Author: Dennis O'Neil

Dennis O’Neil: Happy Endings

For a while, my favorite way of paying the bills was by writing Batman stories for DC Comics. But that was over. I’d accepted a job with Marvel, DC’s arch rival, and so the story I was working on would be my final visit to the Batcave. Well, no  problem.  I was a pro and a pro, I probably thought,  keeps emotions away from the workdesk.

As the splendid Alfred Bester said, “Among professionals the job is boss.”  But still…farewell to Batman? Forever? So I wrote a final panel with a final caption that could have ended the Batman saga, which had been going on for decades.  I knew that it wouldn’t, of course.  Editor Julius Schwartz would  employ another writer and Batman would continue with nary a beat missed. But I would know that my Batman, the only one that counted, would have ended his career with that closing caption.

I wonder how Arthur Conan Doyle felt when he sent Sherlock Holmes over Reichenbach Falls to what he apparently believed would be the great detective’s final exit.

Holmes didn’t stay dead and after some seven years at Marvel, neither did my own private Batman. I returned to DC and, power-mad ogre that I am, assumed editorship of the Batman franchise, which at the time consisted of two comic books. No hardcover novels, no megamovies, just two flimsy comic books. (Plus a number of non-bat related titles, but never mind them.)

And why, you might well inquire, if you are still with me, am I blathering on about such ancient (ancientish) history now?

Cast your mind back to last week’s televised Arrow, which you must have watched, the season’s last episode  and what could have been the finale for the whole series. Arrow, whose birth name is Oliver Queen, has just vanquished his supreme enemy and restored peace and tranquility to his city. He has assembled his cadre of  assistants (disciples?) and proclaimed them his successors. His task is done and they are more than capable of dealing with future tasks. We next see him cruising along an open highway in an open-top convertible, the lovely Felicity Smoak by his side, vanishing into what will surely be the happiest of happy endings.

Except that the series has been renewed and will rise again come fall. So what will Oliver (and let’s not forget the lissome Felicity) be up to in the chilly months while their cohorts kick ass and take villainous names? To just have them leave the series forever would be gutsy, but maybe not commercially prudent. Or maybe they can be more or less absent for a bit – we could look in on them occasionally – and eventually find a reason to return to the fray.  Or maybe they’ll never reach their happy-ever-after destination because of an unforeseen crisis that demands their attention.  (Are they carrying cell phones?)

Or maybe – here’s hoping! – those clever scribes in tv land will devise something breathtakingly original  that will leave me sprawled on  the couch, awed.

I’ve got a whole summer to hope that’s what happens.

 

Dennis O’Neil: Cop Shows, Reality Blows

I call them “cop shows” or, if I’m feeling a bit cutesy, “badge operas.” A screenwriting acquaintance says they’re “procedurals.” But never mind the label: by whatever name, they’re what constitutes most of the bread-and-butter television programming and you probably don’t have to go further than your nearest remote to find one.

There will be a pseudo family of protagonists – police, doctors, lawyers, feds, the occasional fire fighter or paramedic – and these people will be presented with a problem, usually one that involves injury done to an innocent party, and, using their skills and wit and such facilities as are provided to them, they will solve the problem. Usually, but not always, there is a happy ending appended to the story and once in a very great while, things end badly.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for that episode. Usually, by the rolling of the end credits, righteousness and harmony have been restored, justice has been done. The message, which we get over and over and over and over again, is that the system works to assure that the good guys win. Those good guys may have their quirks and eccentricities, but they’ve got each others’ backs and they will get the job done!

Do you believe that? Do I? Well, no, not consciously. That’s not the message real life has delivered. But it is the message that we hear every day, constantly. And I suspect that it registers with most people, at least subliminally, and we are cheery and optimistic enough to hit the mall and, you know, buy happy-making stuff.

