Articles by dennis-oneil
Tue May 15, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: The kryptonite reality
The Four-Color Answer? #14
Once again, life has imitated comics. Maybe comics should sue.
This latest instance was reported in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago and has to do with kryptonite, the stuff from Superman’s planet or origin which can lay the Man of Steel low, or even all the way down. As far as I know, kryptonite was introduced in the early 40s by the writers of the Superman radio show. Since I was only a year or two or three old at the time, I’ll forgive them for not getting in touch with me and telling me why, exactly, they introduced it. But a guess might be: to facilitate conflict, which is widely considered to be a necessary ingredient in drama, and especially melodrama.
These guys – I assume they were guys – and their comic book counterparts were facing a fairly unique problem: how to get their hero in trouble and thus create conflict/drama, and do it not only once, but several times each month, or even more often.
Oh, sure, there had been superhuman characters in world literature and myth before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, but they were in self-contained stories, and not many of those, and the problem was pretty limited. But with Superman… well, here was a fellow who was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound – and that was when he was in his infancy. (For the record: Superman is only a year older than me. That is, he appeared only about a year before I did, though I gestated for the customary nine months and Supes took a leisurely four years to progress from the imaginations of Joe and Jerry to the public prints. He was a slow developer, but once he got started…) And he literally become more powerful with every passing year. And he had to have a lot of adventures.
So, okay, how do you get this guy in trouble, often, and thus create suspense and interest? The question has been answered in many ways, many times over the years. Kryptonite was one of the earliest of these answers. According to the mythos, it is a fragment of – I guess mineral – from Krypton, where Supes was born. Something in the gestalt of our planet makes kryptonite dangerous to natives of Krypton. (All of which you almost certainly know, but we do try to be thorough here.)
We thought it was fictional. Some of us, of the professional writing ilk, further thought that it was neither more nor less than an answer to a plot problem and at least one of that ilk thought it was overused and temporarily retired it. But now, a Chris Stanley, of London’s Museum of Natural History, analyzed a substance some of his colleagues discovered and, according to the Times, “found that the new mineral’s chemistry matched the description of kryptonite’s composition in last year’s film Superman Returns.”
It is not known whether or not anyone collapsed near the stuff.
At this point, you can either shrug and get on with your life, or pause, and engage in some pretty wild speculation about the nature of reality.
Be warned: We probably aren’t finished with this topic.
RECOMMENDED READING: The God Delusion
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue May 8, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: On triskadekaphobia
The Four-Color Answer? #that number
Do my hands tremble as I type these words? Are there creaks and groans coming from the room behind me? Is the air chill and sticky?
What could be happening?
Ah, I think I have it! Triskadekaphobia – that must be it! And what is triskadekaphobia? My computer’s dictionary defines it tersely and simply: An irrational or obsessive fear of... (that number between 12 and 14.) (Parentheses and paraphrasing mine.)
This is the that number of these whatever-they-ares that I’ve written and that, my friends, is scary. That it is also irrational goes without saying, at least to the non-believers among you.
My irrational fear of... that number is not exactly new. If you look at any of the comics I’ve written in the last dozen (nor baker’s dozen!) years or so, you won’t find the dialogue balloons and captions on any single page totaling that number unless the editor added or subtracted or conflated something, in which case it’s on his or her head. And if I’m doing a script and reach the end of page 12, I either quit or make myself charge on until I get to page 14, even if I run out of steam half way through that page.
Tue May 1, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Tribute to a true master
The Four-Color Answer? #12
Kurt Vonnegut is gone.
I’d like to say that I was a bit ahead of the crowd in discovering that, while he was a science fiction writer, he was also much more, but by the publication of Cat’s Cradle in 1963 a lot of people had found this wise, sad, funny man – particularly disaffected young people.
He was often likened to Mark Twain and the comparison’s apt. But while I unstintingly admire Mr. Twain (maybe such admiration is in every Missouri-born writer’s DNA), I think Vonnegut’s quality average may be a bit higher. True, he did not write as much as his predecessor – Twain was astonishingly prolific – but he always seemed to be at or near his best. I can’t remember reading any Vonnegut piece that I thought was second-rate.
He was pessimistic without being sour, famous without egotism, and he had compassion completely devoid of sentimentality. Like Mark Twain, he could voice unpopular opinions without offending those who disagreed with him.
