the
(March 1, 1924 – March 12, 2007)
 
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. His eldest brother,
 Ervin Drake, born Ervin Maurice Druckman, and the middle brother, Milton, both became notable songwriters.
[4] His family was Jewish.
[5]
In the late 1960s, Drake freelanced for
 Marvel Comics, beginning with
 Captain Savage #5 (Aug. 1968), starring a
 World War IIMarines squadron; he would additionally script some later issues of that series, plus a single issue of the WWII series
 Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. 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. Drake introduced several new characters to the series including
 Mesmero,
[23] Lorna Dane,
[24] and
 Havok.
[25]Drake as well wrote issues of the space-alien
 superhero Captain Marvel, stories for the superhero satire comic
 Not Brand Echh, and a story of the jungle lord
 Ka-Zar. In
 Marvel Super-Heroes #18 (Jan. 1969), Drake and editor
 Stan Lee co-created the
 Guardians of the Galaxy,
[26][27] a far-future team of freedom-fighters gathered from different planets of our
 solar system. The characters would star in a 62-issue series in the 1990s, and inspire a
 new team of that name in the 2000s.
By mid-1969, however, Drake had left Marvel. His next new comics work to be published was a supernatural anthology story in
 Gold Key Comics'
 Grimm's Ghost Stories #1 (Jan. 1972) – the first of many stories for that company, including for the series
 Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, and the licensed TV-series titles
 Dark Shadows,
 Star Trek, and
 Twilight Zone, among others.
[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). In 1973, Drake began freelancing again for DC occasionally, writing stories for series as varied as
 Weird War Tales and
 Supergirl.
[8] Beginning in 1977, Drake contributed stories to several issues of
 Charlton Comics' black-and-white
 satirical-humor magazine,
 Sick.
Drake contributed to all four issues of
 Starstream, a 68-page anthology series with cardboard covers that adapted classic science-fiction stories. That series was published by
 Whitman Comics, the rights-holder to several properties it licensed to Gold Key, and Drake would continue with Whitman when it began distributing
 Little Lulu and its other properties itself in 1980.
[8] By 1981, Drake was executive director of the Veteran's Bedside Network, an organization through which actors, actresses and
 sound engineers would perform scripted material to entertain patients in
 Veterans Administration hospitals in the New York City area.
Drake's last known original comics story for nearly 20 years was the six-page "G.I. Samurai" in DC's
 G.I. Combat #276 (April 1985). He resurfaced two decades later with the 12-page "Tripping Out!", illustrated by
 Luis Dominguez, in the mature-audience comics magazine
 Heavy Metal vol. 26, #6 (Jan. 2003). This story was accompanied by a one-page biography of the two creators.
[8]
Drake wrote the foreword, introduction, preface and afterword of DC's 2002 hardcover reprint collection
 The Doom Patrol Archives #1. He was also working on a new Doom Patrol
 graphic novel, a prequel story, at the time of his death.
[29] He as well 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.
[8]
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