RIP Michael Fleischer
The strange and wonderful comics writer Michael Fleischer has been confirmed to have passed away.
RIP Michael Fleischer
The strange and wonderful comics writer Michael Fleischer has been confirmed to have passed away.
What did he write
>inb4 stan posting
Spectre, mostly.
Fleischer was memorable for three things.
Writing a violent and gruesome run on The Specter in Adventure Comics (so violent and bloody it was cancelled by DC)
Writing the definitive run on Jonah Hex.
Suing Harlan Ellison and Gary Groth (publisher of The Comics Journal) for libel after Ellison called him "bugfuck crazy" in an interview.
lonely.geek.nz
>Writing a violent and gruesome run on The Specter in Adventure Comics (so violent and bloody it was cancelled by DC)
Yeah, lot of ironic punishments.
>He kills a vain beauty queen by aging her to death on the runway of a pageant.
>Kills a murderous mannequin maker by turning him into a mannequin and thrown into an incinerator.
>Turns a guy into wood and saws him up.
>Feeds a guy to a giant squid.
>Cuts a guy in half with a giant pair of scissors.
>Turns a guy into glass and shatters him.
>Having Ellison call you "bugfuck crazy"
A grand accomplishment to be had.
Nobody knows who he is
Nobody cares
Stop making threads
They're shitty and gay
Breaks my heart. Especially since apparently he died in goddamn February and we're just finding out now.
Anyway, impromptu Hex storytime.
So, something to keep in mind is that Fleisher didn't actually create Hex. That'd be John Albano, who along with Tony DeZuñiga debuted Hex in 1970's All-Star Western issue 10.
All-Star Western changed names to Weird Western Tales in 1972, but Fleisher wouldn't join in as a Hex scribe until 1974.
He'd keep his position as the main Hex writer until 1987, shepherding him from Weird Western Tales, to his own magazine, to the post-apocalyptic last-ditch attempt that was HEX.
Now, there's more to Fleisher than just Hex. There's his Spectre. There's his history of the DCU. There's even his... iffy stint as a 2000AD writer in the 90s. But even if he didn't create him, to me it's all about his Hex.
(btw, any missing page numbers are just ads)
Because more than anyone else in DC, to me Hex is a character with a deeply rooted sense of history to him.
Other characters have backstories, linear sequences of events happening within a vague timeframe. Sure, Krypton blew up and Batman's parents got killed, but when? On what day? How long has it been since then?
Of course, this is absolutely intentional. Timeless characters need to remain timeless, both for the sake of keeping them relevant and as a consequence of floating timelines and whatnot. By comparison, period characters already have the benefit of existing within a set period.
But even among the likes of Sgt. Rock and Enemy Ace, not to mention his own Western ilk, Hex stands even taller as a man with an incredibly detailed, well-documented history to him. Which, coincidentally, you're reading right now.
Because we know so much about Hex with such incredible exactitude. We know where and when he was born, and we know where and when and how he died. And we know a metric shitton about everything that happened in between.
>RIP Michael Fleischer
Stephen Hawking also died today
bbc.com
Compared to more colorful or gimmicky characters like Bat Lash, El Diablo, Nighthawk and Cinnamon, Hex feels incredibly human even as he kills the absolute shit out of entire gangs single-handedly, or narrowly escapes death through impossible strokes of luck.
And what humanizes him so much is this exact sense of history to him. His life, convoluted and melodramatic as it is, is not vague or unclear. We know where he's coming from, where he's been, and how he's going to end. Which is far, far more than can be said for almost any Big Two character.
All of this is 100% down to Fleisher. Albano's entire idea of Hex's backstory was just "fought as a Confederate Cavalryman in the Civil War, there."
Everything else, everything you're reading right now, is down to Fleisher.
Fleisher took what could've been a six-issues wonder, a scarred Clint lookalike, and fleshed him out into a character that feels both grand in scope and human at his core. He has massive adventures but also a childhood. He cuts down armies of miscreants but will eventually get bushwacked while playing cards and shot twice through the chest.
And none of that bogs him down. You can still do small, done in one adventures where he stumbles onto someone else's story, where he can be just The Man With No Name riding into town, and that too is an incredibly human trait. To people who know him, Hex is a man with a storied past. To those who don't, he's an ugly fuck who shoots real good. A hero to some, and a villain to others.
