The highly anticipated sequel to the film “Guardians of the Galaxy” arrives in theaters this year, but you may not know that one of the co-creators of the comic-book team, writer Arnold Drake (1924-2007), was at one time a University of Missouri student. Drake came to the college under unusual circumstances though.
The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 led Arnold Druckman, who later changed his last name to “Drake,” to enlist in the army. He had taken some coursework at the City College of New York before enlisting, but the army didn’t keep him from a college education very long. Druckman joined an estimated 150,000 men who were part of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) which established military training on over 200 college campuses for the war effort.
Druckman started his ASTP duty at MU in July of 1943 following an engineering course track, but his coursework was similar to an average college freshman with classes in various disciplines. [1] Foreshadowing his later writing career, he earned superior marks in History & English. He also hung out at the campus eatery, “Jack’s Shack,” later putting a reference to it in one of his comic books. [2] “Jack’s Shack” later changed its name to just “The Shack,” and is probably best known due to its association to another Mizzou alum involved with comics: Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey. [3]
At the end of 1943, after two accelerated semesters, Druckman’s MU education came to a halt as it did for many men around that same time; infantry troops were needed in Europe and the A.S.T.P. program was dismantled in 1944. He later participated in the Battle of the Bulge and received three combat stars and two unit citations during his service. [4]
When he got out of the military after nearly four years of service, Druckman went back to college on the G.I. Bill at New York University. During college he took various writing jobs for extra money, which included comic books. [5] He kept with comics after college, establishing himself at DC Comics. [6] Over the years he managed to co-create various characters like Deadman, Beast Boy, and the Doom Patrol, all of which have been popular in comic books and animated TV shows. [7]
Drake eventually left DC Comics for Marvel Comics, with his most important work at Marvel being a one shot story he wrote for “Marvel Super-Heroes” No. 18 published in January 1969. [8] This issue introduced the Guardians of the Galaxy, a group of four characters locked in guerrilla warfare against the alien Badoon who had taken over our galaxy in the 31st century. Drake co-created the team with input from Marvel editors Roy Thomas and Stan Lee as well as artist Gene Colan. [9]
The team probably would have stayed in obscurity if not for the efforts of Steve Gerber, who himself briefly attended Mizzou in the fall of 1967. [10] Gerber brought back the Guardians of the Galaxy into a series of stories that ran throughout the 1970s in various anthology titles. This exposure later led to the team getting their own title in the 1990s, which itself inspired 2008 reboot with a different team taking the name.
Throughout the years the team was of minor importance to most comic fans, but that changed when the Guardians were given a blockbuster live-action film in 2014. The team in the film was based off the 2008 comic reboot, so only one of Drake’s original characters, a re-imagined Yondu, makes an appearance in the 2014 film and the 2017 sequel. Steve Gerber was also given a nod in the 2014 film when his character Howard the Duck shows up during the ending credits scene. [11]
Drake’s comics often featured references to war and veterans concerns, so it’s natural that he got involved with a charity called the Veterans Bedside Network later in his life. [12] “I was more than sympathetic to the G.I. cause,” he said. Drake also did not forget his time at Mizzou, later bragging about attending the school and calling it, “the best undergrad journalism school in the country.”
The Guardians of the Galaxy might be Drake’s most high profile co-creation at the moment, but others are waiting in the wings. Both Deadman & the Doom Patrol have received Hollywood buzz over the last decade and might be headed to a big screen sooner or later. Arnold Drake’s influence on popular culture may have only just begun. [13]
[Note: A version of this article without the footnotes also appeared in the online Columbia Missourian on May 4th, 2017.]
Footnotes:
[1] I’m fairly sure Drake would have liked to study journalism while at MU. He studied journalism in High School, and at some point while in the army he also worked as a reporter.
[2] The second appearance of Drake’s character Deadman appears in “Strange Adventures” No. 206, but the story was reportedly credited to someone else as a favor. Drake later presented proof that he wrote the story: “There’s an old writer’s trick that I employed in story #2: in the story, the bike-gang’s meeting place is “Jack’s Shack.” Now, when I was at the University of Missouri, we hung out at a beer joint called—surprise!—“Jack’s Shack.” So that’s proof-positive that “Deadman” #2 is my script.”
[3] Cartoonist Mort Walker missed Arnold Drake by one semester at MU. Walker came to MU in 1942 and was drafted out of school late that year and didn’t return to school until after the war. He himself was also a part of the A.S.T.P. program at Washington University in St. Louis. He would later use his war experiences as inspiration for his comic strip “Beetle Bailey.” As a MU student, Walker served as editor and contributor of the campus humor magazine “Showme” whose staff meetings were often held in The Shack. Walker often featured The Shack in his illustrations as a student, and also after college in his “Beetle Bailey” comic strip. The Shack burned down in 1988 and was recreated in 2010 in the MU Student Center with Beetle Bailey decor and an eatery called Mort’s.
