Sure, came out just a couple of years ago, under the same title as the 1988 miniseries that first reprinted them and premiered the then-newly drawn last three, WRATH OF THE SPECTRE. I understand that there is absolutely nothing in it but those 13 stories, not even a representation of Peter Sanderson's text pieces from that old mini.

Darren: Concerning a modern-day descendant of Jonah's lost kid--I hope you just gave somebody at DC an idea!

Was anything further ever made of that offspring somewhere?

Not that I can recall. It would be a nifty trick to play, deciding which DC current day hero is a decendant of Jonah.

I don't have the last of the western series at hand but it does leave the lady in the lurch. In the Unlimited Access mini series Axel Asher is shown to be the cause of Jonah's jump into the future, and I vaguely recall that Asher interacts with the lady, but I can't remember the full details.

Check out http://www.lonely.geek.nz/jhcj56.html for as much as I've been able to trace of information and links about Fleisher's later career, the most informative being http://rodrigobaeza.blog-city.com/i_find_that_they_are_comic_books.htm

I haven't looked at one in ~18 years, but I can still remember characters and moments. For instance, one of the protagonists was a paladin with an alcoholism problem. IMS he'd fallen and then crawled back to redemption, but he still had the problem...

I think that series has disappeared without a trace and never been collected. Which is a shame, because it wasn't bad. In fact, for what it was -- a comic book adaptation of a popular role-playing game -- it was fantastic, because you'd expect something like that to suck worse than gravity.

Doug M.

This was clearly very abrupt, as several loose ends were left dangling, including a cliffhanger situation in the very last Western issue, with Hex’s being lifted out of his own time and transported to the future abandoning a young woman in a dangerous predicament.

I flicked through the last western issue years ago at a 2nd hand book store, and from what I remember of the last page, it had Hex shot and dying, or possibly dead, and then his body going pink and dissapearing with a 'The End?' caption, and on the next page an ad for 'HEX'.
So I'm not sure if there was a cliffhanger there - although I only looked at that last page.

Thanx for the info on Fleisher's book. It's certainly different subject matter from comic books. And getting that poster from Fleisher was definitely an unexpected surprise.

Hi Ted,

As I said before, I picked up the Jonah Hex books after I read Hex, and I never did pick up the final issue. In any case, I haven't read issues from either series in several years so I really don't remember the dangling plot lines from JH--so maybe I'm not remembering Fleisher's exact comments either.

My copy of that issue is in storage and not easily accessible.

Sorry, but I stand by my statement that there was a ton of unfinished business in the JH title, including the cliffhanger in the final issue. Let me put it another way: While one could see house ads promising a big change coming for the series, Fleisher was ADDING new plot machinations in the Western format, which were just---and very abruptly---abandoned with the transition to HEX. Doesn't jibe with cancellation already a given. I have always suspected that some other revamp was planned but jettisoned in favor of the SF shift. And a statement in the text page of HEX #1 that the Western book had already gotten its pink slip anyway should have thrown THAT out the window (I had every issue until a 1994 cross-country move). Do you still have that issue and a way to post a scan of that page?

Thanks for posting this article on Michael Fleisher. Does anybody know what became of him after he left comics?

he went on to "pursue other interests," Paul... for instance, he published this here book:

http://www.amazon.com/Kuria-Cattle-Raiders-Violence-
Vigilantism/dp/0472086987

and, oh yeah... i'm pretty envious you got in that "In a violent new world, old habits die hard" poster. i wanted that thing even before i even fully realized that the ad was in any way connected to Jonah!

Jonah Hex was facing cancellation from low sales, but Fleisher wasn't considering any reboot of the character until he saw the Hex logo, which I believe was designed by Ed Hannigan. Hannigan was just having fun sketching the name, but the look of it inspired Fleisher with the idea to drop Jonah into a post-apocalyptic future.

Fleisher pitched it to the powers that be at DC, and although everyone agreed it was a bit out there, they approved it because Jonah was ending anyway.

Whether it was the concept or the new #1 on the cover, the initial books sold well enough and there were a lot of positive letters in the column where Fleisher corresponded with readers. There were enough fans of the book that it lasted 18 issues--an additional year and a half that DC didn't believe Jonah's western book could have done.

Hex's reboot had nothing to do with Crisis on Infinite Earths (or at least it wasn't specifically tied into the series). Jonah appears in COIE with Bat Lash, Nighthawk, and Scalphunter in issue #4 in the Old West with the time-traveling superheroes to defend the Monitor's machine from the Anti-Monitors shadow-demons. He doesn't significantly appear again until issue #12 and Harbinger refers to Hex fighting for survival in the future.

Overall, I enjoyed the Hex series because I picked it up at a time when I was first getting into comics and because I was a huge Mad Max/Road Warrior fan. The first seven issues are the best of the bunch as the story is one continuing arc.

