BILL EVERETT

'William "Bill" Everett', also known as 'William Blake' (He was both named after and a direct descendant of William Blake [1]) and 'Everett Blake' (born May 18, 1917, Cambridge, Massachusetts; died February 27, 1973) was a comic book writer-artist best known for creating Namor the Sub-Mariner and co-creating Daredevil for Marvel Comics.

Contents

Biography

Early life and career

Sub-Mariner

Atlas Comics

Marvel Comics

Footnotes

References

Biography

Early life and career

After studying at Boston's Vesper George School of Art from 1934-35, Everett dropped out to begin freelancing in New York City. In 1939, during what's become known as the Golden Age of comic books, Everett co-created the character Amazing Man at Centaur Publications, working with company art director Lloyd Jacquet. Everett and other creators followed Jacquet to his new company Funnies, Inc., one of the first comic-book "packagers" that would create comics on demand for publishers. As Everett recalled, "I left Centaur with Lloyd Jacquet and another chap whose name as Max; I cannot remember his last name. Lloyd... had an idea that he wanted to start his own art service — to start a small organization to supply artwork and editorial material to publishers. ... He asked me to join him. He also asked Carl Burgos. So we were the nucleus...."^[1] He added, "I don't know how to explain it, but I was still on a freelance basis. That was the agreement we had. The artists, including myself, at Funnies, worked on a freelance basis".^[2]

Sub-Mariner

At Funnies, Inc., Everett created the Sub-Mariner for an aborted project, ''Motion Picture Funnies Weekly'' #1, a planned promotional comic to be given away in movie theaters. When plans changed, Everett used his character instead for Funnies, Inc.'s first client, pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman. The original eight-page story was expanded by four pages for ''Marvel Comics'' #1 (Oct. 1939), the first publication of what Goodman would eventually call Timely Comics, the 1940s precursor of Marvel Comics. Everett's anti-hero proved a sudden success, quickly becoming one of Timely's top three characters, along with Carl Burgos' android superhero the Human Torch and Jack Kirby & Joe Simon's Captain America. Everett soon introduced such supporting characters as New York City policewoman Betty Dean, a steady companion and occasional love-interest, and Namor's cousin Namora.
Everett drew his star character in ''Sub-Mariner Comics'', published first quarterly, then thrice-yearly and finally bimonthly, for issues #1-32 (Fall 1941 - June 1949).

Atlas Comics

Everett returned to the Sub-Mariner at Marvel's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics. Like most superhero characters in the post-war era, Namor had faded in popularity, but after a nearly five-year hiatus briefly returned with Captain America and the Golden Age Human Torch in ''Young Men #24'' (Dec. 1953), during Atlas' mid-1950s attempt at reviving superheroes. Everett drew the Sub-Mariner feature through ''Young Men'' #28 (June 1954) and ''Sub-Mariner Comics'' #33-42 (April 1954 - Oct. 1955), which outlasted the other two characters' features. During this time, Namora had her own spin-off series.
Everett also drew the features "Venus" and "Marvel Boy", as well as a large number of stories for Atlas' anthological horror-fantasy series. One such tale, "Zombie!", written by editor-in-chief Stan Lee and published in ''Menace'' #5, introduced the character Simon Garth, the Zombie, who in the 1970s would be plucked from this one-shot story to star in Marvel's black-and-white, horror-comics magazine ''Tales of the Zombie''.

