Simon, Neil (Marvin Neil Simon), 1927-, American playwright, b. New York City. His plays, nearly all of them popular, if not always critical successes, are comedies treating recognizable aspects of modern middle-class life. Particularly adept at portraying the middle-aged, Simon is a master jokesmith who builds up his characters through funny lines rather than plot, although he does often attempt serious themes. The Gingerbread Lady (1970), for example, deals honestly with alcoholism, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning Lost in Yonkers (1991) treats the anguish of parental rejection. His many other plays include Come Blow Your Horn (1961), Barefoot in the Park (1963), The Odd Couple (1965), Plaza Suite (1968), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), The Good Doctor (1973), God's Favorite (1974), Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1984), Broadway Bound (1986), Laughter on the 23d Floor (1993), and 45 Seconds from Broadway (2001). Many of his plays have been adapted into films, and Simon has written numerous screenplays.

(born July 4, 1927, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. playwright. After studying at New York University, he worked as a comedy writer for Sid Caesar in the 1950s. His autobiographical play Come Blow Your Horn (1961) was the first of a long series of hit comedies that includes Barefoot in the Park (1963; film, 1967), The Odd Couple (1965; film, 1968), and Plaza Suite (1968; film, 1971). His later plays include the autobiographical trilogy of Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1985, Tony Award), and Broadway Bound (1986). His plays deal humorously with the everyday conflicts of ordinary middle-class people, often in New York City. For Lost in Yonkers (1991), he received a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

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(born March 28, 1942, Tredegar, Monmouthshire, Wales) British politician. Elected to Parliament in 1970, he rose in the Labour Party ranks and was named to its national executive committee in 1978. After the party suffered its heaviest defeat in 48 years in 1983, he was elected party leader, the youngest in its history. By 1989 he had persuaded the party to abandon its radical policies on disarmament and large-scale nationalization. Although the party increased its numbers in Parliament, it lost the 1992 general election to the Conservatives, and Kinnock resigned as party leader. He became a vice president of the European Commission of the European Union in 1999.

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(born Aug. 5, 1930, Wapakoneta, Ohio, U.S.) U.S. astronaut. He became a pilot at 16, studied aeronautical engineering, and won three Air Medals in the Korean War. In 1955 he became a civilian research pilot for the forerunner of NASA. He joined the space program in 1962 with the second group of astronauts. In 1966, as command pilot of Gemini 8, he and David Scott completed the first manual space docking maneuver, with an unmanned Agena rocket. On July 20, 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission, he became the first person to step onto the Moon, proclaiming “That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Learn more about Armstrong, Neil (Alden) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born March 28, 1942, Tredegar, Monmouthshire, Wales) British politician. Elected to Parliament in 1970, he rose in the Labour Party ranks and was named to its national executive committee in 1978. After the party suffered its heaviest defeat in 48 years in 1983, he was elected party leader, the youngest in its history. By 1989 he had persuaded the party to abandon its radical policies on disarmament and large-scale nationalization. Although the party increased its numbers in Parliament, it lost the 1992 general election to the Conservatives, and Kinnock resigned as party leader. He became a vice president of the European Commission of the European Union in 1999.

Learn more about Kinnock, Neil (Gordon) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Aug. 5, 1930, Wapakoneta, Ohio, U.S.) U.S. astronaut. He became a pilot at 16, studied aeronautical engineering, and won three Air Medals in the Korean War. In 1955 he became a civilian research pilot for the forerunner of NASA. He joined the space program in 1962 with the second group of astronauts. In 1966, as command pilot of Gemini 8, he and David Scott completed the first manual space docking maneuver, with an unmanned Agena rocket. On July 20, 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission, he became the first person to step onto the Moon, proclaiming “That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Learn more about Armstrong, Neil (Alden) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Dennis O'Neil (often credited as Denny O'Neil) is a comic book writer and editor, principally for Marvel Comics and DC Comics in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and Group Editor for the Batman family of books until his retirement.

Biography

Early years

Dennis O'Neil was born into a Catholic household on May 3 1939 in St. Louis, Missouri. He still recalls from his youth the Sunday afternoon ritual where he would accompany his father or his grandfather to the store for some light groceries and an occasional comic book.

O'Neil graduated from St. Louis University around the turn of the sixties and from there joined the navy just in time to participate in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His degree centered on English literature, creative writing, and philosophy.

After leaving the navy, O'Neil moved on to a job with a newspaper in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. O'Neil wrote occasional columns on the subject for the newspaper, which attracted the attention of Roy Thomas, who would eventually himself become one of the great names of the Silver Age.

