Posted By Dan Greenfield on Mar 15, 2024 | 7 comments

The celebrated Mr. K pays a BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE to the late, great writer…

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The late Bob Haney was born 98 years ago, on March 15, 1926. This year, we have a two-fer BIRTHDAY SALUTE. Paul Kupperberg’s column below and a companion piece by Jim Beard. Click here for that — and dig ’em both! — Dan

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By PAUL KUPPERBERG

Bob Haney didn’t give a damn.

You could see it in the characters he created and the stories he wrote. His creations tended to veer off model from traditional superheroes, and even when he wrote those guys, they took on an edge they didn’t have in their own comics, written by writers who weren’t Bob Haney. He even managed to take the malleable master of mirth, Plastic Man and inject a bit of tragedy into him in a story in The Brave and the Bold #95 (April/May 1971) that has a depressed Eel O’Brien lamenting, “In this wide, wild world of today, is there room for me, or am I really what I feared — an out-of-date freak?”

Jack Cole says, “Wha—?!”

But Bob didn’t care. I can tell you from personal interactions, the Philadelphia-born writer and World War II Navy vet who saw action in the South Pacific during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa and holder of a Master’s degree from Columbia University, he was a man of strong opinions and a very definite idea of how things should be done. When I was a newbie at DC Comics in the mid-1970s I took every opportunity I could to talk to him when our paths crossed at the 75 Rockefeller offices. At first, I would ask him a lot of newbie questions about process and inspiration, but that kind of deep dive stuff seemed to bore him. By that time, he was nearing 30 years writing comics, beginning with a story in Harvey’s Black Cat #9 (January 1948), and, as I can tell you from the perspective of looking back at close to 50 years in the comic-book trenches myself, your process can become almost intuitive and reflexive at times.

But he did answer me when I asked him why he ignored the continuity of the home titles of guest-stars in his Brave and the Bold stories. He said trying to keep all that “continuity crap” straight gave him a headache and he never believed it mattered. He essentially said when continuity got in the way of a good story, he would always choose to ignore the continuity. Batman and Sgt. Rock didn’t coexist in the Second World War? Who cared? All that mattered was if it was a good story. Besides, he growled, grown-ups shouldn’t have to take all this fairy tale stuff seriously.

Bob Haney was a bearded bear of a man who looked like a character who might have stepped out of one of his own stories from My Greatest Adventure. He was lucky to find a sympathetic editor in Murray Boltinoff who gave him the freedom to forge his own trail into otherwise established characters and continuity, and I was lucky to not only be an impressionable young reader during the height of his creative powers, but later a clueless young professional at a time when I could still share my appreciation for him with him. And he did share one piece of advice with me that I use to open my upcoming memoir, Panel by Panel: My Comic Book Life:

“When I once asked veteran DC Comics Silver Age scribe Bob Haney the trick to writing a good comic book story, the co-creator of the Teen Titans and Metamorpho laughed and said, ‘There’s no trick. You just write them one page at a time, panel by panel.’”

Here then, MY 13 FAVORITE BOB HANEY CREATIONS:

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Sgt. Rock (Our Army at War #81, April 1959). The mention of DC’s World War II top-kick Sgt. Rock usually evokes the name of Joe Kubert and even, sometimes, Joe’s frequent collaborator on the feature, Robert Kanigher, but “The Rock of Easy Co.!” actually made his first appearance in a story by Bob Haney and artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. (NOTE from Dan: DC will be releasing this issue as a Facsimile Edition in May.)

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Eclipso (House of Secrets #61, Aug. 1963). Dr. Bruce Gordon may have gotten scratched by the Black Diamond and become “Eclipso, the Genius Who Fought Himself!” but it was the genius of Haney and Lee Elias that created this master of evil and brought them to life.

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Negative Man. (My Greatest Adventure #80, June 1963). The lion’s share of the credit for the Doom Patrol belongs to Arnold Drake and artist Bruno Premiani, but the Haney hand is in there in the form of Larry Trainor, aka Negative Man, his contribution to the world’s weirdest super team.

