Longtime, influential comic book writer and editor Denny O’Neil passed away on June 11th at the age of 81.
A journalism major, O’Neil got started in the comic book filed in the mid 1960s. After brief stints at Marvel and Charlton, O’Neil came to DC Comics, where he made a significant impact.
O’Neil was a very socially conscious individual, and he brought his concerns about inequality and injustice to his work. He was assigned the Green Lantern series, which at the time was struggling in sales. Working with artist Neal Adams, another young talented newcomer interested in shaking thing up, O’Neil had GL Hal Jordan team up with the archer Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen, in a series of stories that addressed head-on issues of racism, pollution, overpopulation, drug abuse, and political corruption.
The above page from Green Lantern / Green Arrow #76 (April 1970), the first issue by O’Neil & Adams, is probably one of the most famous scenes in comic book history.
I read these stories in the 1990s, a quarter century after they were published. At the time I found them underwhelming. I felt O’Neil’s writing was unsubtle, that he threw Hal Jordan under the bus to make a point, and that Oliver Queen was just the sort of smug, condescending left-winger who gives the rest of us liberals a really bad name. As with a number of other people, I always though Hal Jordan’s response to the old black man should have been “Hey, I saved the entire planet Earth, and everyone on it, on multiple occasions!”
When I voiced these criticisms, older readers typically responded “You really needed to read these stories when they were first published to understand their impact and significance.” I never really understood this until I started reading Alan Stewart’s blog Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books. Alan writes about the comic books that he read as a kid half a century ago. When I came to Alan’s posts about O’Neil’s early work on Justice League of America for DC Comics in the late 1960s, I finally began to understand exactly what sort of an impression O’Neil’s stories, with their commentary on critical real-world issues, made upon so many young readers of that era.
So, upon further consideration, while I still find O’Neil’s writing on Green Lantern / Green Arrow to be anvilicious, I recognize that he was attempting to address serious social & political crises for which he felt genuine concern, and in a medium that for a long time was regarded solely as the purview of children. However imperfect the execution may have been, I admire O’Neil’s passion and convictions.
In any case, O’Neil & Adams’ work on Green Lantern / Green Arrow is yet more evidence that comic books have addressed political issues in the past, and anyone attempting to argue otherwise is flat-out ignoring reality.
UPDATE: For an insightful alternate perspective on the Green Lantern / Green Arrow stories I recommend reading J.R. LeMar’s blog post on Denny O’Neil.
O’Neil & Adams were also among the creators in the late 1960s and early 1970s who helped to bring the character of Batman back to his darker Golden Age roots as a grim costumed vigilante operating in the darkness of Gotham City. O’Neil & Adams collaborated on a number of Batman stories that are now rightfully regarded as classics.
I really enjoy O’Neil’s approach to Batman. His version of the Dark Knight was serious and somber, but still very human, and often fallible. I wish that more recent writers would follow O’Neil’s example on how to write Batman, rather than depicting him as some brooding, manipulative monomaniac. O’Neil really knew how to balance out the different aspects of Batman’s personality so that he was intense but still likable.
O’Neil & Adams, following the directive of editor Julius Schwartz, created the immortal ecoterrorist Ra’s al Ghul and his beautiful daughter Talia. Ra’s al Ghul debuted in Batman #232 (June 1971) by O’Neil, Adams and inker Dick Giordano.
Ra’s al Ghul was certainly an interesting villain in that he possessed shades of grey. He admired Batman, and easily deduced that the Dark Knight was actually Bruce Wayne. Ra’s wanted Batman to become his successor and marry Talia. Ra’s was genuinely passionate about saving the environment; unfortunately his solution was to wipe out 90% of the Earth’s population and rule over the survivors. While Batman had feelings for Talia and sympathized with Ra’s end goals, he was understandably repulsed by the ruthless, brutal means Ra’s pursued, and so the two men repeatedly came into conflict.
Throughout the 1970s O’Neil, working with artists Adams & Giordano, as well as Bob Brown, Irv Novick, Michael Golden, Don Newton & Dan Adkins developed the globe-spanning conflict between Batman and Ra’s al Ghul, with Talia often caught in the middle of their immense struggle of wills. These epic stories were later reprinted in the trade paperback Batman: Tales of the Demon. It is some of O’Neil’s best writing, and I definitely recommend it.
O’Neil of course wrote a number of other great Batman stories during the 1970s outside of those involving Ra’s al Ghul and Talia. Among those stories by O’Neil that are now considered classics is “There Is No Hope In Crime Alley” illustrated by Dick Giordano, from Detective Comics #457 (March 1976).
“There Is No Hope In Crime Alley” expanded upon Batman’s origin and introduced Leslie Thompkins, the doctor and social worker who cared for young Bruce Wayne after his parents were murdered in Crime Alley. The story was later included in the 1988 collection The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, which is where I first read it. It was actually one of four stories from the 1970s written by O’Neil to be included in that volume, a fact that speaks to how well-regarded his work on the character was.
In the early 1980s O’Neil went to work at Marvel Comics. In addition to editing several titles, he wrote Iron Man and Daredevil. On Iron Man he decided to follow up on Tony Stark’s alcoholism, which had been established a few years earlier by Bob Layton & David Michelinie. O’Neil had struggled with alcoholism in real life, and he wanted to address that in the comic book Stark was apparently white-knuckling it, trying to stay sober without a support system or a program of recovery.
