Arnold Drake

Arnold Drake was a comic book writer and screenwriter best known for co-creating the DC Comics characters Deadman and the Doom Patrol, and the Marvel Comics characters the Guardians of the Galaxy, among others.

Comic books during this time did not routinely list creator credits; historians have, however, pinpointed Drake's first DC work as the first seven pages of the eight-page Batman story "The Return of Mister Future" in Batman #98 (March 1956). Soon, Drake was scripting stories across a variety of genres for DC, from adventure drama ("Fireman Farrell" in Showcase #1, April 1956, drawn by John Prentice) to humor (1960s stories for the company's Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis comics) to mystery and supernatural fiction (the anthology series House of Mystery) to science fiction (the feature "Tommy Tomorrow" in World's Finest Comics #102, June 1959, and elsewhere, and the feature "Space Ranger" in several issues of Tales of the Unexpected, to give a sampling).

In 1963, as Drake had warned, Marvel's increasingly profitable circulation increased enough to force Independent News to allow it to publish more titles. Meanwhile, editor Murray Boltinoff asked Drake to develop a feature to run in the anthology series My Greatest Adventure. Given the assignment on a Friday with a script due that Tuesday, and inspired to emulate Marvel's idea for superheroes with more character depth, Drake conceived of what would become the superhero team the Doom Patrol, and turned to another DC writer, Bob Haney, to co-plot and co-script the first adventure. Artist Bruno Premiani designed the characters. Drake would subsequently script every Doom Patrol story, with Premiani drawing virtually all, from the team's debut in My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963) through the series retitling to The Doom Patrol with issue #86 (March 1964), to the final issue of its initial run, #121 (Oct. 1968). Drake and Bob Brown introduced Beast Boy in Doom Patrol #99 (Nov. 1965).

Meanwhile, Drake noticed that Marvel Comics published a series of their own, The Uncanny X-Men, barely a few months later that seemed to mirror his own series' concepts in many respects. These included the concept of a wheelchair-bound mentor leading a team of outcast superheroes who often clashed with a team of villains called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that seemed too close to The Doom Patrol's own enemies, the Brotherhood of Evil. However, Drake found no support for his complaints from National's editorial staff until Drake was forced to concede at that time that it could have been a coincidence.

Subject ID: 103312