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Secret Life of Denny O'Neil
greyman24
Posts: 50
I've been thinking about this for awhile and, with the brouhaha over the Dark Knight Returns Part 2 movie & the quote used in the announcement for Batman/Superman, it has been brought to top of mind once again.
I love many of Frank Miller's works. Sin City was fascinating. His Wolverine had a level of honor that made him a bit more interesting than the thug he was otherwise. But what made Miller was his work in the big 2: Returns, Year One, and Daredevil: Born Again.
So, when DK2 came out, I was utterly confused. The story was not the tightly written, character-driven works I'd seen earlier. It was all over the place: completely disconnected thematically and structurally from his earlier works.
But it was when All Star Batman and Robin came out that I decided there must be SOMETHING up. Whether you love ASBAR or hate it, you must acknowledge that, aside from the costumes, it shares little with Year One and Dark Knight Returns. In fact, if you break it down it shares far more with Sin City. Miller and others said all of these works exist in the same universe, but that is an obvious cheat. The Batman that uses rubber bullets on his enemies in Returns and risks his life to save the policeman that shot him in Year One would not kill 2 cops in a car as a casual act (as he does in ASBAR).
So what's different?
The three stories of Miller I love, Returns, Year One and Born Again, all feature relatively similar story arcs. They are the arcs of most stories--superhero or not. Protagonist is brought low, protagonist struggles to overcome, protagonist overcomes.
And the characters in all stories are (for the most part) not unrecognizable from real life. We see Superman in Returns, but not much until the end. We see Thor in Born Again, but only for a second. Everyone else is human, more or less.
Then I realized. Denny O'Neil. Now, while Denny may have been EIC of the Bat-books at the time Miller wrote Returns and Year One, he obviously wasn't EIC for Marvel. But he did write for Daredevil before and after Born Again, and it wouldn't be unrealistic to assume a fledgeling Miller may have received input from O'Neil.
O'Neil's Batman was not as grim or ferocious as Miller's, but he was dark and far more noir than the character had been in the Silver Age. So here's my take. I love that Miller gets credit for these stories. He's a great idea man, and loves challenging the status quo, but, as O'Neil said himself in one interview, "Frank's secret is that he doesn't like superheroes."
I don't hear O'Neil's name as much these days, but he did some great Batman stories, and I think he deserves more credit than he gets. And I think that, while Miller was great, he has never been greater than when he had O'Neil to rein him in.
What do you guys think? Do you think I'm wrong? I'd love for people to poke holes in my theory, or even come up with ideas why I'm a genius! ;)
I love many of Frank Miller's works. Sin City was fascinating. His Wolverine had a level of honor that made him a bit more interesting than the thug he was otherwise. But what made Miller was his work in the big 2: Returns, Year One, and Daredevil: Born Again.
So, when DK2 came out, I was utterly confused. The story was not the tightly written, character-driven works I'd seen earlier. It was all over the place: completely disconnected thematically and structurally from his earlier works.
But it was when All Star Batman and Robin came out that I decided there must be SOMETHING up. Whether you love ASBAR or hate it, you must acknowledge that, aside from the costumes, it shares little with Year One and Dark Knight Returns. In fact, if you break it down it shares far more with Sin City. Miller and others said all of these works exist in the same universe, but that is an obvious cheat. The Batman that uses rubber bullets on his enemies in Returns and risks his life to save the policeman that shot him in Year One would not kill 2 cops in a car as a casual act (as he does in ASBAR).
So what's different?
The three stories of Miller I love, Returns, Year One and Born Again, all feature relatively similar story arcs. They are the arcs of most stories--superhero or not. Protagonist is brought low, protagonist struggles to overcome, protagonist overcomes.
And the characters in all stories are (for the most part) not unrecognizable from real life. We see Superman in Returns, but not much until the end. We see Thor in Born Again, but only for a second. Everyone else is human, more or less.
Then I realized. Denny O'Neil. Now, while Denny may have been EIC of the Bat-books at the time Miller wrote Returns and Year One, he obviously wasn't EIC for Marvel. But he did write for Daredevil before and after Born Again, and it wouldn't be unrealistic to assume a fledgeling Miller may have received input from O'Neil.
O'Neil's Batman was not as grim or ferocious as Miller's, but he was dark and far more noir than the character had been in the Silver Age. So here's my take. I love that Miller gets credit for these stories. He's a great idea man, and loves challenging the status quo, but, as O'Neil said himself in one interview, "Frank's secret is that he doesn't like superheroes."
I don't hear O'Neil's name as much these days, but he did some great Batman stories, and I think he deserves more credit than he gets. And I think that, while Miller was great, he has never been greater than when he had O'Neil to rein him in.
What do you guys think? Do you think I'm wrong? I'd love for people to poke holes in my theory, or even come up with ideas why I'm a genius! ;)
Comments
I know O’Neil was pretty hands off when it came to his artists. I imagine, being a writer himself, that he was a little more hands on with his writers, but even so, from what I know of him, I don’t picture him as ruling with an iron fist in the way someone like Julie Schwartz did. A guiding light, sure, but more open to letting the creators create than a lot of editors.
Look at the first Sin City, which began in ’91. Dark, yes, but not much more racy than the ’50s noir movies, and a really solid book. 1993’s Daredevil: Man Without Fear—edited by Ralph Macchio—was fantastic, and was no more wild and crazy than his previous DD work. ’95’s Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot was a lot of fun, and even got turned into a kids’ cartoon.
Even 1998’s 300 was a pretty darn good book. (I did not care for the movie—bored me to tears—but that’s neither here nor there.) But I think this book (or perhaps That Yellow Bastard from the previous year) is where his writing really starts taking a turn. I don’t know what made the difference—maybe the siren call of Hollywood—but that’s when he started upping the ante and being more controversial and over-the-top.
I don't think O’Neil would have made much, if any, difference if he had come back to edit Miller on Strikes Again or AS:BAR. Just my opinion.
Damn. Totally makes sense. Forgot Man Without Fear, which was a great book and very much had the flavor of his early work.
Now that I think about it, there is a pretty noticeable progression from Man w/o Fear to 300 to Dame to Kill For (which I believe was also early 90's...Wikipedia says '93, but I thought it was earlier) to That Yellow Bastard.
It's true that what I've read of O'Neil said he was no Schwartz (and certainly no Jim Shooter), but, in my heart of hearts, I'd like to believe that Mr. O'Neil's mere presence would be enough to keep Miller in check.
I'd like to believe that...
HUGELY.
The aforementioned Iron Man story is about to be reprinted in trade. The GL/GA stories have been collected more than once, and his Question series has two or three trades at least. They need to collect his Azrael series.
I did a quick check: the regular series ran for 36 issues, plus #37 which came out a couple of years ago as a Blackest Night crossover. The Question Quarterly ran for five issues.
The book was really good. I just read it last month.
Same with The Creeper, come to think of it.
That's gonna be a hard habit to break. Subconsciously from now on, I will have to sing "No L, No L".
Denny O'Neil only wrote two stories during that run -- the final two. And not just the final two chapters, but the final two chapters of the classic clash against Baron Mordo and the Dread Dormmamu, which had sent Strange into flight around the world. (This being Ditko, this likely meant that Ditko had actually heavily plotted the story as well as having drawn it, so O'Neil probably just did the dialogue for it.) O'Neil stayed on the strip for a few more issues with veteran Bill Everett before ceding it back to Roy Thomas and Stan Lee.