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Dennis O'Neil

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This article is about the comic book writer. An unrelated Denny O'Neil is a Canadian radio personality under the professional name Bob Magee.
Dennis "Denny" O'Neil is a comic book writer and editor, principally for Marvel Comics and DC Comics in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and Group Editor for the Batman family of books until his retirement.

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Contents

Biography

Early Years

Dennis O'Neil came from a Catholic household in St. Louis, Missouri. He still recalls from his youth the Sunday afternoon ritual where he would accompany his father or his grandfather to the store for some light groceries and an occasional comic book.[link]

By the time he had firmly entered adolescence, the superhero comic had become something of an anachronism. The loss of government contracts that came with the end of World War II killed off most of the Golden Age characters, and stores tended to shift space to paperback literature, which had a higher profit margin.[link]

He graduated from St. Louis University around the turn of the sixties and from there joined the navy just in time to participate in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His degree centered on English literature, creative writing, and philosophy.[link]

After leaving the navy, O'Neil moved on to a job with a newspaper in Fort Girardeau, Mississippi. O'Neil wrote occasional columns on the subject for the newspaper, which attracted the attention of Roy Thomas, who would eventually himself become one of the Great Names of the Silver Age.[link]

Marvel Comics

Roy Thomas soon took work with DC in its Superman stable, but left before long to work for Stan Lee at Marvel. He suggested that O'Neil take the Marvel Writer's Test, which involved adding dialogue to a wordless four-page excerpt of a Fantastic Four comic; and his entry impressed Lee enough to offer O'Neil a job.[link]

When Marvel's expansion made it impossible for Stan Lee to write the entire line of books, Lee passed as much on to Roy Thomas as he could, but still needed writers, so O'Neil took the reins for a short-term run of Dr. Strange stories, penning six issues.[link]

Charlton Comics

The available jobs writing for Marvel petered out fairly quickly, and O'Neil took a job with Charlton Comics under the pseudonym of Sergius O’Shaugnessy. There he received regular work for a year and a half from Charlton's editor Dick Giordano.[link]

DC Comics

After Charlton folded, Charlton talent arrived at DC from a different culture of comics. At DC, the office seemed like a snapshot from 1950, with a crowd of short-haired men in white shirts and ties. The jeans-wearing, hippy trended Charlton crowd visibly represented a different generation.
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O'Neil's first assignments involved two strategies for bolstering DC's sales. One approach centered on the creation of new characters, and O'Neil helped bring the Creeper into DC's stable. From there, DC moved O'Neil to Wonder Woman and Justice League of America. He took away Wonder Woman's powers, exiled her from the Amazon community, and set her off, uncostumed, into international intrigues with her blind mentor, the dubiously-named I Ching. These changes did not sit well with fans, and O'Neil later considered that removing DC's single super-powered female might have alienated readers. In Justice League, he had more success, introducing into that title the first socially and politically themed stories, setting the stage for later work on Green Lantern/Green Arrow.[link]

Following the lead set by Bob Haney and Neal Adams in a Brave and the Bold story that visually redefined Green Arrow into the version that appeared in comics between 1969 and 1986, O'Neil stripped him of his wealth and Playboy status making him an urban hero. This redefinition would culminate in the character that appeared in Green Lantern/Green Arrow, a socially conscious, left-wing creation that effectively took over Green Lantern's book to use him as a foil and straw main in sounding out the political concepts that would define that work.[link]

He's written several novels, comics, short stories, reviews and teleplays, including the novelization of the movie Batman Begins.[link]

Dennis spent several years in the late nineties teaching Writing for the Comics at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts.

Highlights

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His best-known works include Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman with Neal Adams, The Shadow with Mike Kaluta and The Question with Denys Cowan, all of which were hailed for sophisticated (for the period, in the case of his 1970s work) stories that expanded the artistic potential of the mainstream portion of the medium. As an editor, he is principally known for editing the various Batman titles. Today, he sits on the board of directors of the charity A Commitment To Our Roots.

His 1970s run on Batman is perhaps his most well known endeavour, getting back to the character's darker roots after a period dominated by the campiness of the 1960s TV show, and emphasizing his detective skills. This grimmer and more sophisticated Dark Knight, as well as new villains such as O'Neil creation Ra's Al Ghul, brought Batman back from the verge of pop culture oblivion. His work would influence later incarnations of Batman, from the seminal comic "" by Frank Miller, to the movie Batman Begins in 2005.

His work has won him a great deal of recognition in the comics industry, including the Shazam Awards for Best Individual Story for "No Evil Shall Escape My Sight" in Green Lantern #76 (with Neal Adams), for Best Writer (Dramatic Division) in 1970 for Green Lantern, Batman, Superman, and other titles, and Best Individual Story for "Snowbirds Don't Fly" in Green Lantern #85 (with Neal Adams) in 1971.

Bibliography

Charlton Comics

DC Comics

Marvel Comics

Graphic Novels

Novellas

Novels

Essays, Reviews & Interviews

References

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