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,[3] and Pearl Cohen.
[5] At age 12, Drake contracted scarlet fever, confining him to bed for a year, a time he spent drawing his own comic strip creations.
[6] 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.
[7] 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).
[8] 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.
[21] 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.
"[2] By this time, Drake and artist Win Mortimer had co-created DC's "Stanley and His Monster", a whimsical feature about a 6-year-old boy and his large, tusked, pink-furred and hardly ferocious "pet", which debuted in the talking animal comic The Fox and the Crow #95 (Jan. 1966).
Its most direct antecedent in comics is probably Crockett Johnson's Barnaby, where parents repeatedly interact with their son's supernatural friend even while denying the possibility of that being's existence.
[8] Letterer Clem Robins, who worked with him, wrote that Drake ...had it all: economy, pacing, a sure ear for dialogue, humor, and the ability to invent characters you believed in and cared about.
prison-break movie] The Great Escape, in which a summer camp's inmates attempt to bust out from under the watchful eye of the head counselor, Uncle Hal, who dressed in a Gestapo uniform and whose sexuality was extremely questionable.
Drake wrote the run of X-Men #47–54 (Aug. 1968 – March 1969, co-writing his initial issue with Gary Friedrich), which included two rare circumstances of stories drawn but not written by the noted comics writer-artist Jim Steranko.
In Marvel Super-Heroes #18 (Jan. 1969), Drake and editor Stan Lee co-created the Guardians of the Galaxy,[32][33] a far-future team of freedom fighters gathered from different planets of the Solar System.
[8] His Gold Key work included what comics historian Mark Evanier called "a particularly long and delightful stint on Little Lulu",[2] beginning with issue #232 (May 1976).
[8] Drake wrote the foreword, introduction, preface and afterword of DC's 2002 hardcover reprint collection The Doom Patrol Archives #1.
[36] 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.