Requiem for a Comic Book Writer

I recently learned that longtime Jonah Hex writer Michael L. Fleisher passed away on February 2nd.  Word is still getting around the comics community: Mark Evanier posted the first words about it a few days ago, with Newsarama, CBR, and Bleeding Cool picking up on it not long after (there’s also a memorial page put up by the funeral home in Oregon that performed the services).  I find it strange that Fleisher’s death slipped under everyone’s radar for a month-and-a-half, but then again, he hadn’t written a comic book since 1995 and -- so far as I’m aware -- he wasn’t active on the con circuit at all.  Fleisher just faded away from the comics scene and seemed content with that, though he was fine with giving interviews when asked (this wasn’t a Steve Ditko situation).  On that note, I highly recommend looking up the interviews conducted over the years by my fellow Hex-chroniclers Darren Schroeder, Dwayne Hendrickson, and Michael Browning, not to mention the vintage piece printed in The Comics Journal way back in 1979, as they’ve all been invaluable to me during my work on "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex".

I am hoping that, as more people find out about Fleisher’s passing, those in the industry who knew him will speak up about his work (even a simple “in memoriam” page from DC or Marvel would be nice).  I’m not just referring to the 126 Jonah Hex stories he did, mind you, but also to Scalphunter, The Spectre, Spider-Woman, Ghost Rider, and all the other characters he wrote over the years.  If you look him up on comicbookdb.com, you’ll find his massive list of credits, which doesn’t even include his work on the three-volume Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes (covering Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman).  Then there’s his novels Chasing Hairy and Shambler, plus the non-fiction book Kuria Cattle Raiders from University of Michigan Press, which was based on the field work he did for his Doctorate in Anthropology from the school.  And not to speak ill of the dead, but as many of the articles about him so far have mentioned, Fleisher once sued Harlan Ellison and The Comics Journal for libel.  I’m curious to see if either of those parties offer up any sort of words about him in the coming days.

Despite all the stuff I’ve written in regards to Jonah Hex over the past dozen years -- and all the folks I’ve made connections with due to that -- I never talked with Michael Fleisher in any capacity.  Frankly, I felt the aforementioned interviews with him were so well-done and covered so much ground that anything I came up with, question-wise, would be redundant, and decided to just let Fleisher enjoy his semi-retirement in peace.  When a distant relative of Russell Carley -- Fleisher’s friend who was responsible for “script continuity” on his early Hex stories -- contacted me looking for help on a genealogy project, I passed her information on to those who knew Fleisher personally as opposed to contacting him myself, so as to respect the man’s privacy (I don’t know if Fleisher was able to help her, but since he and Carley had been such close friends, he seemed the best person to ask in this regard).

It could be said, however, that in knowing so much about Jonah Hex, I know Michael Fleisher pretty well.  The writer embraced Jonah as if he was his own creation, giving this fictional person a depth and breadth that helped him live on long past the Western heyday that birthed him.  Nearly every facet of Jonah’s backstory was crafted by Fleisher, building upon the scant amount of information left behind by John Albano & Tony DeZuniga (if it can be said that they’re Jonah’s “fathers”, then it can be equally said that Fleisher raised him).  Thanks to Fleisher, we know about Jonah’s time with both the Apache and the Confederate cavalry, his parents, his marriage, his son, the countless enemies he made over the course of his life, and even his final days.  “I got very choked up writing that story,” he once said in regards to the bounty hunter’s demise in the Jonah Hex Spectacular, “because it was the death of a character that I really loved -- not only loved, but I feel is really me.”  That sentiment is probably what led Fleisher to impart some of himself into Hex lore, first by sharing his birthday with Jonah (November 1st), then by bestowing his middle name of Lawrence upon a character in Secret Origins #21 who not only resembled Fleisher, but in a case of art imitating life, was also said to have written “the definitive book” on the bounty hunter.

Though he may be gone now, Michael Fleisher will never be forgotten in the hearts and minds of Jonah Hex fans.  The two names are inseparable, and I have a feeling he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Secret Origin Time!

Okay, not really all that secret.  Lots of people know this stuff, I just needed a dang title.

