William Blake Everett was an American comic book writer-artist best known for creating Namor the Sub-Mariner as well as co-creating Zombie and Daredevil with writer Stan Lee for Marvel Comics.
20 Facts About Bill Everett
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Bill Everett was allegedly a descendant of the childless poet William Blake and of Richard Everett, founder of Dedham, Massachusetts.
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Bill Everett was born on May 18,1917, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Bill Everett's father ran a successful trucking business, and when Bill Everett was young the family bought a large summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
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At 12, in 1929, Bill Everett contracted tuberculosis, and was pulled from sixth grade to go with his mother and his sister to Arizona, to recuperate for four months.
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Bill Everett soon became a professional artist on the advertising staff of the Boston newspaper The Herald-Traveler for $12 a week.
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Bill Everett then returned east to New York City, where he again did newspaper advertising art, for the New York Herald-Tribune.
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Bill Everett next became art editor for Teck Publications' Radio News magazine, then assistant art director under Herm Bollin in Chicago, Illinois.
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Bill Everett co-created the superhero Amazing-Man at Centaur, working with company art director Lloyd Jacquet, and drew the first five issues.
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When plans changed, Bill Everett used his character instead for Funnies, Inc.
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Bill 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 and Joe Simon's Captain America.
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Bill 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.
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Bill Everett entered the US Army for World War II military service in February 1942.
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Bill Everett attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Belvoir, during which time he met Gwenn Randall, who was working for the Ordnance Department at the Pentagon.
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The couple married in 1944, when Bill Everett returned from the European theater of operations, and their first child, a daughter, was born shortly before he was shipped out to the Philippines to fight in the Pacific theater; he returned home in February 1946.
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Bill Everett was providing Sub-Mariner stories regularly for the solo title as well as for The Human Torch, Marvel Mystery Comics and even Blonde Phantom Comics.
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Bill Everett drew the features "Venus" and "Marvel Boy", as well as a large number of stories for Atlas' anthological horror-fantasy series.
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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 Bill Everett and found that,.
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Artist Gene Colan said that Bill Everett had been Lee's first choice to draw the horror series Tomb of Dracula, which premiered in 1972 and for which Colan then lobbied successfully.
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Bill Everett died on February 27,1973, at the age of 55.