Marvel Comics

Roy Thomas soon took work with DC in its Superman stable, but left before long to work for Stan Lee at Marvel Comics. He suggested that O'Neil take the Marvel Writer's Test, which involved adding dialogue to a wordless four-page excerpt of a Fantastic Four comic; and his entry impressed Lee enough to offer O'Neil a job.

When Marvel's expansion made it impossible for Stan Lee to write the entire line of books, Lee passed as much on to Roy Thomas as he could, but still needed writers, so O'Neil took the reins for a short-term run of Dr. Strange stories in Strange Tales, penning six issues. He also wrote dialog for such titles as Rawhide Kid and Millie the Model, as well as scripting an issue of Daredevil over a plot by Lee when Lee went on holiday. In the late 1970's, O´Neil also edited Daredevil during Frank Miller´s run, one of the most memorables takes on the character.

According to Bob Budiansky, Dennis O'Neil is the person who named Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots and the most important character in the Transformers multiverse.

Charlton Comics

The available jobs writing for Marvel petered out fairly quickly, and O'Neil took a job with Charlton Comics under the pseudonym of Sergius O’Shaugnessy. There he received regular work for a year and a half from Charlton's editor Dick Giordano.

DC Comics

In 1968 Dick Giordano was offered an editorial position at DC Comics and took a number of Charlton freelancers with him, including O'Neil. Charlton talent arrived at DC from a different culture of comics. At DC, the office seemed like a snapshot from 1950, with a crowd of short-haired men in white shirts and ties. The jeans-wearing, hippy trended Charlton crowd visibly represented a different generation.

O'Neil's first assignments involved two strategies for bolstering DC's sales. One approach centered on the creation of new characters, and O'Neil scripted several issues of Beware the Creeper, a series starring a new hero, The Creeper, created by artist Steve Ditko. From there, DC moved O'Neil to Wonder Woman and Justice League of America. With artist Mike Sekowsky, he took away Wonder Woman's powers, exiled her from the Amazon community, and set her off, uncostumed, into international intrigues with her blind mentor, the dubiously-named I Ching. These changes did not sit well with Wonder Woman's older fans, such as Gloria Steinem, and O'Neil later considered that removing DC's single super-powered female might have alienated readers. In Justice League, he had more success, introducing into that title the first socially and politically themed stories, setting the stage for later work on Green Lantern/Green Arrow.

Following the lead set by Bob Haney and Neal Adams in a Brave and the Bold story that visually redefined Green Arrow into the version that appeared in comics between 1969 and 1986, O'Neil stripped him of his wealth and Playboy status making him an urban hero. This redefinition would culminate in the character that appeared in Green Lantern/Green Arrow, a socially conscious, left-wing creation that effectively took over Green Lantern's book to use him as a foil and straw man in sounding out the political concepts that would define that work.

Other Work

O'Neil has written several novels, comics, short stories, reviews and teleplays, including the novelizations of the movies Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He scripted a series of novels about a kung fu character named Richard Dragon, and later adapted those novels to comic book form.

O'Neil spent several years in the late nineties teaching Writing for the Comics at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts, sometimes sharing duties with fellow comic book writer John Ostrander.

He currently writes a weekly column for ComicMix.

Personal life

O'Neil is the father of writer/director/producer Lawrence O'Neil, best known for the 1997 David Schwimmer vehicle, Breast Men.

Highlights

His best-known works include Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman with Neal Adams, The Shadow with Mike Kaluta and The Question with Denys Cowan, all of which were hailed for their sophisticated stories that expanded the artistic potential of the mainstream portion of the medium. As an editor, he is principally known for editing the various Batman titles. Today, he sits on the board of directors of the charity The Hero Initiative.

His 1970s run on Batman is perhaps his best-known endeavour, getting back to the character's darker roots after a period dominated by the campiness of the 1960s TV show, and emphasizing his detective skills. This grimmer and more sophisticated Dark Knight, as well as new villains such as O'Neil creation Ra's al Ghul, brought Batman back from the verge of pop culture oblivion. His work would influence later incarnations of Batman, from the seminal comic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, to the movie Batman Begins in 2005.

Speaking about his role in the death of character Jason Todd, O'Neil remarked:

It changed my mind about what I do for a living. Superman and Batman have been in continuous publication for over half a century, and it's never been true of any fictional construct before. These characters have a lot more weight than the hero of a popular sitcom that lasts maybe four years. They have become postindustrial folklore, and part of this job is to be the custodian of folk figures. Everybody on Earth knows Batman and Robin.