Many of the world’s religions have been offering similar palliatives for centuries. No matter how wretched your life is, be patient and do what we say and eventually you’ll go to the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

But procedurals aren’t all that television provides. Lately, if you’ve surfed your way onto a news channel, you’ve seen images of fire and chaos and violence. That little town outside St. Louis – Ferguson, is it? And a couple of hundred miles or so south of where I’m sitting, a favorite city, Baltimore. Riots and looting and pain and terror. None of it scripted.

More to come? Almost certainly.

Maybe something can be done. But…the situation isn’t really that bad, is it? Oh, that business in Ferguson and Baltimore and maybe a few other locales here and there, now and then – that’s certainly disturbing. But fundamentally, everything’s okay. Nothing broke that won’t be fixed.

Now, what’s on tonight? Law and Order SVU? One of the CSI shows? Oh, and Bones. Bones is always good.

 

Dennis O’Neil: It’s All Done With Mirrors

So the new Avengers movie only brought in $191,000,000 and change, domestic. Well, we knew it was a loser, didn’t we? Its predecessor did way better – broke the $200,000,000 mark without working up a sweat. Then along comes this loser with its giant robot – a giant robot? Really? What a two-finger job!

Okay, I haven’t actually seen the movie but I’ve certainly been aware of it. All those tv ads, all that hype… I imagine that when I do, I won’t be disappointed. It will be what it is, a professional entertainment done by people who know how to make movies and know how to tell superhero stories.

That hasn’t always been the case: I’ll arbitrarily date the first serious superhero flick from 1978 when the kindly corporation that was, then, my main source of income delivered unto the nation’s screens Superman, a film that was slightly marred by an unevenness of tone but which, unlike most of its forerunners, asked that audiences take it seriously. It wasn’t the Citizen Kane of costumed melodrama, but it was a solid dose of escapist entertainment.

When the darkish Batman debuted decade later and repeated Superman’s success, the superheroic colonization of summer blockbusters began in earnest. Now, the guys in the costumes own the region.

Don’t they? If you wanted to play pessimist, you could interpret the latest Avenger flick’s lavish but slightly disappointing box office performance as a harbinger of an impending end. Have we superheroed out?

At least one commentator thought that might be so and I confess that when I look at Yahoo’s news column and see several superhero stories that really aren’t very important, even as importance is measured in the land of popular entertainment, I wonder if the journalists haven’t anything else to occupy their computers. (The middle east? Racial tensions? Global warming?) It’s the old going-backstage-at-the-magic-show quandary: do I really want to see how all the tricks are done? Won’t that interfere with my enjoyment of them? And if everyone knows the Secrets, won’t that hasten the end of magic shows? And what if magic shows are the only kind of amusement available?

Of course, I can go backstage and not look at how the tricks are done. But do you really think I have that much character? Really?

Ah, the questions we ask ourselves on a beautiful spring afternoon…

Maybe because asking questions about the middle east, et al.is discomfiting.

Let’s think about something else, shall we? I wonder if the forthcoming Superman vs Batman will be any good. And what on Earth can the guys at Marvel possibly hope to do with Ant Man? And will there be a sequel to Daredevil?

Boy oh boy, there sure is a lot too think about!

 

Dennis O’Neil: This Shall Not Change!

I guess I should put some kind of SPOILER WARNING right here, up front. Isn’t that a rule?

So Arrow has made a devil’s deal with Ras Al Ghul and, in exchange for his sister’s life, agreed to become one of Ras’s League of Assassins. What next? I’ll be watching the CW on Wednesday night to find out, but in your time zone, that was yesterday.

The storyline is based on one that appeared in Batman some years ago. Adapting a Batman plot to the Arrow really isn’t much of a stretch – the characters, though impressive, are both thoroughly human and operate pretty much on the same scale. (I’m tempted to call it “mythic” but that might be edging toward pomposity so let’s settle for “primordial” and get on with it. Or is “primordial more pompous than mythic?)

