Drake by then had left to work at rival Marvel Comics, following a dispute with Donenfeld over Drake's DC page rate. Drake said he consented to complete the script because of his friendship with Boltinoff. 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." 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). One comics historian hailed the feature as a precursor of Bill Watterson's comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, "where a boy keeps company with a marvelous being, the very existence of which is unknown by any of his more worldly associates. 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." Drake wrote the revival of the Quality Comics character Plastic Man in 1966. He wrote several stories for The Adventures of Jerry Lewis including issue #101 (July–Aug. 1967) which featured artist Neal Adams' first full-length story for DC. With artist Carmine Infantino, Drake had co-created Deadman, a murdered circus trapeze artist whose ghost traverses the country seeking the unknown man who killed him. Deadman's first appearance in Strange Adventures #205 included the first known depiction of narcotics in a story approved by the Comics Code Authority. Drake additionally scripted the following issue's story, miscredited in several reprints as written by Jack Miller. The character would become a mainstay of the DC Universe well into the 2000s. Other work for DC during this time included stories of the adventuring quartet the Challengers of the Unknown. Letterer Clem Robins, who worked with him, wrote that Drake Later comics work In the late 1960s, Drake freelanced for Marvel Comics, beginning with Captain Savage #5 (Aug. 1968), starring a World War II Marines 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