DENNIS O’NEIL: (Hey, Dude, ain’t he ever gonna git done yakkin’ about) Continued Stories

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.

You may also like...

2 Responses

  1. M. Sean McManus says:

    "Are we done yet?"I hope not…

  2. Russ Rogers says:

    Here is another benefit of LONG serialized fiction. There is an element of interactivity between the writers and the audience. In comics this comes generally from the letter pages, where readers get to point out continuity errors, proclaim their affection or hatred for certain characters and suggest plot developments. In it's most crass form, this can take the form of phone polls, "If you think we should KILL Robin, call this number!"At it's best, the medium becomes a collaborative form between audience and writer. Like improv comedy on paper. The editors and writers takes the good suggestions and run with them. This gives the audience a greater sense of ownership, a deeper emotional investment in what finally comes out.I have a theory that one of the reasons Star Trek is so popular is because of the letter writing campaign that saved the show from cancellation between the second and third seasons. This campaign gave the fans a sense of responsibility and ownership in the franchised that lasted LONG after the series was canceled. Just a theory.ComicMix goes beyond the classic letters page. Here we have COMMENTS that can be instantly posted, and near instantly responded to. There are many examples of this, from things like (you put page 127 before page 126) which get handled almost immediately, to pointing out where spelling errors or continuity mistakes have been made. Sometimes it's just, "Good Job!" "Aww gee, thanks!"I'm a big fan-boy geek. I can admit it. I get a thrill out of interacting with writers, artists and even editors that I have admired for decades. Hey, I've been interacting for decades. I've been buying and reading. That's the major interaction that artists really want. But now I'm chatting, commenting, criticizing and validating too! And getting direct responses to questions and comments from … well some of MY heroes. That ROCKS!Here's an experiment I would like to see tried on ComicMix. Have somebody write a very short two page story with a cliffhanger. Have readers comment on how they think the cliffhanger should be solved or what direction the story should take and then have the artists create the next two page segment of the serial based on those suggestions. It's a free form example of the "Choose Your Own Adventure Story." Fast artists might even draw out alternate time lines to stories, showing how some choices suggested by readers lead to mayhem or catastrophe while others lead to some kind of limited success.The cliffhangers can be stuff like, "How should the hero escape from the car that's about to go off the cliff?" or "Should the heroine kiss the girl?"The idea is to generate a sense of involvement and ownership from the readers.