The Arrow creative folk are basing their drama on the old Batman continuity to which I contributed, but they’re taking the basic ideas further and in the process making improvements. As I was watching the show I wondered if those improvements occurred to me, way back when.  Almost certainly not. Why? Well, uh…maybe because they break, or broke, some of the rules of superhero writing. And where, exactly, did I learn these rules? Were they written down, maybe on the walls of the publishing office? Given to me as part of a “welcome aboard” package? Or did some paternal executive, kindly eyes twinkling behind rimless glasses, take me aside and explain the facts of life to the new kid?

Nope, nope, and nope.

My best guess is, I intuited them, or figured them out, from the comic books I’d read. This, obviously, was how things were done. I’m not talking about sex or violence – we knew those had to be approached gingerly because of the times we were living in and that was no problem; I didn’t, and don’t, yearn to splash hormones and blood across the pages of comics. (The mandate, as always, is if the elements in question don’t serve the narrative, they probably don’t belong in the story.) No, the kind of unwritten taboo we’re discussing might have been broached if I’d had my masked vigilante reveal his real identity to the world, or had him ally with the villain, as Arrow apparently did last week.

Would rebellious li’l ol’ me have gotten away with such transgressions? Hard to say. Might have depended on who I was working for. Editors have their individual foibles. And there seemed to be no one way of reading and interpreting the Comics Code, the industry’s self-censoring tsar which was, presumably, the real rule setter. But nothing in the Code’s protocol mentioned double identities (though there was, if memory serves, a provision that dictated that the bad guys had to be in custody by story’s end.

(I did get away with depriving Green Arrow of his fortune and sending both the original Batwoman and Black Canary’s husband, Larry Lance, to their eternal rewards. Maybe nobody noticed.)

I guess the overarching commandment was: This Shall Not Change.

Some form of that is probably still The Commandment, but the enforcement is much more generous.

Alas, there was no rule, written or unwritten, that guarantees a great story every time out. There still isn’t. If I’m wrong about that, somebody please let me know.

Dennis O’Neil: Small Scientists In Big Packages

Glad tidings for all you superhero fans out there. A new Atom! And this one didn’t debut in the pages of a comic book, as his predecessors did. No, he sort of snuck in to the zeitgeist through whatever portal is reserved for television-spawned characters. If he eventually does appear in the comics, it’ll be a reversal of the usual procedure of going from comics to other media.

Since you’re reading this no earlier than Thursday morning (unless you’re a ComicMix staffer) you may have already seen him on Wednesday night’s episode of Arrow, where I’m sure he’ll put in an appearance. Fact is, if you’re a fan of that show, you’ve already seen him. He’s been on the set for a while now, introduced in the same way as Arrow’s people introduced The Flash last year. At first he was just a part of the storyline and only gradually did it become obvious that he had a larger destiny. (Introducing a character in a show other than the one said character will star in is an old television trick. There’s even a name for it: back door pilot.)

So, what about this new Atom? Take a look at him. Compare him to the first Atom, introduced in 1940. Anything familiar? Certainly not the costume. How about his superpowers? Hah – trick question. The first Atom didn’t have any powers. Costume: yes. Powers: no. He was a college student and later a scientist named Al Pratt and he was small and tough and… that’s it. Didn’t keep him from joining the Justice Society and share meeting with Superman, Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern – the biggies. Weep not for Al, because he did eventually gain super strength.

I wonder about the no-powers business. I mean, why? Well, the superhero game was brand new in 1940, maybe not well understood. Could the first Atom’s creators thought that the suit was the important thing?

Anyway, that was the first Atom. The second was a big improvement on ol’ Al Pratt. This was Ray Palmer, another, yes, scientist who, after exposure to a fragment of a white dwarf star, devised a gadget that allowed him to shrink way, way down, to sub atomic size if he so chose. That may not have been the most spectacular superpower in the paantheon, but it at least justified the “Atom” sobriquet. (Did anyone call him “the swatable super guy”? Probably not.)

And after Ray Palmer, the deluge. Five more Atoms, not counting the one who currently graces your video screen – another Ray Palmer who is a, you guessed it, scientist. Costume? Powers? That’s where this Atom differs from the rest. His powers are his costume, an exoskeleton that allows him to fly and be strong and maybe other nifty stuff to come. It’s not a new idea – you might know that there’s a Marvel dude with a similar rig – but, as we’ve observed before, nothing is really new. It’s always the recipe, never the ingredients.

