Comic book writer Arnold Drake died 12 March 2007. Born on 1 March 1924, he contracted scarlet fever at the age of 12. That illness confined him to his bed for a year, during which he spent a lot of time drawing comics. Later, however, he decided he preferred to write them.
His first comics job was writing for DC’s House of Mystery. Later, he worked on My Greatest Adventure, Mark Merlin, Space Ranger, Batman, and Tommy Tomorrow In the 1960s, he created The Doom Patrol, Deadman, and Stanley and His Monster (an imaginative kids’ comic that preceded, but contained many of the elements of, Calvin and Hobbes). After DC, he worked for Marvel, and then moved on to Gold Key Comics, for whom he wrote The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Little Lulu.
After crusading for the creation of the Bill Finger Award, to honor veteran comics writers whose work had been insufficiently recognized, Drake wound up its first recipient, in 2005.