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Michael Schumacher – RIP

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D. D. Degg Published: January 5, 2026 Updated: January 6, 2026 1 minute 3 comments

Author, historian and biographer Michael Schumacher has passed away.

From the obituary:

Michael was an accomplished author having published numerous articles in local and national magazines, newspapers, and publications. Michael had the opportunity to interview many national figures, artists, authors, politicians, and athletes over his career. Michael was the author of an eclectic assortment of books, including biographies on Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Eric Clapton, Francis Ford Coppola, George Mikan, Will Eisner, and Al Capp. Michael also wrote extensively on the Great Lakes shipwrecks, including Mighty Fitz, Wreck of the Carl D, Torn in Two, and others. Michael edited numerous books about Allen Ginsberg and his life. Michael was passionate about the Beat Generation and he spent decades dedicated to researching and writing about it.

Noted here for his pair of biographies about two comics creators Will Eisner and Al Capp.

In a 2003 interview he says he got his start in early underground newspapers:

Right, right. This was at a time when the underground newspapers where big, late 60s early 70s. The thing that was beautiful about underground newspapers was that they were always looking for somebody who could write. I worked at a wonderful little paper called The Bugle-American [link added], and when you look back at the staff of that paper and the contributors to that paper, a lot of them went on to do very, very well as writers. We were all very serious. You weren’t making any money doing it, but the beauty of it was that they were publishing your stuff regularly, so I broke in that way, and for years I just contributed to whoever would buy my work. It was very difficult if you didn’t have an extensive resume to show people. You were generally writing for small publications and weekly publications, and once in a while I would write a book review for one of the newspapers or whatever. Then I caught my big break in 1979 after doing a fair amount of writing for all these little publications or newspapers. I interviewed Tom Waits for Playboy, and when you can put Playboy on your resume, other magazines listen. That was then…. I believe Playboy still is considered to be a really good place, from the writing aspect, to publish good writing. So I was respected, and all of a sudden the flood gates opened. I started sending out to magazines, and they listened to me seriously. They asked me to contribute. At that time Writer’s Digest and I established quite a relationship.

The Guardian runs the Associated Press obituary.