Cut Them Off At The Past, by Dennis O’Neil

Dennis O'Neil

Dennis O'Neil was born in 1939, the same year that Batman first appeared in Detective Comics. It was thus perhaps fated that he would be so closely associated with the character, writing and editing the Dark Knight for more than 30 years. He's been an editor at Marvel and DC Comics. In addition to Batman, he's worked on Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, the Question, The Shadow and more. O'Neil has won every major award in the industry. His prose novels have been New York Times bestsellers. Denny lives in Rockland County with his wife, Marifran.

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5 Responses

  1. Rick Taylor says:

    Denny – Regardless of whether you may have FELT like scabs after the fact, I'm choosing to view the situation from this perspective. All of the talent brought over from Charlton at that point in history had actual TALENT. From a reader's perspective I truly liked reading the stories from you and Steve and the fresh style of Jim Aparo as well as others.Other editors brought Phillipino artist's over and those guys were clearly making less at their new gigs. THAT smells bad to me.Do we clearly need some sort of organization? Sure! But in this day an age we may be dealing with a concept that may exist in the past.Look at the attempt to dilute copyright ownership rolling out now. The businesses have a method to beat any attempt to give creators and talent and their will always be plently of fresh, new talent to replace them.You gotta make a living.

    • mike weber says:

      Absolutely – i loved their work at Charlton and (mostly) loved it at DC, too.I particularly loved Aparo's "Phantom Stranger"…

  2. Elayne Riggs says:

    Thanks for the name-check, Denny! I think the potential ease of scabbing is one of the big reasons there isn't a comic book creators' union. There are so many folks willing to do this sort of thing for free, who are currently putting out web comics and self-publishing and whatnot on an amateur basis, that they'd jump at the chance to work for the Big Two and make some actual money. And largely due to the national mood against unions which started turning in full force with the Reagan era and the firing of the PATCO employees, it would be tricky at best to summon up enough of the feeling of solidarity to keep wanna-bes from becoming worker bees.

  3. Rick Taylor says:

    For my money scabbing only happens when you are brought in to replace someone else.Doens't sound like this was the case.But yes, a union is still a good idea.I loved Aparo's version of the Phantom and Wander at Charlton. I liked Pat Boyette's Phantom there, too.

  4. Zonker says:

    Denny, Arnold Drake's fuller comments on the subject of the "writers' purge" (along with those of Bob Haney and John Broome) can be found in Mike W. Barr's article "The Madames and the Girls" from Comic Book Artist, and available for viewing on line athttp://books.google.com/books?id=18evuq_VXXUC&amp…+drake%22+%22comic+book+artist%22+purge&source=web&am…