A scientist has been abducting warriors from throughout the time-stream to battle in re-created virtual environments for the amusement of the wealthy. Jonah escapes, hooks up with the scientist's daughter, the warrior Stiletta, and befriends Stanley Harris, an American soldier taken out of Vietnam. With Stiletta's help, Jonah and Harris just want to return to their own times.

There was some good character development in those first issues (especially Harris), and Mark Texeira illustrated a wild world that was part-Road Warrior and part-Star Wars. Then Texeira left and Keith Giffen took over the art--and the extreme style change was too much for most readers. Fleisher's scripts became as abstract as Giffen's art and Hex ended abruptly--the final story having Hex come upon his stuffed and mounted corpse, realizing that he will return home someday.

Fleisher penned one last Hex tale for Secret Origins #21. In 1987, Jonah's ancient Indian wife, Tall Bird has found his body and wants to bury it properly. A collector of Old West artifacts wants the body for himself, and when he threatens to kill Tall Bird he is shot in the back by Jonah's corpse.

Considering how most fans feel about the Hex series, I was surprised and amused to find Jonah refer to his time-traveling experiences in the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Once and Future Thing."

Hex was my first introduction to Fleisher and the first Jonah stories I read. I liked the series enough that I bought around 50-60 back issues of the original (and arguably superior) Jonah Hex series. At the time I got into comics, I probably never would have heard of Jonah had Hex not been published, as most of my friends were into 80s media comics and superheroes.

I also have a soft spot for the Hex series because I had a brief correspondence with Fleisher at the time of its publication. I had written into the letter column asking about the Hex advertisement I had seen in several books ("In a violent new world, old habits die hard"), and if it was available as a poster. Fleisher was kind enough to send me his own copy of the poster. At a recent Big Apple Con, I had an amused Mark Texeira sign it.

Thanks for posting this article on Michael Fleisher. Does anybody know what became of him after he left comics?

I haven't seen DC's SHOWCASE collections, but the one Marvel ESSENTIAL I flipped through (Dr. Strange) was not only in b/w, but the art didn't seem to have been prepared for the lack of color (like the very first collection of the Goodwin/Simonson MANHUNTER, published in the old graphic album-like format and out-of-house in about 1980). Don't like THAT.

As for JONAH HEX becoming HEX, DC didn't cancel the title, any more than they cancelled WONDER WOMAN at about the same time; they just revamped it to the point of deserving a new #1, and in Jonah's case, altering the title ''per se'' as well. This was clearly very abrupt, as several loose ends were left dangling, including a cliffhanger situation in the very last Western issue, with Hex's being lifted out of his own time and transported to the future abandoning a young woman in a dangerous predicament.

Greg, you talk in detail about the shelved Spectre scripts eventually drawn abd published in the last issue of 1988's "WRATH" miniseries, and mention THE COMICS JOURNAL's 1980 interview with Michael Fleisher. Ever notice that while the former presented THREE stories, the latter specifically stated he left TWO? And Mike went on in depth about what he felt was and was not the right way to handle Spectre, especially criticizing the approach of the 60s version, yet just a few months later, BRAVE AND BOLD #188 presented a Batman/Spectre team-up credited to him (and Jim Aparo) that was exactly the sort of story found in that Julie Schwartz-edited run! His description there of the 40s version is in stark contrast to what is to be found in the Spectre's archive volume a few years ago. Does anybody know if Fleisher's lawsuit also contained (or didn't) a complaint about his own interview (which was in #56, just three issues after the Ellison one)?

The original Green Lantern and Superman volumes were published at $9.99, so there’s got to be a LITTLE wiggle room there.

There might be some wiggle room, but that may also just be a case of DC deliberately losing money by offering those two volumes at that price as "loss leaders."

My guess is the former, being that (a) DC, a subsidiary of Time-Warner, surely has WAY more money to throw around than Marvel, and (b) the mid-'70s would tie the royalty change to around when the Seigel/Shuster brouhaha over the Superman movie was in full swing. DC came out of that much kinder to their freelancers than they'd ever been before; better royalties seem a likely development. (And an ironic one if better royalties mean the publisher balks at actually paying the improved royalty fees and therefore elects not to republish the material at all, but never mind...)

The original Green Lantern and Superman volumes were published at $9.99, so there's got to be a LITTLE wiggle room there. Didn't Marvel have some sort of similar issue with their Essential line, and didn't they get over it pretty quick when they saw what a demand there was for Howard The Duck and Tomb of Dracula?

That's not rhetorical -- I'm genuinely curious. It would be great if someone seeing this who knows the score could clear it up. Because if it really is about DC not wanting to pay fees for work past 1976, that means a lot of other good stuff is off limits as well. That would be a shame.

Also, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Hex Showcase v2. What I've heard is that due to a change in reprint fees that cuts in at that date, Showcase won't go past 1976 in terms of what it reprints, since to do so would up the price of the volumes considerably. I believe Hex v1 went as far as they can go under that policy.