And wherever he rode, people spoke his name in whispers.
He had no friends, this Jonah Hex, but he did have two lifelong companions.
>Blah blah[insert Stan Lee life vampire joke].
One was Death itself.
The other, the acrid smell of gunpowder.
Alright, second part.
I think one of the finest testaments as to how strong Fleisher's imprint on Hex was is that, when Palmiotti and Gray got to write his origin for a new generation, they basically just remade this beat by beat, only making one or two minor additions.
And they did it TWICE.
Shit, this sounds amazing.
please don't do storytimes in the very thread mate, you kill discussion.
Judge is playing tribute to a great creator by posting his work. Fuck off back to Sup Forums.
You're more than welcome to talk in between the pages. I'll stop after this issue anyways.
Ouch.
>called him "bugfuck crazy"
I'd consider that a compliment tbdesu.
Don't be stupid. I don't care who storytimes. Someone dies, someone thinks it's ok to dump his entire works on the thread, nobody else ever bothers reading.
I've seen it happen half a dozen times already. Better to make a thread for the storytime so people don't have to skip 300 posts to read who Fleischer was.
Fuck me. I picked up some Jonah Hex back issues of that happened to be in the 99 cent bin a few weeks ago. Good shit.
youtube.com
They really are. I got the two Showcase Presents volumes but I don't think they ever reprinted any more.
What year was this made? If it's Silver Age, it's fucking DARK for it.
So ultimately, that's what I'll always remember Fleisher for: taking what could've been a derivative nothing character and, over the course of a decade and a half, turning him into the closest thing to a historical figure DC has ever had. RIP and thanks for all the comics.
You can always find the dates in the legal notices at the bottom of the first pages: So, 1978. Also, check out Larry Hama as the editor.
It's over.
He's on his death bed.
trying desperately to cling to life
Thanks Judge for the Jonah Hex story by Fleischer. My mom usedcto read these comics back in the day and I'm glad I got to read it somehow.
This is a dick move, even for wild west standards.
>Ellison called him "bugfuck crazy" in an interview.
Echoing the other anons in that I'd just nod and smirk.
HE CANNOT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!
Your mom sounds like a cool lady.
RIP and thank you.
crazy bastard
One of the few kikes I wouldn't gas
Stephen Hawking also died, Stan is in a fucking roll
>Fleisher
Fixed.
Nothing new.
Oh, she is. She don't read comics these days but she does mention from time to time about Jonah Hex she follows because of the western genre she kinda was following.
I consider myself well versed in comics but I was unaware of Fleischer's work. I say storytime because there's no discussion I can participate in, other than "F"
Bump
See, no more storytime, no more discussion.
Happy?
So I'll do some discussion by asking about Hex, in my experience he's the "supernatural cowboy stories" dude, but these issues posted seem pretty straightforward cowboy action, except the protag is badly scarred. And a filthy reb traitor
Some motherfuckers are always trynna ice-skate uphill...
I would say Fleisher is being overshadowed by the death of Hawkings right now. Even then, Fleisher died in Feburary, so just finding out now made tributes to him seem well, a missed opportunity to pay respect at the right time.
I was the same for a while. Truth is, Hex being a Weird Western Character is only from his Vertigo miniseries by Tim Truman, and a couple of issues of Palmiotti and Gray's run. By and large, he's more of a hard-boiled Clint Eastwood type.
(I'll only be able to post this issue tho', I gotta run to work in a few mins)
In fact, the G&P run gave him Clint's face. Except the issues by Bernet.
Oh yeah, Luke Ross' Hex is straight-up Clint.
RIP, I have a lot of his Jonah Hex comics, I reread those issues so many times. Time to read them again. Maybe now DC will give us an omnibus?!
I'd be happy with a new DC Showcase volume. They barely scratched the surface of his run.
>drinkin' or wh-
hehe gotta skirt the ole comics code
And that's it from me for now. Gotta ride out now.
Happy trails, Sup Forums.
Just as keikaku.
I think I like Hex's paw
Love this linework, like a looser Frank Godwin