These Be the Words You Read and Remember: Denny O’Neil- the groundbreaking Writer and Editor’s run on Spider-Man (pt.1)

Now it is time we were going, I to die, you to live; But which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God. – Plato, “The Apology of Socrates”

That’s a quote from a Daredevil story, written by Denny O’Neil. When Denny offered a perspective through literature, as with his quotes, he gave his work a sense of sharing a humble place alongside its more canonical literary family. He had a smart way of making comics relevant and artistically vibrant, despite their underestimated standing- at least, in the years he wrote Batman, Green Lantern/ Green Arrow, Iron Man, and here, Daredevil. But he also helped bring them out of pile of discarded juvenilia. After all, when he got into the business, barely anyone thought of comic books as more than kid’s stuff, or something to pass the time of bored soldiers. If we came to think of them as legitimate reading material for smart people of any age, I’m confident we can thank Denny for his part.

“These be the words you read and remember,” says the splash page. You open the yearly stand-alone extra-pages special, Amazing Spider-Man Annual #14, and find a charming, medieval art-inspired frontispiece, topped with these words, as though from an ancient occult tome. That’s how we begin our discussion of the first work, I believe, from Denny O’Neil and Frank Miller, storytellers. At this point, summer of 1980, Denny has been editing several comics titles a few months. His first credits editing at Marvel appear in late 1979, on these magazine: Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man; Marvel Team-Up; and Spider-Woman. Soon he becomes the editor of the color premiere of Moon Knight. But first, he steps in to edit Amazing Spider-Man for three months, transitioning after Marv Wolfman’s departure for DC Comics, where he co-creates The New Teen Titans with George Perez. Apparently, in this time period, his writing premieres first in Amazing #207. About two or three months later, this “King-Sized Annual” that pairs Spider-Man with Doctor Strange. Those two share quite a history: they are early Marvel Age co-creations, with Stan Lee, from the talents of artist and writer Steve Ditko.

As you can see in his DC Comics Guide To Writing Comic Books, famous editor Stan Lee affirmed Denny’s master of comics writing craft, particularly wowed by Green Lantern 76 and its most famous quiet character collision, heard around the country: the poor man on the street and the intergalactic law man.

Speaking of two characters with a history, Denny’s story about Dr Doom and the dread mystic ruler Dormammu comes to life under the inventive visuals of Frank Miller. Many tributes to Denny, who died- but has hardly passed away- at the age of 81 on June 11, 2020, credit him with hiring Frank Miller, a creator who changed the comics field in a way as substantial as O’Neil himself, with works like Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Daredevil: Born Again, and Sin City.

But here, in Year One of Frank Miller, as comics creator, I’d like to set the record straight. When Dark Knight O’Neil returned to comics, hired in by editor in chief Jim Shooter, he was hired on primarily as an editor. As his career is born again, Denny follows the efforts of associate editor Mary Jo Duffy- the first woman to write for Marvel in several years-on Daredevil. He did hire Frank Miller, yes- but as writer, after and in addition to Frank’s art on hornhead’s title. When I asked Jo Duffy to help me set history straight, she replied with this:

For the record, I gave Frank the Daredevil art assignment. He and I had worked together, on stories I wrote or edited, a number of times prior to that. I loved his work, and I knew he loved Daredevil. (I had already gotten him his first chance on drawing DD in a Spectacular Spider-Man story where DD and Spider-Man teamed up, when I was the assistant editor. It was the first time Frank drew the character. When Frank got the Daredevil art assignment, Roger McKenzie was still the writer, and Denny was still working at DC. Denny joined Marvel and replaced me as editor shortly thereafter, and soon after that he gave Frank the writing assignment. (I had, however, already given Frank his first comics writing job: a one-pager about Daredevil’s billy club.) – Mary Jo Duffy, via FB

. Jo Duffy has agreed she'll be my Creating Marvels Podcast guest soon!
As he draws this special tale, pairing Doctor Strange with Spidey in his 1980 annual, Frank pays close tribute to the visual motifs that Ditko used so well, drawn in his own emerging style. The ‘split-Spider-Man mask’ symbolism, when Peter’s spider-sense danger signals buzz in his head, the beautiful, shadowy view of Doc’s house on 1777a Bleeker Street, the use of backlit shadows and dynamic contortions and svelte anatomy, and of course, the mystic energies used by Doom’s nebbish little pawn, culminating in a view of Dormammu’s realm- very faithful to the design work of their mid-60s source. It’s not an unusual story, just well-executed! A pity Miller’s contributions to Dr. Strange would afterwards be a single page ad declaring his arrival soon on the Doctor Strange monthly title…and nothing more.

As for this very well-drawn annual?  

Putting mastermind villains in the shadowy background makes sense - and does keep them from being over-exposed- but I feel we lose something of their wiles and power in this scheme. The cover sets you up for a confrontation we don't get. I know Dormammu in the forefront would turn this into a Dr. Strange story, most likely, but something's lost in not bringing Spider-Man and Strange toe-to-toe with Doom.

It’s not hard to see why Shooter was prompted to take a chance on Denny. With Steve Gerber, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman and finally, Stan’s successor, Roy Thomas, all departed from Marvel, there were fewer old hands from the 1970s editorial team. David Anthony Kraft takes over editing Ghost Rider, and that’s the one 70s name carrying over into the new decade. If Denny was ready to go again, this was a voice of expertise.

Denny goes back to a hallmark of his DC writing.

Well-crafted short stories.

Characters: In his Marvel years, O'Neil contributes several lasting, even important, ones, such as Tony Stark’s arch foe Obadiah Stane, who, like in the blockbuster first Iron Man movie, becomes the armored Iron Monger in the end. He introduces the character who becomes Lady Deathstrike in Wolverine’s pantheon.

