Arnold Drake penned over 2,000 comics stories in the course of a long career which also included work on feature films, plays, novels, animation, radio and television. Born in 1924, Drake began his work in the comics industry in 1950 with a startlingly innovative project: the "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust from St. John Publications, which he co-wrote with Leslie Waller. A precursor to the modern graphic novel, this paperback comic book drew upon pulp crime novels and film noir as a framework for what Drake envisioned as a new medium of genre "movies on paper." Drake brought the same inventiveness to his work for DC, where he wrote for titles including THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY, THE HOUSE OF SECRETS, MYSTERY IN SPACE, CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN and TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED. Drake also conceived of two of the era's most innovative features: the Doom Patrol (in MY GREATEST ADVENTURE) and Deadman (in STRANGE ADVENTURES). He went on to work for Western Publishing's Gold Key comics line in the 1970s and early '80s, and in later years he was deeply involved in the Veterans Bedside Network, an organization of show business personalities using music and drama as therapy in America's V.A. hospitals. In 2005 Drake received the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing at the Comic-Con International in San Diego in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the medium.