Early life and career Arnold Drake was the third child of Max Druckman, a
Manhattan furniture dealer who died in June 1966 at his home in
Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, and Pearl Cohen. His eldest brother,
Ervin Drake, born Ervin Maurice Druckman, and the middle brother, Milton, both became notable songwriters. His family was
Jewish. At age 12, Drake contracted
scarlet fever, confining him to bed for a year, a time he spent drawing his own
comic strip creations. At some unspecified point before or after this, he met a neighbor of one of his brothers:
Bob Kane, the co-creator of
Batman for one of
DC Comics' precursor companies. After collaborating with Drake on some projects, Kane introduced Drake to editors at DC. 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).
DC Comics creations In 1962, Drake and his friend,
Bob Haney discovered the product of a small company distributed by
National Periodical Publications'
Independent News,
Marvel Comics, and were impressed by its bold new quality. However, when the pair confronted National's publisher,
Irwin Donenfeld, about the new competition, they were frustrated by his curt dismissal of the rival, citing their current large revenues. 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-using 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. The Doom Patrol bears a strong resemblance to Marvel's older series about another super-powered quartet, the
Fantastic Four: Elasti-Girl of the Doom Patrol has abilities similar to Mr. Fantastic, Negative Man's powers are similar to those of the Human Torch, Robot-Man is like the Thing (an extraordinarily strong man bitter about being trapped in a freakish body), and the Chief is behind the scenes as the Invisible Girl is invisible. Premiani and Boltinoff appeared as themselves in the final story, discussing the impending demise of the team, but Drake, who had included himself in the script as well, did not. In 1981, Drake said that DC publisher
Irwin Donenfeld had ordered him removed from the story because Drake by then had left to work at rival
Marvel Comics, following a dispute with Donenfeld over Drake's DC page rate. Drake said he consented to complete the script because of his friendship with Boltinoff. Comics historian
Mark Evanier believes that, additionally, Drake, among others, was "ousted" for being "a loud voice in a writers' revolt during which several of the firm's longtime freelancers were demanding health insurance, reprint fees, and better pay." Drake wrote the revival of the
Quality Comics character
Plastic Man in 1966. He wrote several stories for
The Adventures of Jerry Lewis including issue #101 (July–Aug. 1967) which featured artist
Neal Adams' first full-length story for DC. With artist
Carmine Infantino, Drake had co-created
Deadman, a murdered
circus trapeze artist whose ghost traverses the country seeking the unknown man who killed him. included the first known depiction of
narcotics in a story approved by the
Comics Code Authority. Drake additionally scripted the following issue's story, miscredited in several reprints as written by Jack Miller. The character would become a mainstay of the
DC Universe well into the 2000s. Other work for DC during this time included stories of the adventuring quartet the
Challengers of the Unknown.
Lorna Dane, and
Havok. Drake as well wrote issues of the space-alien
superhero Captain Marvel, stories for the superhero satire comic
Not Brand Echh, and a story of the jungle lord
Ka-Zar. In
Marvel Super-Heroes #18 (Jan. 1969), Drake and editor
Stan Lee co-created the
Guardians of the Galaxy, a far-future team of
freedom fighters gathered from different planets of the
Solar System. The characters would star in a 62-issue series in the 1990s, and inspire a
new team of that name in the 2000s. By mid-1969, however, Drake had left Marvel. His next new comics work to be published was a supernatural anthology story in
Gold Key Comics' ''Grimm's Ghost Stories
#1 (Jan. 1972) – the first of many stories for that company, including for the series Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery
, and the licensed TV-series titles Dark Shadows, Star Trek,
and Twilight Zone, among others. That series was published by Whitman Comics, the rights-holder to several properties it licensed to Gold Key, and Drake would continue with Whitman when it began distributing Little Lulu'' and its other properties itself in 1980. Drake's last known original comics story for nearly 20 years was the six-page "G.I. Samurai" in DC's
G.I. Combat #276 (April 1985). He resurfaced two decades later with the 12-page "Tripping Out!", illustrated by
Luis Dominguez, in the mature-audience comics magazine
Heavy Metal vol. 26, #6 (Jan. 2003). This story was accompanied by a one-page biography of the two creators. He also wrote a five-page afterword, "The Graphic Novel – And How It Grew", in
Dark Horse Books' March 2007 reprint of his and collaborators
Leslie Waller and
Matt Baker's pioneering, 1950 proto-graphic novel
It Rhymes with Lust. ==Awards==