Awards

His work has won him a great deal of recognition in the comics industry, including the Shazam Awards for Best Continuing Feature Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Best Individual Story for "No Evil Shall Escape My Sight" in Green Lantern #76 (with Neal Adams), for Best Writer (Dramatic Division) in 1970 for Green Lantern, Batman, Superman, and other titles, and Best Individual Story for "Snowbirds Don't Fly" in Green Lantern #85 (with Neal Adams) in 1971.

As a character

In The Batman Adventures -- the first DC Comics spinoff of Batman: The Animated Series -- O'Neil appears as The Perfesser, one of a screwball trio of incompetent super-villains that also includes The Mastermind (a caricature of Mike Carlin) and Mr. Nice (a caricature of Archie Goodwin). The Perfesser is depicted as a tall, pipe-smoking genius who often gets lost in his own thoughts, and who regularly forgets to give his criminal friends crucial information in planning their heists. (For example, after carefully planning a hotel robbery, the trio arrives at the hotel's location to find a vacant lot. The Perfesser then remembers that the hotel was torn down several years ago.)

In addition, his last name appears as the name of a Gotham City corporation in the 1993 animated movie Batman: Mask of the Phantasm along with the last names of Neal Adams, Scott Peterson and Kelley Puckett.

Bibliography

Charlton Comics

• Charlton Premiere #2
• Thunderbolt #58 - 60

DC Comics

• Adventure Comics #418, 419, 449 - 451
• Armageddon 2001 special #2
• Atom and Hawkman #42 - 45
• Azrael #1 - 100
• Bat Lash #2 - 7
• Batman #224, 225, 227, 232, 234, 235, 237, 239-245, 247, 248, 251, 253, 256-264, 266, 268, 286, 303, 320, 684
• Batman: Gordon of Gotham #1 - 4
• Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #1 - 5, 16 - 20, 50, 59 - 61, 63, 127-131
• Batman: Sword of Azrael #1 - 4
• Beware The Creeper #1 - 4, 6, 8
• Brave and the Bold #93
• Challengers of the Unknown #68 - 74
• DC Comics Presents #19, 20, 23
• DC Special Series #1, 5, 18, 19
• Detective Comics #395, 397, 399 - 401, 404 - 406, 410, 411, 414, 418, 431, 451, 483 - 491, 851
• Doc Savage #1 - 6
• Dragonslayer #1 - 2
• Flash, The #217 - 221, 223, 224, 226 - 228, 230, 231, 233, 234, 237, 238, 240 - 243, 245
• From Beyond the Unknown #7 - 8
• Green Lantern #63, 64, 68, 72, 76 - 87, 90 - 100, 102 - 129
• Hercules #3 - 5
• Isis #1
• Joker, The #1 - 3, 6
• Justice, Inc. #1 - 4
• Justice League Of America #66, 68-75, 77-83, 86, 115
• JLA #91 - 93
• Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth! #45 - 48
• Legends Of The DC Universe #7 - 9
• Nightwing (miniseries) #1 - 4
• Phantom Stranger #8
• Question, The #1 - 36
• Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter #1 - 10, 13 - 18
• Shazam! #1 - 7, 9, 14, 15, 17, 25
• Shadow, The #1 - 8, 10, 12
• Showcase #82 - 84
• Spectre, The #9
• Strange Sports Stories #4
• Super Friends #20, 22 , 24
• Superman #233 - 238, 240 - 242, 244, 247, 253, 254
• Super-Team Family #2
• Sword of Sorcery #1 - 5
• Tarzan #255, 256
• Time Warp #1/1
• Weird Worlds #4 - 10
• Wonder Woman #178, 179, 180 - 182, 199 - 201
• World's Finest #198, 199, 201, 202, 204, 211, 212, 214, 244, 256-264

Marvel Comics

• Amazing Spider-Man, The #207 - 219, 221, 223
• Amazing Spider-Man Annual, The #14, 15
• Billy the Kid #68, 69
• Chamber of Darkness #3 - 5
• Cheyenne Kid #66 - 69, 70 - 73
• Daredevil #18, 194 - 202, 204 - 207, 210 - 223, 226
• Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, The #6, 14
• Epic Illustrated #16 - 20
• Go-Go #7
• Ghost Rider #7
• Hercules #2
• Heroes For Hope Starring The X-Men #1
• Hulk #21 - 24
• Iron Man 1968 #158, 160 - 208
• Kid Colt Outlaw #134 - 136, 138, 139
• Moon Knight #26 - The Cabbie Killer
• Power Man and Iron Fist #85 - 89
• Rawhide Kid #56, 59, 60, 62, 66
• Savage Tales #5
• Team America #2
• Two-Gun Kid #90, 92
• X-Men #65

