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I mostly agree, or at least think you voice persuasive opinions, but I do disagree on some minor points. Len Wein, for example, I see as early on achieving a distinctive voice and superstardom with his acclaimed SWAMP THING run with Wrightson. They pretty much cleaned up in the awards or nominations for best writer, best artist, best series for the three years the series ran. I could agree with you that for much of Wein's period at Marvel, he mostly wrote in a Stan Lee style. Wein was even editor-in-chief at marvel briefly (as were Wolfman, Thomas, Conway, and Goodwin, until Shooter came along.)


You're equating critical acclaim with influence. By that argument, "Annie Hall" was more influential than "Star Wars."

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On the Batman front, it was actually Neal Adams (working with Bob Haney and Murray Boltinoff on BRAVE AND THE BOLD in 1968-1969) who started altering scripts and bringing Batman back to his late 1930's avenger-of-the-night roots. Adams would take a script and change a day scene to a night scene, so that he could give Batman more mystery and atmospheric shadows. It was after Adams did this that readers sent letters to DC asking why this atmospheric version of Batman wasn't also appearing in BATMAN and DETECTIVE, at which point in 1970 editor Schwartz paired up O'Neil and Adams. And I think both O'Neil and Adams had similar ideas of taking Batman back to his earliest avenger-of-the-night roots. I don't wish to shortchange O'Neil, just to give Adams some partial credit.


I don't disagree that they a perfect team, playing to each other's strengths and giving us something greater than the sum of its parts. So, of course, Adams deserves credit.

That being said, O'Neil without Adams was still pretty much O'Neil. An O'Neil Batman story drawn by, say, Irv Novick or Dick Giordano, was still the same "Darknight Detective" we got (at least in terms of characterization and story quality) with Adams.

Adams, however, while he might have changed the art in B&B the stories were still more in the pre-O'Neil vein, heavy on sci-fi and fantasy elements and replete with Bob Haney's trademark "faux groovy" dialogue. And let us not dwell upon his more recent Batman work.

Finally, as you touch upon, Adams himself made it clear that O'Neil gave him the "realism" he wanted
  • Many comic book writers come from being comic book fans. Not Denny. Denny was a news writer often on the night beat. His eyes saw reality and he wrote that into his work....So, Denny wrote comics of characters that emerged from reality. That being so, why would I need to ever question such a writer? And I never did. Denny made me shine because he gave me reality in a fantasy genre.


In fact, I think Adams touches on something that gets back to what I was trying to get at. O'Neil, brought a sense of naturalism and a journalist eye for realty to comics that hadn't been seen before. That injection of reality into fantasy was something that many writers later attempted with varying degrees of success but it didn't really exist until O'Neil came along.