But I wonder why they decided to call him The Atom. There was some mention of nanotechnology in the dialogue, but it didn’t, and doesn’t, seem important to the character.

Maybe Al Pratt could tell us.

Dennis O’Neil: The Neil Gaiman Digressions

So what I’d like to know is, how come Neil Gaiman looks better in photographs than I do?

There I was, paging through the latest issue of the AARP magazine and… Wait! Isn’t that a familiar face? Yes! It’s my old friend Neil!

Looking, as always, grave, thoughtful, wise… authorial. You see my pic, you wonder when J. Puddingpuss Chromedome hit town.

(Now, let us indulge in a digression. Seth Kuchner’s picture of me, which one of my students dubbed “Denny noir,” does not make me look like Mr. Chromedome. Seth posed me on a fire escape in a Chinatown alley, about a half block from Canal Street and maybe because you can’t really see much of me, the result was pretty nifty.)

(And while we’re digressing…You might want to check out Leaping Tall Buildings, a book of Seth’s photos of comic book people accompanied by Christopher Irving’s biographical essays. Might make a welcome gift for the comics reader in your life.)

But where were we? Oh yeah, Neil Gaiman.

(Before we go on, though, answer me one question. Just exactly what is a pup like Neil doing in a magazine published by the American Association of Retired Persons? Do you youngsters have to take over everything? Can’t we dodderers have a single thing that’s ours? You don’t find us going to your raves or mosh pits or whatever you call those noisy and perverted gatherings.)

(Once, it must have been shortly after I got sprung from military service, I did go to one of those “music clubs” in some city or other, probably hoping to encounter some not-overly-picky young woman seeking male companionship for the evening and who knows where that might lead? Picket fences, maybe? But the music – that’s what they called it, “music” – was so loud that I found conversation to be impossible and even if I knew sign language, I doubt that I could have initiated a lifelong relationship using it and don’t we all, really, yearn for lifelong relationships?)

(And for those of you who may think I’m a pacifist – yes, I put in my time wearing a uniform and though I was arguably the worst sailor in the history of the United States Navy. I don’t regret it. When I enlisted, I was buying the whole load of bushwa about how we had to stop the commies in Viet Nam, yada yada yada… Pacifism came later, post-discharge, and then became modified when a book by Sam Harris convinced me that there were god-fearing folk who feel that their passport to heaven is my infidel’s dead body and they won’t listen to reason and so self-defensive combat is the only option. Which does not begin to justify the numerous wars to which the Land of the Free seems addicted.)

But where were we? Oh yeah, digressing. But digressing from what? Dunno. But I guess it doesn’t make a whit of difference. Not very much does.

Dennis O’Neil: After Changes Upon Changes…

Denny ONeil Neal AdamsWay back before your daddy was born – yes, it’s you I’m talking to – I wrote some superhero comic books that were based on real-life events and I guess they were successful. They got artist Neal Adams and me noticed and they’ve been reprinted and reissued in various formats and I still find myself autographing them at conventions. So yeah – successful. But I have two regrets about them.

The first is that the most of the problems they dramatized are still with us some 45 years later – the world has changed enormously but we still have racism and poverty and addiction and judicial malfeasance and especially climate disruption. I was worried about this stuff back in the day and I’m more worried now.

My other regret concerns my frame of mind when I was writing the stories. To me, it was obvious that what I was portraying was True and there was no doubt where Right and Wrong lived. None whatsoever. And I still believe everything I believed back then and I think I have better information and a clearer understanding.

But I wish I hadn’t been so righteous and certain. Most of the serious mischief – your wars and pogroms and the like – is and has been perpetrated by zealots. People who knew, absolutely, beyond any possibility of skepticism that their cause was just, that they were right, that, yes, God was on their side.