[4] Drake said that he started writing songs while he was in the army. “When I got out, I wrote a lot of radio jingles and a few pop songs but I wanted to concentrate on story writing. I had two brothers who were already writing songs. I figured we were well enough represented.” Drake’s brothers Milton & Ervin were fairly well known songwriters. One of Ervin Drake’s big hits that he co-wrote was the song “I Believe,” a song commissioned by Columbia, Missouri, native Jane Froman, for her TV show back in the 1950s.
[5] While still in college, he co-wrote “It Rhymes with Lust” a unique “picture novel” that came out in 1950. “We reasoned that for the ex-GIs who read comics while in the service and liked the graphic style of story telling, there was room for a more developed comic book–a deliberate bridge between comic books and book-books,” Drake said. The idea didn’t take off at the time, but can now be seen as a precursor to the modern day graphic novel.
[6] Arnold Drake’s big break in comics came when he met Batman co-creator Bob Kane, who was a neighbor of his brother Milton. Kane showed Drake around the offices of publisher DC Comics, and he secured a job writing various anthology titles for the company.
[7] Interestingly enough, the Doom Patrol team has ties to Missouri. The first Doom Patrol series was headquartered in a “bustling city,” but Drake never officially revealed where they were. In Doom Patrol #94 though, a reference is made to their hometown containing a “Cardinal Stadium,” which might suggest that they were in St. Louis. The second volume of the series that started in 1987 (which was not written by Drake) put the headquarters of the team in Kansas City, which was the hometown of Steve Lightle who drew the first four issues of that series.
[8] Drake eventually quit DC in 1967 following a pay dispute and went over to Marvel Comics, where he wrote a few stories for the very team that the Doom Patrol was rumored to have inspired: “X-Men.” When he strode into the Bullpen looking for an assignment, “X-men” seemed a natural,” editor Roy Thomas wrote. Drake only wrote the X-Men for eight issues but he introduced at least two characters who’ve become a significant part of Marvel Universe: Lorna Dane (Polaris), the daughter of Magneto and Alex Summers (Havok), the brother of Cyclops.
[9] Marvel editor Roy Thomas explained how he and Stan Lee were involved with the start of the group: “‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ started out as an idea of mine: about super-guerrillas fighting against Russians and Red Chinese who had taken over and divided the USA. I got a sort of general approval out of Stan (I think), and gave the idea to Arnold Drake, since I had no time to write and research it. Arnold went in for a conference with Stan, and Stan (maybe Arnold, too) decided to change it to an interplanetary situation. All the characters and situations in Guardians were created by Arnold and/or Stan.” I didn’t find any mention of Drake talking about the Guardians in interviews, which makes sense; the Guardians were such a minor Marvel team during Drake’s lifetime that it probably wasn’t of interest to most people.
[10] A little more info about Steve Gerber: He spent two years at University of Missouri-St. Louis and one semester at the Columbia campus in the fall of 1967 where he majored in speech and dramatic art. He finished his undergraduate work at St. Louis University in 1969 (and did some graduate work there too) before becoming an associate editor at Marvel in 1972. In 1973, he created his most memorable character, Howard the Duck; His human companion was named Beverly Switzler after Switzler Hall on the MU campus. Gerber decided to give the Guardians of the Galaxy a try after it was suggested to him by another Marvel writer, Tony Isabella.
[11] Yondu might be the only Drake character in the 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy film, but one other element from Drake’s tenure is in the script. The main character Peter Quill (Starlord) is abducted by space aliens in the year 1988, which is a clear nod to the year original team leader Major Vance Astro started his interstellar space travel mission from Earth. In addition to Drake’s Mizzou connection, Guardians of the Galaxy has many other Missouri connections. Marvel editor Roy Thomas & writer Steve Gerber were born in Missouri, as well as director James Gunn, who decided that main character Peter Quill would be from Missouri in the film continuity.
[12] The Veterans Bedside Network is an organization that brings entertainment into V.A. Hospitals. Drake volunteered for the organization for 20 years and was executive director for seven years himself.
[13] Deadman just appeared in the animated film “Justice League Dark” released in Feburary of 2017, and the Doom Patrol currently has an ongoing comic book penned by rock star Gerard Way.
Sources:
Arnold Drake Resources:
“Alter Ego” No. 17, “Alter Ego” No. 24, “Back Issue” No. 65, “Blackhawk” No. 197, “Sequential Tart” interview, Jerry Bail’s Who’s Who profile, Archer St. John history, New York Times letter to the editor, “Newsarama” interview, Mark Evanier blog post, Marc Tyler Nobleman interview, “Telling Stories: The Comic Book Creators“, Marvel Masterworks “The X-Men,” Vol. 5, “Deadman” book one.
Mizzou & A.S.T.P Resources:
The Military and Mizzou, The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops, Mort Walker interview, Savitar Yearbook 1944, Columbia Missourian, Columbia Daily Tribune, MU Archives.
Thanks:
- Edward Liu for letting me use his Arnold Drake photo.
- The staff at the MU Libraries for providing research help.
- Dirk Burhans for reading over an early draft of this article.
- Matt Dulin for helping to share the story with the Columbia Missourian.