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Saturday, June 13, 2020 

Denny O'Neil, RIP

The UK Mail reports that one of comicdom's most notable writers/editors, famous for restoring the darker approach to Batman successfully from an artistic angle, has died at 81:
The legendary comics writer and editor Dennis 'Denny' O'Neil died Thursday at 81.

O'Neil is best known for his work writing Batman comic books for DC, and he later took on an editing role for the caped crusaders tales from 1986–2000.

He also wrote for other iconic comic book heroes, this time for Marvel, including Spider-Man and Iron Man.

O'Neil died at his home of natural causes, according to his family.
Maybe the most interesting moment in his career would be his extra job in the toy industry:
He was also involved in naming Optimus Prime, the leader of the Transformers series.
He had some involvement with GI Joe to boot, both the comics in editing, and possibly the cartoon series in the mid-80s. And while not without his flaws in the past, I do think he had significant successes, certainly far more than today's smug SJWs are experiencing. Compared to modern comics, the stories with political themes he wrote in Green Lantern/Arrow and the late 80s Question series provide more to think about, and were nowhere near as heavy-handed as what's been seen in the past decade. And of course, he did have significant moments at Marvel too, certainly with Daredevil and Iron Man.

Of course, there are more recent moments in history that bother me, such as this one reported by Variety in their obituary:
In December 2018, O’Neil was the keynote speaker at The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library’s “Comic Books and Social Justice” event and Phoenix, Ariz. declared May 25 as “Dennis O’Neil Day” in 2019.
I really wish he hadn't attended a meeting at an institution founded by one of the USA's worst presidents, who enabled the ayatollah to take over Iran in 1979. And the conference was done under the banner of "social justice", which today is becoming a tasteless phrase.

All that said, O'Neil was decidedly one of the better writers of his time, deserves credit for developing Optimus Prime for Hasbro's Transformers line, and will be remembered far better than some of the would-be creators who came along in later times.

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