Sometimes they refuse service to gay couples. Sometimes they sponsor legislation that serves society’s predators. Sometimes they strap explosives to their chests.

So I wish that the person I was in 1970, the writer of those comic books, had allowed himself a few moments of doubt – allowed for the possibility, however distant and unlikely it might be, that he could be mistaken.

But…if that had been the case, would he have written those stories?

When they pass my hands I notice that they’re dog-eared and frayed and we climb to the top of he collection we notice that within their plastic bags evidence of yellowing and curled pages

Somebody’s read ‘em!

These are my people!

Pretty skimpy column. I could entertain you with hokey stories of trains and adventure but a lot of us is too lazy for that. We can hope, can we not?

 

Dennis O’Neil: Big Comicon, Big Business

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. • I Timothy 6:10

Vast marketplaces, comic conventions these days, and that has its upside, certainly. You get to complete your collections by visiting the used comics dealers and maybe see something you didn’t know exists but would enjoy owning and out comes the wallet or, increasingly, the credit card and the deal is done.

I don’t want to get all new-agey on you, but I think it’s good for us to interact with the universe of which we’re a part and money is a way to do that; you’re exchanging whatever effort got you the money for food, clothing, shelter, comic books…you know –life’s necessities All good.

The problem comes when money ceases too be a medium of exchange and becomes an end in itself.

But don’t you dare take my word for it!

Whose word should you take? Well, there’s some research I first saw mentioned in a book by Nobel prizer Daniel Kahneman titled Thinking, Fast and Slow. The claim is that money can have a negative on a person’s personality without that person being aware of it. Here’s a Googled quote from a website called neuromarketing that pretty much explains what we’re discussing:

In each experiment, the researchers subtly prompted half the volunteers to think of money – by having them read an essay that mentioned money, for example, or seating them facing a poster depicting different types of currency – before putting them in a social situation. In one experiment, the researchers gave volunteers a difficult puzzle and told them to ask for help at any time. People who had been reminded of money waited nearly 70% longer to seek help than those who hadn’t. People cued to think of money also spent only half as much time, on average, assisting another person who asked for their help with a word problem and picked up fewer pencils for someone who’d dropped them.

(For the record: the researchers referred to were Kathleen Vohs and colleagues.)

Are we ready for some connection to comics yet? Okay: it seems to me that a lot – but by no means all – comics conventions are big, big business. What seems most important at them are the commercial aspects and the presence of celebrities, which is part of the commerce, since the celebs charge for autographs and, in at least some instances, are paid for appearing.

What I’m afraid may be lost is the innocent enthusiasm for the comic book hobby, in whatever form, and the camaraderie like like-minded souls getting together and sharing. The whole scene seems to have coarsened. And that’s too bad.

And in the interest of fairness and balance, a brief anecdote: About four years ago Marifran lost her purse while we were attending the mother of all cons, the annual San Diego shindig, I thought, there are 140,000-plus strangers in that building and bye bye purse and money therein. The next day, the purse was returned, anonymously, with absolutely nothing missing.

 

Dennis O’Neil: Are We Crowded Yet?

We’ll be at the big convention in Indiana this weekend. First con of 2015, which means that, for us, the comic book year has begun. ( or guys like me, the comic book year is like the school year is for a kid, the time when the action really begins.) The highlight of the convention may be interacting with another guest, Carrie Fisher, who once worked briefly with my chief DNA sharer. I mean, at least we’ll have an excuse to speak to her and Marifran might well do that, extravert that she is. I mean, don’t put it past her.

You might get to interact with her, too. She’s usually sitting beside me asking fans, in her nicest-teacher-you-ever-had way, to donate something to the Hero Initiative, which is a good idea and which you should do.

For those of you for whom comics are merely an interest, as opposed to a passion or, heaven help you, a lifestyle, the summer looks to provide the usual ration of superheroic pleasures, mostly in the form of huge movies. You know what they are, probably, and if you don’t, you should have ample opportunity to find out before you need a bathing suit.

If you attend either of the Rockland County NY multiplexes, you might see an old couple near the front. That’d be us. I’ll be the bald one.