Continue reading DENNIS O’NEIL: Tribute to a true master ›
Tue Apr 24, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 3
The Four-Color Answer? #11
I had it easier than many comics writers. I began in the business as an assistant to Stan Lee in 1965, when Marvel was just completing its metamorphosis from obscure Timely Comics to publishing phenomenon, and Stan’s vision of what a comic book company could be was pretty much complete. Implicit in the writing part of the job was the requirement that I imitate Stan’s style – after all, Stan’s style was Marvel. That made the job simple: imitate Mr. Lee successfully and I was doing it right.
Of course, I bridled a bit at having to imitate anyone. After all, I was in my 20s and had been doing comics for about two days, and therefore, according to my lights, I was deeply wise and fully knowledgeable about…oh, name it, and don’t forget to include comics. As Bob Dylan sang, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” Now, in my sexagenarian salad days, I’m grateful for my Marvel initiation because everyone begins by imitating someone, and I didn’t have to seek a model or wait for the churning of the universe to provide one – I learned the trade by having to imitate the comic book scripter who was at that time, arguably, the best.
Here are a few words from a man who is well on his way to becoming my favorite mainstream writer: “Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master… Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.” Those observations are from a Harper’s Magazine piece by Jonathan Lethem titled “The Ecstasy of Influence,” which you can read on Harper’s website. They bring us, at last and via the long way around, to the subject of this installment of the arc (or miniseries, or series-within-a-series or whatever the hell it is) that began with what we called “Who Knows What Evil… Part 1.” Those of you who were kind enough to read the earlier installments may remember that I suggested that the creators of Batman may have been…well, call it “intensely aware” of The Shadow and other popular culture creations.
Let’s assume that they were. Did that make them wicked, weaselly thieves? No, no, and again, no. Remember: everyone begins by imitating someone. As Anthony Tollin said in a phone conversation, those early comics guys (who were barely out of adolescence and in the process of inventing a medium) had no one to emulate except authors from other forms and the newspaper strip fraternity. Since they were generally not from society’s loftier precincts, with ready access to elitist amusements, their entertainment was comic strips, movies, the pulps, and maybe radio, and it was natural – inevitable? – that they’d seek inspiration in those media. Where else?
Continue reading DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 3 ›
Tue Apr 17, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 2
The Four-Color Answer? #10
Suddenly, the air was full of bats!
The “air” here is metaphorical and if you’d allow me to fully ripen the trope, possibly to the point where it emits a faint odor, it might read, The air of popular culture in the 30s and 40s was full of bats.
Let’s see. There was a Mary Roberts Rheinhart novel and an early talkie adapted from it, both called The Bat, and there was a pulp hero also called The Bat and, a bit later, another pulp do-gooder who labeled himself The Black Bat. Am I forgetting anyone…? Oh yeah. A comic book character that was introduced in Detective Comics #27, dated May 1939, as Batman. Like an estimated eighty percent of your fellow earthlings, you may have heard of him.
And, again metaphorically, standing behind the Batman and maybe some of the others was one of the greatest pulp heroes, The Shadow. The writer of the early Batman stories, Bill Finger, made no secret of his admiration for the Shadow novels. He went so far as to admit that the Shadow’s influence on his batwork was extremely direct when he told historian (and author and artist and publisher) Jim Steranko, “I patterned my style of writing Batman after the Shadow.” And: “My first script was a take-off on a Shadow story.”
Which brings us to Anthony Tollin. Remember him? I introduced the two of you a couple of weeks ago in this very feature. I told you that a company Anthony owns has been issuing reprints of the Shadow books. Recently, he sent me an early copy of one of those books, titled Partners of Peril, and suggested that I might want to compare it to the first Batman adventure, The Case of the Chemical Syndicate.
Of course there are differences. After all, the Shadow novel is probably around 50,000 words long and Batman’s debut is six comic book pages. But there are also similarities. I won’t even try to describe them all – see Robert Greenberger’s ComicMix article, or Anthony’s text piece in the book itself – but they are manifold. In a phone conversation a few hours ago, Anthony mentioned the most obvious, among which are:
- Both are about a – yes! – chemical syndicate.
- The heroes of both get involved in the proceedings while visiting a law-enforcing friend.
- Both feature virtually identical death traps, which each hero beats in the same way.
- Both heroes offer the same whodunit-type explanation at the adventure’s end.
- Both heroes spend a lot of time on a rooftop after a safe robbery.
- The denouements of both stories are, again, virtually identical.
Et cetera.
As I wrote in the earlier column, anyone with even the dimmest interest in pop culture or comics history, or who just wants to sample the kind of entertainment that kept pops or granddad reading by flashlight under the covers, or who’s just in the mood for capital-M Melodrama combined with capital-H Heroics, might want to see if the Shadow has anything for them.