So, in his initial series, Spider-Man, Denny has the most ideas, initially, bringing in new characters the first few months. Calypso, Madame Web, Hyrdo Man recur in later stories- such as Todd McFarlane’s smash-selling vehicle Spider=Man title in 1991, and the Madame and Hydro Man even return in cartoons. Peter even gets an opponent at the Daily Globe, photographer Lance Bannon- before O’Neil abruptly shifts gears and does away with the Daily Globe newspaper era started by Marv Wolfman in a single issue, #210.

However, those characters do not generally add much to any ongoing saga. In some ways, while the stories in the middle do continue into each other, from 213-218, most O’Neil Spider-Man stories exist in an almost stand-alone fashion. Hydro Man- who suffers from the most glaring flaw in this era’s villains, his obstinate motivation of revenge, like the Wizard in the next issue- does come back for a sort of humorous rivalry with Sandman over a barfly floosy, which leads to flared tempers and them, a bizarre mutation of team-up, as they become one big muddy monster with little intelligence. That is to say, less than thugs Morrie Bench or Flint Marko usually have- almost non-sentience.
The joking build-up to a story for one supporting character- Peter’s yowling neighbor, Mr. Pincus- marks the single instance of character development over the run. Peter’s completely mistaken as to which neighbor is keeping him off-kilter with his rachet singing of very corny songs at all hours. But ‘Lonesome Pinky’ has only the simplest interaction with Peter along the way, before Denny’s last story brings him poignantly to the front stage. In some ways, legend Denny O’Neil kind of ends up being the Lonesome Pinky of Spider-Man writers. He heroically stands in, when the flagship title needs an experienced writer. He does end up finding his authentic voice after putting on an act that didn’t necessarily reflect his most earnest ability when engaged. And then, his work’s largely forgotten.


Denny does use college secretary Debbie Whitman, constantly stood-up by Peter. She’s basically the one-person stand in for all his absent supporting cast, and she’s rather one-note: she brings up her endangered uncle, to entangle a very reluctant wall-crawler in an ocean-going research adventure that runs smack into an irate Prince Namor, the Submariner. Otherwise, she replays the same ‘hopeful date/ crushed expectations’ theme, over and over- which increasingly, does not speak well of Peter Parker, basically underscoring the one flaw of insensitivity. He does get a taste of his own medicine when she starts seeing the rather douchy hometown boyfriend Biff Rifkin, whose alliterative name kind of reflects O’Neil might be phoning it in.


While I don’t think the run works great as a run, however, individual stories do shine for different readers. As a very young reader who was bought three of these around the time of publication, I didn’t know any better, and loved them. Sure, I wanted a costumed villain and something of consequence to Peter’s ongoing story in Amazing Spider-Man #216, but looking at it now, the story “Marathon” is one of Denny’s shining moments on the title. If I had encountered the Frightful Four versus Spider-Man and Namor, I would have been ecstatic! It’s true, you know, that in this era, Spider-Man’s the subject of two national cartoons of the Saturday morning kids sort- so, more mature and complicated themes probably ran counter to what Jim Shooter wanted to do with the character in the monthly issues. So, if you didn’t appreciate them as a child, they may not, on whole, stand up as paradigms of comics storytelling that would make an older reader a fan. Roger Stern’s work on the character, concurrently on the Spectacular Spider-Man title, and succeeding O’Neil on Amazing, on the other hand, seems to absolutely nail a classic run by a continuing consensus of later readers.

All along, under both writers, we get the rapidly-developing John Romita, Jr, son of the man whose tweaks and co-plotting help bring Spider-Man a much-wider audience in the 1960s and early 70s. His layouts for action scenes are incredible, as we see much more of in his work at the same time on my second-favorite Marvel hero, Invincible Iron Man. It’s speculated that Denny gave him full scripts, which detailed the pace and ‘blocking’ of the scenes more closely than his Iron Man collaborators, David Micheleinie and Bob Layton, who probably worked from ‘plot-first’ scripts that gave the artist more room for ‘directing’ the camera.
He does utilize classic Spidey villains Kraven the Hunter and the Sandman, and both appear with the innovation of partnering them with other O’Neil creations, albeit Sandman’s teamwork with the Frightful Four dates back to the heart of Kirby’s 1960s run on Marvel’s first flagship title, Fantastic Four.
His run generally uses a trick repeated by successor Roger Stern, trying not to wear out the welcome of early mainstay Spider-villains, to try to stay fresh in story ideas, especially for the ongoing anomaly of longtime fans and collectors of those earlier stories. Denny’s calling up villains, sometimes quite a bit apart from a hero’s A-list of foes, from all over the Marvel Universe. He opens up with Mesmero, a recurrent second-in-command to Magneto in his clashes with the X-Men, to provide a steady, if not earth-shaking, debut on Amazing. Spider-Man’s briefly lured back to show business by the hypnotic mutant’s offer. We afterwards get fights with Prince Namor- whose saga’s continued through many issues of Spider-man, to the point where you wonder if Denny wouldn’t have preferred a crack at writing his title, if he only had one. In the second Namor storyline, we get the Frightful Four, perpetual counterparts to the Fantastic Four, and even get a supporting cameo from Reed and his team to resolve the diabolical trouble put on them by the Wizard. We get mad doctor Jonas Harrow and the Grey Gargoyle, and finally, old Daredevil cast-off, Ramrod.

This is really my scripted draft for my podcast, which I'll be recording soon for Creating Marvel Podcast. I might even experiment with smaller 'bites' and post installments, rather than one blanket O'Neil/ Marvel Years. This is probably my dry run for an eventual video, too.