10 People Who Changed The Comic Book Industry Forever

9. Dennis O'Neil

Dennis O'Neil honestly doesn't receive nearly enough the praise he deserves, and that's a shame. The writer, a DC staple in the seventies, eighties and nineties, is responsible for so much of what comics fans have come to love about the industry in its current form, especially in respect to some of its most beloved characters.

No disrespect to the sixties Batman TV show - it was amazing, in its own way - but O'Neil must surely be credited with having made the Batman we know today. Taking over the book alongside frequent artistic collaborator Neal Adams, O'Neil returned the character to the original Bill Finger concept, adding his own creations with characters like R'as Al Ghul too. It set the precedent for the definitive Dark Knight, and is the run all subsequent Batman comics - and films - are built upon.

It would be a disservice to the writer to mention only one of his runs however, and with one certainly more influential than any other, it has to be said that the writer's stint on Green Lantern/Green Arrow was the one that not only reiterated his own credentials, but the one that reinvigorated the superhero genre's salience top to bottom.

Politically scathing, refreshingly honest and revolutionary to its core, O'Neil and Adams' comic is one of the most important of all time, and a definite turning point in the genre's ascension to mainstream recognition.