For me, the stuff has another aspect, one which is as modern as hip-hop. But that’s for next week.
RECOMMENDED READING: Awww…you know.
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue Apr 10, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O'NEIL: No evil lurks this week
The Four-Color Answer? #9
Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I know I promised, at least implicitly, to deliver Who Knows What Evil Lurks – Part 2 this week. But that will take some time and maybe digging, to write and, honestly, I have the luxury of neither. By the time you read this, I’ll either be at or returning from Juaniata, Pennsylvania, where I’ve been invited to be the guest of Jay Hosler and maybe shoot off my mouth in public a bit. I’ve been busy doodling notes for said mouth-shooting; hence no dissertation on lurking evil.
I thought about just blowing off this whole column thing, or delaying it until I was back here in scenic Upper Nyack, and rested. But… I promised editor Mike Gold and PR goddess Martha Thomases that I would deliver a minimum of 500 words each and every week. And I made the same promise to myself. Sternly, I said to myself that I had to respect the deadline, even if the deadline in question is largely of my own making.
By the way, I don’t hate deadlines the way a lot of writers and artists seem to. Maybe that’s just because I lived with them for so long – for over 40 years, they were a constant part of my life. What can be said against them is that they can be a pain in the ass. What can be said for them is that they can impart focus to a project and they can be an impetus to stop kvetching and worrying about your ability to leave civilization breathlessly in your debt (and maybe sit on David Letterman’s couch) and just, please, get the damn thing done.
A couple of paragraphs back – I’ll wait while you check – I mentioned Jay Hosler. Doctor Hosler teaches biology at Juaniata College, is a proponent of evolution, a comics enthusiast, a writer, and a cartoonist. He’s done two graphic novels which I found educational and very entertaining. You’ll find the titles below.
Tue Apr 3, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 1
The Four-Color Answer? #8
Meet Anthony Tollin.
I did, more than 30 years ago, at DC Comics. Anthony was tall, friendly, didn’t look like a New Yorker, and wasn’t. He came to Manhattan from Minneapolis in 1973, worked a couple of jobs, and then landed at DC, where he stayed for 20 years, proofreading, color-coordinating, helping Jack Adler manage the production department – necessary chores, done well away from the spotlight, that transform the raw materials of artwork and script into a printed artifact. Along the way, Anthony got married, and divorced, moved to another state, and when he retired from DC, settled in Texas, where he lives and single-parents his lovely and gifted daughter, Katrina.
If you talked to Anthony much, you soon discovered that he had a number of pop cultch enthusiasms, not the least of which was comic books. But his real passions – I don’t think the word is too strong – were always The Shadow novels, mostly written by Walter Gibson under the pseudonym Maxwell Grant and published in the 30s and 40s in the pulp magazine format, and old radio shows, particularly the crime and adventure programs that were the first cousins of the pulps and comics. If ever I had a question about either of these subjects, Mr. Tollin was always my first go-to guy. I never needed a second.
Those passions are still part of the Tollin gestalt, and now he’s found a new way to both share and make a living from at least one of them. Since July, a company Anthony started has, in partnership with something called Nostalgia Ventures, been issuing reprints of The Shadow books. The price is $12.95, quite modest considering that in one volume you get two novels and reprints of the original illustrations, a feature that’s both unusual and, I think, a real value-adder. The book that’s on the desk next to my computer would certainly be mistaken for one of the old pulps – same size, same kind of cover and font – until you picked it up and found that, in fact, both the cover stock and the interior stock are considerably better than anything that bore the original work. Inside, there are the novels, plus a couple of pieces by Will Murray, another expert and go-to guy, and an adaption of a Shadow radio show.
And as a comics fan you should care… why?
Continue reading DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 1 ›
Tue Mar 27, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: On Arnold Drake
The Four-Color Answer? #7
For a lot of years I didn’t know much about Arnold Drake beyond some minimal biography: he was a first-generation comic book writer, he had written a movie or two. Then, last summer, we were thrown together for a public conversation at a small convention and for an hour I found Arnold to be charming, witty, a good raconteur, a treasury of information about the history of our medium, and way younger than his years. When we parted, Arnold gave me his card and we made vague noises about getting together in Manhattan, some time or other. We never did, and last week an email from Danny Fingeroth informed me that Arnold had died.