O’Neil, working with penciler Luke McDonnell & inker Steve Mitchell, wrote a three year long story arc around Stark’s alcoholism. Corporate raider Obidiah Stane, a literal chess master, ruthlessly manipulated events so that Tony fell off the wagon hard, then swooped in and bought out Stark International from under him. Stark became destitute and homeless, and was forced to make a long, difficult climb back to sobriety, rebuilding both his life and his company from the ground up.
It’s worth noting another development in O’Neil’s Iron Man run. Previously in Green Lantern / Green Arrow, O’Neil & Adams had introduced African American architect John Stewart, who they had become a new Green Lantern. Twelve years later on Iron Man O’Neil had African-American pilot & ex-soldier James Rhodes, a longtime supporting character, become the new Iron Man after Stark succumbed to alcoholism. Rhodey would remain in the Iron Man role for over two years, until Tony was finally well enough to resume it.
So, once again, the next time you hear some troll grousing about SJWs replacing long-running white superheroes with minorities, or some such nonsense, remember that O’Neil did this twice, telling some really interesting, insightful stories in the process.
This is another instance where the argument comes up that you had to be reading these comic books when they were coming out to understand that impact. In this case I can vouch for it personally. It was early 1985, I was eight years old, and the very first issue of Iron Man I ever read was in the middle of this storyline. So right from the start I just accepted that there could be different people in the Iron Man armor, and one of them just happened to be black.
In the late 1980s O’Neil returned to DC Comics, where he became the editor of the various Batman titles. He also continued to write. Among the noteworthy stories he penned was “Venom” in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #16-20 (March to July 1991), with layouts by Trevor Von Eeden, pencils by Russ Braun, and inks & covers by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.
“Venom” is set early in Batman’s career. After the Dark Knight fails to save a young girl from drowning, he begins to take an experimental drug to heighten his strength. Unfortunately he very quickly becomes addicted to the Venom, and is almost manipulated into becoming a murderer by the military conspiracy that developed the drug. Locking himself in the Batcave for a month, Batman suffers a horrific withdrawal. Finally clean, he emerges to pursue the creators of the Venom drug.
It is likely that “Venom” was another story informed by O’Neil’s own struggles with addiction. It is certainly a riveting, intense story. Venom was reintroduced a few years later in the sprawling Batman crossover “Knightfall” that O’Neil edited, which saw the criminal mastermind Bane using the drug as the source of his superhuman strength.
In 1992 O’Neil, working with up-and-coming penciler Joe Quesada and inker Kevin Nolan, introduced a new character to the Bat-verse. Azrael was the latest in a line of warriors tasked with serving the secretive religious sect The Order of St. Dumas. Programmed subliminally from birth, Jean-Paul Valley assumed the Azrael identity after his father’s murder.
Azrael soon after became a significant figure in the “Knightfall” crossover. After Batman is defeated by Bane, his back broken, Azrael becomes the new Dark Knight. Unfortunately the brainwashing by the Order led Azrael / Batman to become increasingly violent and unstable. After a long, difficult recovery Bruce Wayne resumed the identity of Batman and defeated Azrael. O’Neil appears to have had a fondness for the character, as he then went on the write the Azrael ongoing series that lasted for 100 issues.
Another of O’Neil’s projects from the 1990s that I enjoyed was the bookshelf special Batman / Green Arrow: The Poison Tomorrow, released in 1992. Written by O’Neil, penciled by Michael Netzer, and inked by Josef Rubinstein, The Poison Tomorrow had the Dark Knight and the Emerald Archer working together to prevent a ruthless corporation from using the femme fatale Poison Ivy to create a virulent plague.
O’Neil’s liberalism definitely shines through with his clear distrust of Corporate America. In one scene that evokes “the banality of evil” multi-millionaire CEO Fenn casually discusses with Poison Ivy his plan to poison jars of baby food, killing hundreds of infants, and then to sell the antidote to millions of terrified parents across the nation. Reading this story again in 2020, it is not at all far-fetched, as in recent months we have repeatedly seen various corporations publically musing on the various ways in which they can turn a profit on the COVID-19 pandemic.
I also like how O’Neil wrote the team-up of Batman and Green Arrow. Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen can both be very stubborn, inflexible individuals. Each of them has a tendency to browbeat others into submission, so having them forced to work together is basically a case of unstoppable force meets unmovable object. O’Neil got a lot of mileage out of the tense, almost adversarial chemistry that existed between these two reluctant allies.
The Poison Tomorrow is a grim, unsettling tale. The moody artwork by Netzer & Rubinstein and the coloring by Lovern Kindzierski effectively compliment O’Neil’s story. There were such a deluge of Batman-related projects published by DC Comics in the early 1990s that I think The Poison Tomorrow sort of flew under a lot of people’s radar. I definitely recommend seeking out a copy.
O’Neil had such a long, diverse career that I have really only touched on a few highlights in this piece. I am certain other fans, as well as the colleagues who actually worked with & knew him, will be penning their own tributes in which O’Neil’s many other important contributions will be discussed.
For example, I’m sure some of you are asking “How can you not discuss O’Neil’s fantastic run on The Question with artist Denys Cowan?!?” Regretfully I have to admit that I have never read it. However, if you are a fan of The Question then I recommend that you read Brian Cronin’s excellent tribute to O’Neil’s work on that series.
I was very fortunate to meet O’Neil at a few comic book conventions over the years. Briefly talking with him while he was autographing some comic books for me, and hearing him speak on panel discussions, it was immediately obvious that he was an intelligent and passionate individual. Those qualities definitely came through in his work.
In My Not So Humble Opinion 