Dennis Joseph O'Neil (May 3, 1939 – June 11, 2020) was an American comic book writer and editor, principally for Marvel Comics and DC Comics from the 1960s through the 1990s, and Group Editor for the Batman family of titles until his retirement.
His best-known works include Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman with Neal Adams. For Batman, the team is credited with returning the character to his dark pulp fiction roots, in contrast to the campy Batman television series of the 1960s. However, comics historian Les Daniels considers O'Neil's "vengeful obsessive-compulsive" Batman to be an original interpretation that has influenced all subsequent portrayals of the character. It was during this run that O'Neil co-created the Batman villains Ra's al Ghul and Talia al Ghul. During their Green Lantern/Green Arrow run, O'Neil and Adams introduced a mature, realistic tone through stories such as "Snowbirds Don't Fly", in which Green Arrow's ward Roy Harper is revealed to have become addicted to drugs. They also created and introduced the Green Lantern character John Stewart in 1971.
As an editor, he is principally known for editing the various Batman titles beginning in 1986 after returning to DC. In 1989, O'Neil launched the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight series, and was the writer for the "Shaman" and "Venom" stories. O'Neil led the Batman creative teams for the Batman: Knightfall (1993–1994) story arc. O'Neil co-created the antihero Azrael (Jean-Paul Valley) in 1992, who temporarily became the new Batman during Knightfall. After the storyline's conclusion, O'Neil was the writer for an Azrael monthly series that lasted 100 issues.
His other notable work includes creating Richard Dragon with Jim Berry, and runs on The Shadow with Michael Kaluta and The Question with Denys Cowan. While working for Marvel during the 1980s, O'Neil scripted issues for The Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Daredevil. In the late 1990s, O'Neil taught a comics writing course at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts. He also sat on the board of directors of the charity The Hero Initiative and served on its Disbursement Committee.
Early life O'Neil was born into an Irish Catholic household in St. Louis, Missouri on May 3, 1939. His father owned a grocery store. On Sunday afternoons he would accompany his father or his grandfather to the store for some light groceries and an occasional comic book. O'Neil graduated from Saint Louis University around the turn of the 1960s with a degree centered on English literature, creative writing, and philosophy. From there he joined the U.S. Navy just in time to participate in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Career
Writing After leaving the Navy, O'Neil moved on to a job with a newspaper in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. O'Neil wrote bi-weekly columns for the youth page, and during the slow summer months he filled the space with a series on the revival of the comics industry. This attracted the attention of Roy Thomas, who would eventually himself become one of the great names in the history of the medium.
Marvel Comics When Roy Thomas left DC Comics to work for Stan Lee at Marvel Comics, 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. O'Neil's entry resulted in Lee offering O'Neil a job. O'Neil had never considered writing for comics, and later said he'd done the test "kind of as a joke. I had a couple of hours on a Tuesday afternoon, so instead of doing crossword puzzles, I did the writer's test." He had intended to only work in the comics industry for six months to make some extra money, but soon found enjoyment from creating comic book scripts, and abandoned his plans to move back to the Midwestern United States to be a journalist.
O'Neil took the reins for a short-term run of Marvel's Doctor Strange stories in Strange Tales, writing dialogue and captions for six issues that were plotted by artist Steve Ditko. He also wrote for such titles as Rawhide Kid and Millie the Model, and scripted the final 13 pages of Daredevil #18 over a plot by Lee when Lee went on vacation.
Briefly returning to Marvel a few years later, O'Neil and artist Neal Adams revived the Professor X character in X-Men #65 in one of the creative team's earliest collaborations.Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams collaborations at the Grand Comics Database
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.
"Sergius O'Shaugnessy" is the name of the protagonist of Norman Mailer's 1955 novel The Deer Park. O'Neil has quoted Mailer's writing in at least one of his comic book scripts. He would continue using the pseudonym occasionally throughout his career.
DC Comics In 1968, Dick Giordano was offered an editorial position at DC Comics and took a number of Charlton freelancers with him, including O'Neil.
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 scripted several issues of Beware the Creeper, a series starring a new hero, the Creeper, created by artist Steve Ditko. From there, DC moved O'Neil to Wonder Woman and Justice League of America. With artist Mike Sekowsky, he took away Wonder Woman's powers, exiled her from the Amazon island of Themiscyra, and set her off, wearing boutique street clothes rather than her superhero uniform, into international intrigues with her blind mentor, I Ching. These changes did not sit well with Wonder Woman's older fans, including feminists such as Gloria Steinem, who successfully lobbied DC to return the character to her roots, and O'Neil later acknowledged that de-powering DC's most well-known superheroine had unintentionally alienated readers. In Justice League, he had more success, scripting socially and politically themed stories that presaged his later work on Green Lantern/Green Arrow. He and artist Dick Dillin made several changes to the membership of the JLA by removing founding members the Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman.McAvennie "1960s" in Dolan, p. 133 "In less than a year on the Justice League of America series, scribe Denny O'Neil and artist Dick Dillin had made major changes to the team. Two issues after Wonder Woman left the JLA, the Martian Manhunter did the same."
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 (with many stories also drawn by Adams), a socially conscious, left-wing creation that contrasted and debated with the establishment liberal, law and order advocating, Green Lantern.McAvennie "1970s" in Dolan, p. 139 "Real-world politics have always gone hand-in-hand with comics and their creators' own personal perspectives. Yet this was never more creatively expressed than when writer Denny O'Neil and artist Neal Adams paired the liberal Green Arrow with the conservative Green Lantern." It was during this period that the most famous Green Arrow story appeared, in Green Lantern #85–86 ("Snowbirds Don't Fly"), when it was revealed that Green Arrow's ward Speedy was addicted to heroin.McAvennie "1970s" in Dolan, p. 146 "It was taboo to depict drugs in comics, even in ways that openly condemned their use. However, writer Denny O'Neil and artist Neal Adams collaborated on an unforgettable two-part arc that brought the issue directly into Green Arrow's home, and demonstrated the power comics had to affect change and perception." As a result of his work on Green Lantern and Green Arrow, O'Neil recounted, "I went from total obscurity to seeing my name featured in The New York Times and being invited to do talk shows. It's by no means an unmixed blessing. That messed up my head pretty thoroughly for a couple of years. ... Deteriorating marriage, bad habits, deteriorating relationships with human beings – with anything that wasn't a typewriter, in fact. It was a bad few years there." O'Neil and Adams also created Green Lantern John Stewart, who debuted in Green Lantern vol. 2 #87 (December 1971/January 1972).