When I think about guys like Arnold, I’m reminded of the final scene of Herman Wouk’s play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. You may remember it: Defense lawyer Barney Greenwald, having just cleared his Navy officer client of a charge of mutiny and, in the process, humiliated a career Navy man named Captain Queeg, arrives at the victory party and, bitterly, eloquently, regrets what he has done. Queeg and his ilk, Greenwald says, kept the Navy going during the years between wars, when there was no opportunity for glory, maintained the infrastructure so there was something to build on when the country was threatened.
Tue Mar 20, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Death Dedux
The Four-Color Answer? #6
It’s getting so a man can hardly turn on his television set without seeing someone he knows. A couple of weeks back, there was my old boss, Stan Lee, playing a jovial bus driver on NBC’s Heroes. And a few days ago I was surfing through the news channels when I saw a familiar face belonging to Joe Quesada, once my co-creator on a comic book called Azrael and now Marvel’s editorial honcho. I caught the very end of Joe’s appearance and so didn’t hear what he was talking about. But the next day’s New York Times told me: Captain America is dead! Then, that evening, Comedy Central’s Colbert Report devoted a whole segment to Cap’s passing.
Well, okay, but before you transfer all your issues of Captain America to black mylar bags, remember that, in comics, death is not necessarily permanent. I myself presided over the termination of Jason Todd, aka Robin the Second, and these days he’s again on the scene, quite chipper. This is not even the first time Cap has returned from that Great American Legion Hall In The Sky. Some time in the 60s, Stan featured, in one of his superhero titles, a guy impersonating World War Two’s greatest hero – yes, Captain America – and, as I understand it, when the reader response was positive, did a story in which our flag-bedraped hero was found to be, not dead, as people had assumed, but frozen in an ice berg. Thawed, he was good as new.
The post-WWII Cap presented creators with problems because he was, unavoidably, an anachronism, a fact that later writers incorporated into plotlines. He was created at the outbreak of the war by two very young and patriotic men and wore his allegiance on his back, literally, in a restitching of Old Glory. There was a lot of implied chauvinism in his early adventures, and I mean that as no criticism. In those days, the nation faced a real and present enemy and everyone was ultra-patriotic except for a few fringe folk who were widely considered loony, or worse. Cap was one of a long line of protagonists for whom conventional virtue was the only virtue.
In the years before the war, some pop cultcha good guys showed signs of rebelling against conservative notions of right and wrong. The first World War, the one that was supposed to end all wars (and all may now laugh bitterly), had served up a massive helping of disillusionment which was reflected in the private eyes and rogue adventurers who populated the pulp magazines, and radio, and even movies – swashbucklers and truth seekers who knew authorities were not to be trusted. (Later, they were admired by the French existentialists as men who, living in an essentially meaningless universe, created and lived by their own morality.) They were maybe truer to reality than their predecessors, these lonely rebels in business suits; after Viet Nam and the Nixon administration; only the innocent and naive could believe that persons of authority were incorruptible.
Tue Mar 13, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
Dennis O'Neil: The Fanatic Conclave, part two
The Four-Color Answer? #5
About 370 million years ago, give or take, swimmy little critters biologists now call lobefish developed appendages that were helpful in getting around the bottoms of the ponds and lakes where they lived. Their descendants eventually flopped onto land and those appendages evolved into things that are useful for tap-dancing, kicking field goals and, attached to the likes of Jessica Alba, drawing admiring glances.
Comic books began as a low-common-denominator, novelty entertainment and became an industry and, arguably, an art form. Lobefish spawned, among other phenomona, karate and Ms. Alba’s thighs and comic books spawned, among other phenomona, comic book conventions. These were, at first, quite modest affairs, as described in last week’s installment of this feature, but, like the lobey appendages, have evolved into quite something else. They’re, some of them, held in gigantic auditoriums – the San Diego Convention Center and New York’s Javits Center, to name two – and attended by tens of thousands of participants. And people far more knowledgeable regarding showbiz than I am say that anyone wanting to launch a fantasy or science fiction-themed movie or television show is well-advised, if not required, to do so at one of these mega-soirees.
They have become an integral part of the huge modern monster media and I wonder if they’re not more influential as that than as places for hobbyists to gather and share enthusiasms. Further – I wonder if some folks forget that the “comi” in comicon refers to these visual narratives still being published in glorified pamphlet form.
A lot more entertainment seekers will see the forthcoming Fantastic Four movie (starring our friend Jessica, by the way) than will read any years’ worth of Marvel’s Fantastic Four comic books. And how many of the millions of ticket buyers who made Ghost Rider the box office champ for two weeks running, despite iffy reviews, even realized that the character had been born as a Marvel superhero?
