February 1975: Who Knows How to Break In to Comics?

 INT. 909 THIRD AVE., NEW YORK — Day

 New editor Denny O’Neil is shouting inside his DC Comics office.

A 1974 summer hire staffer runs in to check on O’Neil. He finds the writer-editor upset because DC had canceled and then un-canceled the Shadow title, leaving him with a comic book to publish immediately — but no script.

The young staffer realizes this is his chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of writing comics. Bluffing, he tells O’Neil he has a great idea for a story

What is it, O’Neil asks.

The staffer thinks fast. He and his wife had recently honeymooned at Niagara Falls, which daredevils once crossed on tightropes in the 1930s, the Shadow’s era. Could he use that?

“Uh … Picture a fight between the Shadow and a villain on that tightrope over Niagara Falls … at night … the roving searchlights catching a glimpse of him up in that sky!” the staffer improvised.

Good cover there, says O’Neil. Go on. Why are they fighting?

Still thinking on his feet, desperately, the staffer comes up with the idea of smugglers between the U.S. and Canada.

Smuggling what?

Drugs!

How?

In those barrels that people used to use to go over the falls!

O’Neil asks if he could have the script on his desk by 6 p.m. the next day, and the staffer says sure.

The Night of the Falling Death was published in The Shadow 9 (Feb.-March 1975), with interior art by Frank Robbins and a cover by Joe Kubert.

And the young summer hire who wrote it? He was Michael Uslan, who would go on to originate and serve as executive producer on the Batman movie franchise.

The anecdote appears in his memoir, The Boy Who Loved Batman.