Seth Fisher

Seth Fisher was born in Seattle in 1972, and lived in Coronado with his mother from age 5 to 10, until his mother remarried and the family moved to the East Coast with the Navy. In junior high school Fisher went to live with his father in Custer, South Dakota; his mother and stepfather soon moved back to Coronado, and he came every summer to visit. Fisher decided he wanted to be a comic book artist after attending his first San Diego Comic-Con when he was a freshman in college, circa 1991. After that, he started attending every year, bringing a portfolio of his work and standing in line for an editor at DC or Marvel Comics to look through the work and offer a real life critique. By the time he was 23, Fisher's work had improved enough to receive some real attention from professionals, though so far nothing that turned into a paycheck. (with a degree in mathematics), Fisher went to Japan with the JET Programme, to teach English in a rural Japanese high school on the small Oki Islands. His initial attraction to Japan was its comic book culture. Fisher studied the intricacies of manga, and wanted to go to a country where an adult could read a comic book in public without feeling the need to hide it behind a copy of Newsweek. ==Career==

Fisher first gained mainstream recognition for his and Andrew Dabb's Vertigo series Happydale: Devils in the Desert. Fisher met Dabb online in 1996, and they did an 8-page mini-comic that gave a feel for the story to pitch to a publisher. Upon completing the project, Fisher took it to SDCC '98, where he was immediately recognized by Andy Helfer. After completing Green Lantern: Willworld, Fisher was eager to do more, so he was given a year-old Flash script by John Rozum. The Flash story had no deadline, so Fisher was able to work on both that and what would eventually become Vertigo Pop! Tokyo as well as a Batman story with Dan Curtis Johnson and J. H. Williams III (that wouldn't be released until three years later as "Snow" arc of Legends of the Dark Knight series). After finishing those projects, he contributed two fill-in issues to his then-favorite ongoing, After the expiration of his exclusive contract with DC (signed in 2001, renewed in 2002), Fisher took another break from comics to focus on his marriage and, later, the birth of son. In the meantime, he produced album covers in Finland and his adopted home of Japan, as well as some work for QuickJapan magazine and Dentsu ad agency. Fisher returned to comics once again in 2005, wanting to do a Fantastic Four or Iron Man project. Zeb Wells, writer of the eventual mini-series, recalled in an October 2005 interview, In a 1999 interview, Andrew Dabb stated he and Fisher had a sequel for Happydale planned sometime in the future; Zeb Wells planned to reunite with Fisher on an Ant-Man story; unfortunately, neither of these nor any other possible future Fisher projects ever came to be. ==Death==

J. H. Williams III first broke the news of Fisher's death in a post at Barbelith Underground: The news was confirmed later that day by most major comics websites. Seth Fisher died in late January 2006 as a result of injuries suffered in a fall from a seventh story roof of an Osaka, Japan club where he went to celebrate the completion of the last issue of Big in Japan. ==Personal life==

In 1998, Fisher married his college girlfriend, April Brody, and they moved from Japan to Florence, Italy for a year so that April could study Italian. When Fisher was hired by Presto, he and April moved back to the United States to San Diego. Some years later, they divorced, and in 2002 Fisher moved back to Japan for six weeks of photographic research for Vertigo Pop! Tokyo. Acquiring an artist's visa to remain in Japan, Fisher reconnected with an old friend named Hisako Sugiyama, who would become his second wife. On May 5, 2004, the couple's son Toufuu Fisher was born. ==Bibliography==