Goodbye to Denny O'Neill at the age of 81.
O'Neill wrote for both DC and Marvel Comics from the 60s to the 90s and is remembered for top-notch work for both companies.
However, to me, O'Neill's DC stint was his calling card with his run with Batman in the seventies being the beginning of the turn away from the campiness of the Batman television show and towards the brooding, dark character that Batman is known for today.
O'Neill is the creator of Batman villain Ra's Al Ghul during that run and Ghul is a villain with a fan base to this day.
O'Neill's most celebrated work though was his two-year turn with Green Lantern and Green Arrow where O'Neill used the characters with Green Arrow as the liberal/countercultural person with Green Lantern as the more establishment oriented character and their travels around the country dealing with "real" issues of the time.
Racism, pollution, corruption, and cults were all written about by O'Neill in the series, which wasn't exactly standard material for comic books of the era.
The most famous was the two-part comic with Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy being found addicted to heroin and his road to recovery.
The comic won several awards for the writing, but didn't sell well on the overall and was the reason that the series met cancellation after only two years.
O'Neill would continue to write over the decades, but he also edited several series for both DC and Marvel as his main job from 1980 forward.
O'Neill did one other book that I read but never owned despite my groaning for it- 1978's Superman vs Muhammad Ali.
Both comic companies would occasionally release these monstrous, oversized comic book versions that were expensive for the time, but did give plenty of value for the dollar.
Superman vs Ali was in that format, but I never owned it.
Darn, the luck.
Goodbye to Jim Kiick at the age of 73.Kiick was part of the three-pronged backfield for the 1972 and 1973 World Champion Dolphins and was part of the highly-publicized leap to the WFL with Larry Csonka and Paul Warfield, which could have cost the Dolphins another Super Bowl trip or victory.
Had the Dolphins made that trip (they lost in the final seconds at Oakland in the famous "Sea of Hands" game), it would have been four trips in a row and a win would have been three of four titles.
If that happens, it's the Dolphins that grab the "team of the seventies" title, not the Steelers.
Larry Csonka was the hard-driving workhorse fullback, Mercury Morris was the speed back that could break a long run at any time and Kiick was the pass-catching, change of pace back.
The varied skills of the trio are what made the Dolphins so tough to defeat at that time and I think Miami wouldn't have been nearly as good with only two of the backs.
Miami owner Joe Robbie was noted as a cheaper owner in the league and when the WFL's Memphis Southmen offered Kiick, Larry Csonka, and Paul Warfield far superior contracts, the three leaped to the WFL.
The WFL didn't even complete their second year (The only year there for the Miami Three) and everyone seemed to suffer.
The three played well for the Southmen, but they didn't dominate, none of the three players played as well as they did with the Dolphins when they returned to the NFL in 1976 and Miami didn't even make the playoffs in 1975 ( they finished 10-4, tied for first with the Colts, but lost the tiebreaker and the wild card was 11-3 Cincinnati) or in the following two seasons as well.
Kiick's return to the NFL didn't go well as he was a seldom-used back for Denver in 1976, played three games for the Broncos in 1977, along with one for Washington in the final season of his career.
Goodbye to Adrian Devine at the age of 68.
Devine was a journeyman pitcher for the Braves and Rangers in the late 1970s and was part of three trades between the teams that saw Devine move from Atlanta to Texas back to Atlanta and then back to Texas to end his career.
Devine was mostly a reliever in his career with his best season occurring in his first stint as a Ranger in 1977 with 15 saves.
Devine survived two battles with tongue cancer that left him unable to speak, another with brain cancer until finally succumbing to lung cancer- one tough man.
Devine may be the subject of an upcoming post on the joy of liking and collecting "common" players and their baseball cards coming soon.
Goodbye to Ernesto Marcel at the age of 72.
Panama's Marcel came within an eyelash of winning both the WBA and WBC featherweight titles in nine months in 1971-72.
The smooth-boxing Marcel drew with WBC champion Kuniaki Shibata in Japan in November 1971 and then took away the WBA title from Antonio Gomez via a majority decision in August 1972.
Marcel would defend the title three times and defeat two future champions in Sammy Serrano (non-title ten rounder) and all-time great Alexis Arguello in Marcel's final fight as Marcel retired following his unanimous decision win in February 1974.
Before winning his title, Marcel fought another future great in 1970 against fellow Panamanian Roberto Duran in the first major test of Duran's career.
Duran would stop Marcel in the final round of the ten-round fight and Marcel is one of only two fighters along with Vilomar Fernandez to have fought both Duran and Arguello.
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