I think it’s clear that the term comic book is in the process of redefinition, though what it will mean in 10 years I don’t know. It certainly won’t be merely a noun referring to the aforementioned pamphleted narratives. Nor will it any longer be a modifier meaning low, dumb, semi-literate, borderline immoral, as it has been until recently, and might still be in some venues. Probably it’ll describe a genre, or combination of multi-media genres. Or, could be, it’ll be entirely forgotten. After all, we don’t call legs lobes, do we?
And now, in the spirit of Jon Stewart, who on The Daily Show has his moment of Zen, we have our Recommended Reading: Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre
Tue Mar 6, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
Dennis O'Neil: The Fanatic Conclave
The Four-Color Answer? #4
File this under: If the tail wags the dog for long enough, does the tail become the dog? Part I.
But first, a little reminiscence.
I had been in the comic book business less than six months, maybe not much more than one month, when I attended my first comics convention at the invitation of Flo Steinberg, known as "Fabulous Flo" during Marvel's formative days. The event was held in the gym of the McBurney YMCA on 23rd Street in Manhattan. The guest of honor was Buster Crabbe. I don't think I'd seen any of his filmed work yet, but somewhere I'd learned that he had done some comics-derived movie serials and that made him a celebrity and I guess I was impressed, not having met many celebrities.
Tue Feb 27, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
Dennis O'Neil: Heroes and Villains
The Four-Color Answer? #3
When writer John Broome, artist Gil Kane, and the real villain, editor Julius Schwartz, reinvented the Green Lantern in 1959, they were corrupting the youth of America, or at least the comics reading segment thereof, by promoting authoritarian attitudes and glorifying barely disguised fascism.
Weren't they?
I mean, didn't we agree, in last week's installment of this feature, that Green Lantern was changed from a guy with magical powers derived from a lantern and a ring, a bit of a loner, not unlike Aladdin, into a guy with superscientific gimmickry who gave unquestioning obedience to his masters, the self-styled Guardians of the Galaxy? A member of a uniformed corps?
Well, maybe not.
Tue Feb 20, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
Dennis O'Neil: What Would Green Lantern Do?
The Four-Color Answer? #2
So do the Guardians of the Universe equip Green Lanterns with bumper stickers that read: My Space Sector, right or wrong?
This question is prompted by something that recently popped up on my screen, a political blog entry forwarded by Martha Thomases, ComicMix's commnications director and my friend of more than 30 years. The blog was by Matthew Yglesias and it likened the current U.S. foreign policy honchos to the fictional Guardians and their interstellar group of do-bes, the Green Lantern Corps, each of whom is assigned a chunk of the galaxy. Mr. Yglesias describes the gizmos that give the Lanterns their bag of tricks as "the most powerful weapon(s) in the universe," trinkets that "let bearer(s) generate streams of green energy... (W)hat the ring can do is limited only by the stipulation that it create green stuff and by the user's combination of will and imagination." Mr. Yglesias continues: "(A) lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that... we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient... force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower."
Continue reading Dennis O'Neil: What Would Green Lantern Do? ›
Tue Feb 13, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
Dennis O'Neil: I’m not the man I used to be
The Four-Color Answer?
I'm not the man I used to be. But comics aren’t what they once were, either.
Allow me to elaborate, on both myself and comics.
First, me. A looming godlike Presence -- you can call him "Mr. Editor" -- would like me to introduce myself. Well. I’ve gone past many of my Catholic boyhood shibboleths, but I'm still stuck with the one that insists that no Gentleman speaks favorably of himself -- we're supposed to be like medieval knights, only without all the skewering and clanking. Still, when a Looming godlike Presence commands... Okay, quick and dirty, I’ll tell you what I was.
Starting in 1965, when I took a job as Stan Lee's assistant, I was in the comic book business. As a writer, I did hundreds of comics scripts, some of which got noticed. Also, I was an editor for 23 years, most recently of the Batman franchise, and, even more recently, a teacher of comic book writing, a job I still happily do. I've also written novels, non-fiction books, a few teleplays, a lot of short pieces, including stories, reviews and introductions. And columns -- I've done those, too. And I've shot off my mouth in public quite a bit. That’s what I was. What I am, as these words are typed, is a semi-retired slug.
We cool, Mr. Presence?
Continue reading Dennis O'Neil: I’m not the man I used to be ›