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The Teen Titans (The Brave and the Bold #54, July 1964). They were originally cover billed as just “Kid Flash, Aqualad and Robin,” but “The Thousand and One Dooms of Mr. Twister,” with art by Premiani, was for all intents and purposes (or, in Aqualad’s case, porpoises) the introduction of the Teen Titans. Wonder Girl would join the boys in B&B #60 (June/July 1965) where the quartet was first referred to by their team name.

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Metamorpho (The Brave and the Bold #57, January 1965). If I have to tell you why “The Origin of Metamorpho,” with art by Ramona Fradon is so insanely good, you’ve obviously never read any of the Element Man’s original tales.

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The Enchantress of Terror Castle (Strange Adventures #187, April 1966). A young woman is possessed by a supernatural being known as the Succubus and becomes “The Enchantress of Terror Castle,” a powerful sorceress, with art by Howard Purcell and Sheldon Moldoff. All you need to know is she was billed on the cover as “the Switcheroo-Witcheroo.”

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Batman and… (The Brave and the Bold #59, April/May 1965). Not exactly a Haney creation, but he did write the very first Batman team-up in B&B, pairing the Caped Crusader with Green Lantern in “The Tick-Tock Traps of the Time Commander,” with art by Fradon and Charles Paris.

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Super-Sisters Doing It For Themselves (The Brave and the Bold #63, December 1965/January 1966). I’m also stretching the definition of “creation” a bit with this one to get to the magic No. 13, but “The Revolt of the Super-Chicks,” drawn by John Rosenberger, was the first time two major DC superheroines were teamed up without their male counterparts or comrades hanging around.

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Tula (Aquaman #33, May/June 1967). Her name is Tula, and she was “Aqualad’s Deep-Six Chick!” Nick Cardy was the artist.

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Vulko (The Brave and the Bold #73, August/September 1967). Wise Atlantean scientist Dr. Vulko, likely created as a throwaway character for this one story, found a permanent place in the Haney-scripted Aquaman the very next month, although the lean, brown-haired Howard Purcell- and Sal Trapani-drawn scientist put on some weight and age and had his hair turn snow white in the transition.

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An Enduring Bat-Partnership. (The Brave and the Bold #79, August/September 1968). Neal Adams had been an artist who had drawn Batman in a couple of issues of World’s Finest before landing the B&B assignment, but the stories created by the Haney/Adams team were where he was first recognized as the Batman artist.

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Dirty Job. (Our Army at War #241, Feb. 1972). “Dirty Job” is the rare story drawn by Alex Toth where the script, in this case a four-pager written by Haney, is more breathtaking than the art.

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The Super-Sons! (World’s Finest #215, Jan. 1973). Did we all laugh when “Saga of the Super-Sons” by Haney, Dick Dillin, and Henry Scarpelli was originally published? Yes. We did. The reason Bob Haney was such a good fit with editor Murray Boltinoff was because they shared a disinterest in continuity and just tried creating the best stories they could. It was surprising to learn years later that what the hardcore fan saw as Boltinoff and Haney’s silliness, the casual reader ate up with a spoon. The Super-Sons made 11 appearances in World’s Finest between January 1973 and December 1976, and DC revived the concept in 2017 and hasn’t let go of it, in one form or another, since.

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MORE

— ZANY BOB HANEY: Dig 13 MORE Great BRAVE AND THE BOLD Stories. Click here.

— THE NEAL ADAMS CHRONICLES: Why the Great Artist Had Such Respect for Writer BOB HANEY. Click here.

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PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. Now, as a Post-Modern Age gray eminence, Paul spends a lot of time looking back in his columns for 13th Dimension and in books such as Direct Conversations: Talks with Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators and Direct Comments: Comic Book Creators in Their own Words. His latest, Direct Creativity: The Creators Who Inspired the Creators, is due out in April.