O’NEIL, DENNIS 451
Risso (a modern day rarity), but for the undeniable synergy that these two creators
were able to sustain from start to fi nish.
J. Gavin Paul
O’NEIL, DENNIS (1939–). Working his way up from editorial assistant, Dennis “Denny”
O’Neil would become an acclaimed and prolifi c writer of comic books and novels and one
of the most infl uential editors of American comic books, overseeing, most notably, the
entire line of Batman titles. Born and raised in St. Louis, O’Neil was working as a crime-
beat reporter in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in 1965, when Roy Th omas, who had just
accepted a job with Marvel Comics , encouraged O’Neil to take the Marvel writer’s test.
Subsequently, O’Neil soon joined what he calls the “second generation” of Marvel writ-
ers, the fi rst writers to follow in Stan Lee’s footsteps. During his initial tenure at Marvel,
O’Neil worked on such diverse titles as Millie the Model , Kid Colt , and Doctor Strange.
In 1967, O’Neil began moonlighting for Charlton Comics under the editorship of
Dick Giordano, writing under the pseudonym Sergius O’Shaughnessy, a name bor-
rowed from a Norman Mailer novel. O’Neil worked on such Charlton titles as Th e
Prankster and Wander until the company folded its superhero line in 1967. O’Neil fol-
lowed Giordano to DC , where he initially worked on titles like Th e Creeper and Bomba
the Jungle Boy. Soon, though, O’Neil began writing for Justice League of America as well
as stories featuring some of the League’s original members: Wonder Woman , Green
Lantern , and Batman.
One of the recurrent trends of O’Neil’s work as writer and editor has been the
re-humanization of superheroes. Early on at DC, O’Neil developed a storyline that
saw Wonder Woman surrender her powers. Later, he greatly weakened the essentially
omnipotent Superman. In a diff erent vein, he turned the wealthy and aloof Green
Arrow into a poor political activist. A decade later, after returning for a time to write for
Marvel, O’Neil sent Iron Man’s alter ego, Tony Stark, on a six-month alcoholic binge.
In 1970, O’Neil wrote his fi rst solo Batman story, “Th e Secret of the Waiting Graves,”
which teamed him up for the fi rst time with an important long-term collaborator, artist
Neal Adams. Later that year, O’Neil and Adams began developing the highly acclaimed
Green Lantern/Green Arrow series in which the socially aware Green Arrow introduces
a naïve Green Lantern to some of the woes facing American society. Many consider the
short-lived series a turning point in comic book maturity, moving the genre beyond the
realm of adolescent fantasy.
In 1986, O’Neil became the group editor of all of DC’s Batman series, which
included, at the time, Detective Comics, Batman Comics , and a few other titles. By
the time of his retirement in 2000, O’Neil was editing 12 monthly Batman titles as
well as graphic novels, miniseries, and one-shots, along with writing for the Batman
spin-off Azrael. During his tenure, he oversaw the most signifi cant evolution of the
Batman character, changes that O’Neil says “went back and took what was implicit”
from the original character. O’Neil helped return Batman to the brooding detective
Bob Kane and Bill Finger fi rst envisioned. Subsequently, O’Neil supervised some of