Elsewhere, there’s television. Last week, we mentioned Daredevil, a show that Netflix will stream next month. And CBS has a Supergirl series ready to go. And I’m sure other costumed wrong-righters will pop up here and there. You superhero fans – you’ll be okay.

Are we nearing a saturation point? Are we already there? I shrug. A network executive recently said that no, we aren’t overstuffed with superheroes because every show and movie is different. Well… every cop show is different, too, in that they use different casts, characters, sets, locales. But they all feature dedicated public servants, some of them maybe a tad quirky, who, dammit, make the system work. Who bring what they call “justice” and what a nitpicker might call “vengeance.” Most superhero stories have a similar dynamic, with a quasi-mythic super person replacing quirky policemen.

It’s how ancient themes are expressed in our post-industrial Earth and I’m not complaining. Catch me on a sunny day and I might even cheer. But this particular way of expressing them, with the costumes and flying and the double identities and all the rest of it? Too much, yet? The obvious parallel genre is the westerns, once an absolute staple of screens large and small, now rare. But the world has changed since the cowboy heyday and the parallel might not be valid. We’ll see, eventually, maybe.

Meanwhile, we can all enjoy the spectacle of Iron Man kicking Ultron butt and, convention goers can breathe the same air as the talented folk who enact our favorite fantasies.

 

Dennis O’Neil: Arrow and Bat

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice • Robert Frost

All you climate change doubters may now put on your dunce caps and leave. Don’t forget to shovel the walk on your way out.

…But where were we? Ah yes, where we often are, on opposite sides of a time gap. I’m writing here, you’re reading there. I suppose we can deal with it.

We’re looking ahead, you and I, to the forthcoming Daredevil television presentation, to be streamed on the increasingly diverse and interesting Netflix. Might be interesting. Might surpass the Ben Affleck movie Daredevil of a few years back, which may not have been everyone’s favorite entertainment. (I don’t have an opinion about it. Really, I don’t!) I see that Vincent D’Onofrio has gotten the job of being veteran DD baddie, The Kingpin, which seems to be good casting; let us not forget that Mr. D’Onofrio played a giant bug in the first Men in Black flick, so a corpulent gangster shouldn’t be a stretch for him.

What else am I looking forward to? (For you, it’s already past.)

Well, for one thin, the fate of poor Oliver Queen – other-named Arrow – last seen kneeling before the sinister Ras Al Ghul, a helpless captive. Ras stabbed him with a sword and kicked him off a mountain a while back, so is Ollie doomed to suffer a similar fate, perhaps again administered by a Ras who may have gotten a bit better at hero slaying? Nope. Ras is trying to recruit him into Ras’s criminal organization, The League of Assassins. (Good pay? Good benefits?)

This is not the first time Ras has gone hero-trolling. In the long ago when he was a mere comic book character, before being incarnated as a mega-movie star and a continuing presence in Arrow Ras made a similar move on Batman, sweetening the deal by suggesting that Bats and Ras’s daughter Talia might become an item and, yes indeedy, Talia would make a splendid trophy wife if she could just get past her daddy issues. Bats refused both job and lady and lived to fight another day but who knows what Ollie will do? (Well, actually, at this point, a lot of people. All those writers and actors and technicians…)

I like how our TV brethren are adapting some Batman tropes for Arrow. It’s a good match of characters: both the bat and the arrow are human-scaled, depending on skill and perseverance and motivation rather than some acquired superpower, and both are burdened with a tragic past. Since I prefer such characters I’ve always liked working on these two when I was a laboring scripter. Consider that an admission of bias.

Ras al Ghul, as some of you know, is a twisted idealist who wants to save the world – on his own terms, using his own methods, which are, to put it mildly, draconian. Pure fiction. But I look out at the snow and remember the savage winter which is not yet gone, and learn of the escalating barbarity in the middle east, and I wonder: Could there be a Ras?

But no, the reality is simpler and sadder, well expressed by Pogo the Possum: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

 

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