From 1948 to 1956, he read and collected not only Westerns but every comic that featured Superman, Superboy, and, especially, Batman. “So it wasn’t very hard to write at all,” he said in a 2010 interview.Īnd he read comics.
In the 1960s, he enjoyed the so-called “Spaghetti Westerns” starring Clint Eastwood. His parents divorced when he was four years old and, thereafter, Fleisher said his father would take him to watch double features in New York City on Saturdays, where he developed a love for Westerns.
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Though comics would dominate the first part of his professional career, in later life Fleisher proved himself to be a dedicated researcher, scholar, and humanitarian.īorn Novemin New York City to David Fleisher (later chairman of the department of English and fine arts at Yeshiva University) and Nell (Blaustein) Fleisher Moskowitz, he graduated from the Horace Mann School for Boys, an exclusive college preparatory school in the Bronx, in 1960.
Michael Fleisher by Bob Smith, 1980.įleisher is perhaps best remembered in comics for his groundbreaking work at DC Comics on The Spectre and Jonah Hex, the authorized encyclopedias he wrote on Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and a libel case he doggedly pursued and lost against The Comics Journal (Fantagraphics, Inc.), Journal editor Gary Groth, and the science fiction writer Harlan Ellison. Michael Lawrence Fleisher, an often controversial and polarizing comic-book and comic-strip writer, died February 2, 2018, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease in Beaverton, Oregon, according to his half brother, Martin Fleisher. Features Michael Fleisher: Comic Book Writer, 1942-2018Īrthur Lortie and Michael Catron | March 21, 2018