Graphic Novels

• Justice, Inc - 1975
• The Shadow "1941" - with Michael W.Kaluta, Russ Heath 1988
• Shadow the Private Files - with Mark Waid 1989
• Batman: Bride of the Demon - 1990
• Batman: Birth of the Demon - 1992
• Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard-Traveling Heroes - 1992
• Green Lantern/Green Arrow: More Hard-Traveling Heroes - 1993
• Batman: Sword of Azrael - 1993
• Batman: Bloodstorm - 1995
• Batman: Death of Innocents : the Horror of Landmines - 1996
• Batman: I Joker - 1998
• Batman: Shaman - 1998
• Batman in the Seventies - 2000
• The Deadman Collection - 2001
• Batman: The Ring, the Arrow, and the Bat - 2003
• Green Lantern/Green Arrow Collection - Volume 1 - 2004
• Green Lantern/Green Arrow Collection - Volume 2 - 2005
• Green Lantern : Hero's Quest - 2005

Novellas

• The Iconoclasts - Fantastic Stories, ed. Ted White, Ultimate Publishing, 1971
• "Report on a Broken Bridge" - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 1971
• After They've Seen Paree - Generation, ed. David Gerrold, Dell, 1972
• "The Elseones" – Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1972
• "Mister Cherubim" – Fantastic Stories June, 1972
• "Noonday Devil" - Saving Worlds, eds. Roger Elwood & Virginia Kidd, Doubleday, 1973
• "Devil Night" – Haunt of Horror August, 1973
• "Annie Mae: A Love Story" - The Far Side of Time, ed. Roger Elwood, Dodd Mead, 1974
• "There Are No Yesterdays!" - Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction March 1975
• "Sister Mary Talks to the Girls Sodality" – Harpoon Magazine, January, 1975
• "The Killing of Mother Corn" – Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1975
• "Father Flotsky" – Apple Pie Magazine May, 1975
• "Alias the Last Resort" – Best Detective Stories of the Year, Ed. Hubin, 1975
• "Adam and No Eve" (with Alfred Bester) - Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction March 1975
• "Wave By" – Fantasy & Science Fiction, September, 1980
• "Bicycle Superhero"- Superheroes, ed. John Varley Ace Fantasy, 1995

Novels

• The Bite of Monsters – Belmont, 1971
• Dragon’s Fists – Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Master with Jim Berry, 1974
• Secret Origins of the Super DC Heroes - Crown Publishing Group, April 1976
• The Super Comics - Scholastic Book Services 1981
• Batman Knightfall – 1994
• The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics - 2001
• Green Lantern Hero’s Quest – 2005
• Batman Begins novelization – 2005
• DC Universe: Helltown - 2006
• The Dark Knight novelization - 2008

Non-fiction

• The DC Comics Guide To Writing Comics, Watson-Guptill, May 2001
• Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City, SmartPop series, Benbella Books, March 2008 (editor)

Essays, reviews and interviews

• The Lurker in the Family Room - The Haunt of Horror, June 1973
• Review of Will Eisner’s “A Contract With God” – Comics Journal #46, May 1979
• Interview w/ Samuel R. Delaney – Comics Journal #48, Summer 1979
• The Super Comics – 1980
• Article on Gary Trudeau/Doonesbury – Comics Journal #63, Summer 1981
• Forum & Interview w/ Gil Kane – Comics Journal #64 July 1981
• The Man of Steel and Me – Superman at 50, 1987
• Martial Arts – Superman & Batman Magazine #1, with Marifran O'Neil, Summer 1993
• Comics 101/Classes 1 & 2 – Write Now! #3, March 2003
• Comics 101/Classes 3 & 4 – Write Now! #4, May 2003
• Comics 101/Classes 5 & 6 – Write Now! #5, August 2003
• "Introduction" to Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre by Peter Coogan (MonkeyBrain Books (Jul 25, 2006))

Audio interviews

• Around Comics Interview on Around Comics Part 1
• Around Comics Interview on Around Comics Part 2

References

External links

• Dennis O'Neil's Official Message Board
• Comic Geek Speak Podcast Interview (October 2005)
• Contento stories listed by author
• Scifan.com Dennis O'Neil
• Dennis O'Neil year by year
• Talent Pool Biography on Dennis O'Neil
• Legions of Gotham Interview w/ Dennis O'Neil
• Dennis O'Neil's column on ComicMix

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