fleisher contributed to Captain America, Spider-Woman, Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Conan, and other titles for Marvel. At the same time, Fleisher partnered once more with Carley on the DC series, The Spectre. Fleisher and artist Jim Aparo went on to produce ten stories of the supernatural avenger, that became controversial for what was considered gruesome violence. During an interview with The Comics Journal #53 in 1980, writer Harlan Ellison praised Fleisher’s comic work while describing Fleisher as certifiable and twisted, among other more unfavorable terms. As a result, Fleisher filed a $2 million libel suit against Ellison, publisher Gary Groth and the The Comics Journal. The case came to court in 1986, and resulted in a verdict for the defendants.
Afterward, Fleisher attended college in New York City and began writing for the British comics magazine 2000 AD. He eventually left the comics field in the early 1990s to focus on his newfound work as an anthropologist. A list of survivors was not readily available.
