Comics is a visual medium. But no matter how dazzling the individual images, how pretty the pictures, how powerfully the lines have been drawn, the story is what's at the heart of it all. Without a story, all we have are pinup pages. Maybe they're great pinup pages. But it's not really comics without a story. Writer and artist. You need both to create comics.
Sometimes the writer and the artist are one and the same, from Will Eisner to Art Spiegelman to Carol Lay. More often (especially in commercial comics), there is a division of labor. The writer writes, the artists--usually more than one artist--pencil, ink, and letter, and also color if the work's not for black-and-white publication. When I was a teenager, I decided I wanted to be one of the writers. I wanted to be like Dennis O'Neil.
Dennis O'Neil had been a journalist from Missouri before breaking into comics as a writer in the '60s. O'Neil initially wrote for Marvel Comics, then for Charlton, and began writing for DC Comics in 1968. It was at DC that O'Neil made his name.
I'm not sure of when I first became aware of O'Neil, nor can I identify which comic offered my first exposure to his work. Maybe it was in Beware The Creeper, or possibly Justice League Of America, neither of which would be among my favorite O'Neil runs. There was also his underrated work on Wonder Woman, chronicling the adventures of a de-powered Amazon Princess. I can tell you I loved his early '70s work on Superman, the "Kryptonite Nevermore!" run that moved Clark Kent out of The Daily Planet to new duties as a TV newsman. O'Neil brought an unexpected sense of verisimilitude to his portrayal of the Man of Steel. I was 11 and 12, 1971-72, and I thought it was just the greatest thing ever.
It would not be O'Neil's only claim to greatness. With artists Neal Adams and Dick Giordano, O'Neil took over Green Lantern in 1970, bringing the titular cosmic hero down to Earth to team with a costumed archer named Green Arrow, an also-ran superhero who'd hung around without much distinction since the '40s. This dynamic creative team infused Green Lantern/Green Arrow with new energy, excitement, and an embrace of social relevance that drew the attention of mainstream media. Understand: Green Arrow was strictly a second-banana character up to that point; O'Neil and company revamped this Emerald Archer into the model for the popular character we know today. You don't get to the Arrow TV series or the subsequent successful DC superhero shows on The CW without O'Neil, Adams, and Giordano showing the way. O'Neil also revived The Shadow for DC, wrote the return of the original Captain Marvel in Shazam!, crafted the magnificent Superman Vs. Muhammed Ali one-shot, and much later turned in some stunning work on The Question. He did more work for Marvel, as well. This isn't even a thumbnail of O'Neil's c.v.
But O'Neil's most important and lasting work in comics was on Batman. No--make that THE Batman. Following the cancellation of the campy 1966-68 Batman TV series, the once-formidable Caped Crusader had become a joke. Batman's tarnished reputation could only be salvaged with a return to his pulp roots. O'Neil wasn't the first to consider reestablishing the shadows in The Batman's world; Neal Adams had started adding noirish visuals to Batman's appearances in the team-up book The Brave And The Bold, and writer Frank Robbins and artist Irv Novick (inked by Giordano) had already separated Batman from Robin the Boy Wonder by sending the latter off to college, all prior to O'Neil's first Batman script.
Nonetheless, it all came together when O'Neil began to chronicle the goings-on in Gotham City. Whether working with Adams or Novick (both almost always inked by Giordano), O'Neil's Batman was undeniably The Batman. From the early '70s onward, this vision of The Batman as The Dark Knight influenced nearly every subsequent interpretation of the character. O'Neil created a new nemesis named Ra's al Ghul, revived Golden Age villain Two-Face for the first time since the '50s, and turned The Joker from the buffoonish Clown Prince of Crime that he'd become back to the murderous harlequin created by Bill Finger (and, I guess, Bob Kane, maybe) in 1940's Batman # 1.
Dennis O'Neil saved Batman. The lasting impact of his Batman writing is beyond measure; if not for O'Neil, you can be damned sure that Batman--THE Batman--wouldn't have become the multimedia juggernaut we now know. It wasn't just O'Neil, of course. Still, none of it--the movies, the mania, the pop cultural preeminence, none of it--could have ever existed otherwise.
I was blown away by O'Neil's Batman. I'd been hooked on superheroes in general and Batman in particular by the TV show in 1966, when I was six. As an adolescent and young teen, I read O'Neil's Batman and exulted in the thrill of a Dark Knight, a Batman I could believe in.
I was 13 or 14 when I decided I wanted to be a writer. Specifically, I wanted to write comics. I wanted to write Batman. Goddamn it, I wanted to write Dennis O'Neil's Batman.
I failed at that. And that's okay. The effort made me better, gradually, over time. Dennis O'Neil was one of my biggest influences as a writer. If you have ever enjoyed anything I've written, fiction or non-fiction, for this blog or elsewhere, it all comes from me wanting to be Dennis O'Neil, and Harlan Ellison, and Woody Allen, and Mark Shipper, and Max Allan Collins, and...yeah, it's a long list. The list starts with Dennis O'Neil.
Dennis O'Neil passed away last week. He was 81. Comics fandom mourns. Gotham mourns. If The Batman also mourns, his emotions remain hidden in the shadows that are his home, his mask and cloak concealing any hint of his thoughts. He sees a signal in the night sky, and knows he is needed elsewhere.
And he is gone. As if he were never there.
Thank you, Dennis O'Neil. My life and my imagination would have been much poorer without you. Thank you. Just...thank you.
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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
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Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 134 essays about 134 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).
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