When I was a wee fangirl growing up in Michigan, my dad worked for a toy company that later became part of Fundimensions, which was an umbrella name for MPC, Lionel Trains, and Craft Master in the mid-80s.  So, unlike most kids whose only exposure to the toy industry was TV commercials and the aisles of Toys R Us, I got pretty familiar right off the bat with the concept of licensed products.  That's not to say that I wasn't duped into liking dumb things just because a pitchman told me to, but I also knew that, when my dad went to New York not long after my birthday every year, he was going to Toy Fair to check out what was new and hot before it even hit the shelf.  I recall begging him to take me a few times, but it never worked, and in my head, New York soon became this mythical land that revolved around FAO Schwartz.  However, my dad would sometimes bring his work home with him: I still remember the night we played with a remote control R2-D2 that one of his buddies at Kenner loaned to him.  I have an RC Dalek these days that could probably run circles around it, but when I was three, this was the end-all-be-all pinnacle of coolness.  I treasured toys of all shapes and sizes, and would love to just look at the darn things in catalogs.

So that's the first link in the fangirl chain.  The second goes back to that R2-D2 toy: the mass-merchandise phenomenon that is Star Wars.  Again, I was three when this came out, and I shall be perfectly honest when I say that I screamed like the little girl I was when we saw it the theatre.  DARTH VADER SCARED ME TO DEATH!  Every time I peeked out from behind my fingers, there he was, glaring at me from the screen.  I actually refused to see The Empire Strikes Back when it came out because I knew Darth freakin' Vader was waiting to get me.  Mind you, this didn't stop me from playing with the action figures or reading the storybooks, but to go sit in that darkened auditorium?  No way no how!  Thank God I mellowed out by the time I got to elementary school, because some parent had managed to get a hold of the first reel of Star Wars, and that became a special treat over the years: going down to the lunchroom/gym, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and watching Luke and Han and Princess Leia get projected onto the cement wall (note to all you young'uns: this occurred in the days before home video, so this was the ONLY way to see the movie once it was out of the theatre!).

The third link comes from my mom, who taught me how to draw Snoopy when I was little.  Like most kids, I gravitated towards cartoons (both animated and in the newspaper), and by the age of 5, I had a goal of becoming a cartoonist (I figured I'd squeeze it in when I wasn't being an astronaut).  Because of this, I studied linework and tried to copy my favorites until I got a style down that fit me good (I also made a brief living one summer by selling my drawings to neighborhood kids...the venture collapsed within a week).  I've become a pretty fair artist since then, and I really did consider making a career out of it when I entered college, but I couldn't stand being told what to draw day after day by my teachers.  I still love looking at vintage newspaper strips and checking out what new 'toons are on TV, though the plotlines of some are just a tad too out there for my tastes.

The fourth and strongest link in my fangirliness is what sent me right over the edge.  One of the licenses that my dad's company had the rights to was DC Comics: they'd make models and magic-marker posters and rubber-stamp kits of Superman and Batman and all their Spandex buddies, and due to this, DC would occasionally send the company free comics.  These were totally random issues of whatever DC was printing the month they made the package, and one day in 1984, my dad decided to bring one of these comp packages home for us kids.  Now, keep in mind that the only comic book I'd seen before this was an Uncle Scrooge that I swiped from a friend of mine.  So here I am, a 10-year-old wannabe cartoonist with a love of overblown adventure stories, looking at this foot-high pile of reading material.  I don't know how they managed to pry the things outta my hands so I could eat dinner!  I READ EVERYTHING.  Even the stuff I probably shouldn't have been reading at age 10 like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run and the Mature Readers-labeled Vigilante.  I didn't understand half of what was going on, but dangit, I was going to learn!

And learn I did.  Any hopes my mom had of getting me to act like a normal little girl were irrevocably shattered (not that things were looking so hot before that: I supposedly announced to her around the age of 6 that I would never put on a dress again or wear my hair in pigtails).  My already-healthy reading appetite kicked into high gear when we moved to a town that had both a public library and a comic book store within walking distance...and this was in 1989, the Year of the Batman, so I went absolutely bonkers and never looked back.  I still own about 80% of what I've termed "the original stack", and many of my current favorite comics were introduced to me there.  I'll give you a breakdown of the particulars in later posts.

So that's my secret origin.  A bunch of random events that blended together to create the craziest fangirl known to the Interwebs.  Maybe not the most unique origin, but it's the only one I've got.