Marvel Comics

With writer-editor Lee, Everett co-created the Marvel superhero Daredevil who debuted in ''Daredevil'' Vol. 1, #1 (April 1964).^[3] In an interview conducted by Marvel writer-editor and Everett's one-time roommate Roy Thomas, in what the latter recalled as either "late 1969 or in 1970", Everett said of ''Daredevil's creation five years earlier:
Within two years, however, Everett began penciling for Marvel once again, first on the character the Hulk, in ''Tales to Astonish'', initially over Kirby layouts, and on Doctor Strange in ''Strange Tales''. Readers during this 1960s Silver Age of comic books also became acquainted with his Golden Age and 1950s stories in the comic books, which were reprinted first in the book ''The Great Comic Book Heroes'', by Jules Feiffer (Dial Press, 1965), and then in the comic books ''Fantasy Masterpieces'', ''Marvel Super-Heroes'' and ''Marvel Tales''.
Everett even returned to his enduring character, writing, penciling and inking ''Sub-Mariner'' #50-55 & 57 (June 1972 - Nov. 1972; Jan. 1973), with script assists by Mike Friedrich on two issues; and #58 (Feb. 1973), co-written with Steve Gerber and co-penciled with Sam Kweskin. He also co-wrote and inked ''Sub-Mariner'' #59 (March 1973), plotted #60 (April 1973), and co-wrote, co-penciled (with fellow Golden Ager Win Mortimer) and co-inked #61 (Maqy 1973). His final efforts on the character he created were five pages of pencils (inked by fellow Golden Ager Fred Kida) that appeared posthumously in ''Super-Villain Team-Up'' #1 (Aug. 1975).

Footnotes

1. Bill Everett interview, originally published in ''Alter Ego'' Vol. 1, #11, 1978; reprinted in ''Alter Ego'' Vol. 3, #46 (March 2005); p. 8 of the latter.
2. Ibid., p. 9
3. Comics historian and former Jack Kirby assistant Mark Evanier, investigating claims of Kirby's involvement in the creation of both Iron Man and Daredevil, interviewed Kirby and Everett on the subject, years before their deaths, and concluded that, "in both cases, Jack had already drawn the covers of those issues and done some amount of design work. He ... seems to have participated in the design of Daredevil's first costume. ... Everett did tell me that Jack had come up with the idea of Daredevil's billy club. ... Jack, in effect, drew the first page of that first Daredevil story. In the rush to get that seriously late book to press, there wasn't time to complete Page One, so Stan had [production manager] Sol Brodsky slap together a paste-up that employed Kirby's cover drawing. ... Everett volunteered to me that Jack had 'helped him' though he wouldn't — or more likely, couldn't — elaborate on that. He just plain didn't remember it well, and in later years apparently gave others who asked a wide range of answers".''POV Online'': "The Jack FAQ", by Mark Evanier Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada later noted that when Everett turned in his first-issue pencils extremely late, Brodsky and Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko inked "a lot of backgrounds and secondary figures on the fly [and] cobbled the cover and the splash page together from Kirby's original concept drawing"/ ''Newsarama'': "Joe Fridays" (column) #4, by Joe Quesada

References

★ "Everett on Everett", originally published in Alter Ego Vol. 1, #11, 1978; reprinted in ''Alter Ego'' Vol. 3, #46 (March 2005), pp. 5-34

★ "Bill Everett: The Ancient Sub-Mariner — A Tribute by Roy Thomas", Vol. 3, #46 (March 2005), p. 35

★ Jim Hill Media: "A Tribute to Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner's Father", by Monique Pryor

★ The Deep Six Project: A Biography of Namor McKenzie, The Sub-Mariner

★ Jess Nevins' The Timely Comics Story

★ Comic Books on Microfiche: The University of Tulsa, McFarlin Library, Dept. of Special Collections Note: The listing for ''Amazing Man Comics'' #5 (Sept. 1939) says the comic continues the numbering of the unreleased ''Motion Picture Funnies Weekly''

★ A Timely Talk with Allen Bellman

★ The Grand Comic-Book Database

★ ''All in Color for a Dime'' by Dick Lupoff & Don Thompson ISBN 0-87341-498-5

★ ''The Comic Book Makers'' by Joe Simon with Jim Simon ISBN 1-887591-35-4

★ ''Ron Goulart's Great History of Comic Books'' by Ron Goulart ISBN 0-8092-5045-4