DENNIS O’NEIL: On Arnold Drake
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.
