I doubt Haney had the final say. Murray Boltinoff was the editor of B&B and I think he tended to be the one who decided who teamed up with Batman. He was also a
control freak racist.
That one I didn't know.
Murray Boltinoff was my least favorite editor because of the way he butchered letters in his column down to like one sentence, to cram as many reader comments as possible on the page. It made for very dry reading, and rendered letters devoid of any personality or style.
I hated Tyroc, it was everything negative about black "ethnic" characters of the 70's. It's actually something of a relief that Grell portrayed him that way because he refused to take the notion of the character seriously.
In contrast, Grell created a very strong and likeable black character in Machiste, in his WARLORD series.
