Author: DOuG pRATt

With Krypton and its laws gone, Superman seemed to be suggesting the taboo idea to Supergirl more than he was rejecting it.

It’s been 60 years — sixty! — since I hooked onto my first favorite Marvel Comics character, Daredevil, in issue #19. I continue to shake my head in amazement at the mass popularity of what, once I got into my teen years, other boys made fun of me for liking. Today’s Daredevil is an undeniably grittier version than the one I first enjoyed.

A few months after Daredevil #19, this one-shot comic book was published, reprinting Daredevil #1. Ostensibly, the book was to promote the upcoming Marvel Super-Heroes syndicated cartoon series but, curiously, Daredevil wasn’t one of the cartoons.

I read this favorite comic book many times over. Other times I just studied the drawings. The one disappointment was the poor reproduction quality of Bill Everett’s art.

Everett drew the issue while working full-time at Eaton Paper Company in Pittsfield, MA. He missed more than one deadline getting this job done. Some of the inking in the later pages of the story was reportedly completed by Steve Ditko.

It’s obvious in Marvel Super-Heroes #1, that a lot was lost in the photostats. Here are eight examples of the finely detailed original art for Daredevil #1.

After the Daredevil debacle concluded in late 1963, Everett continued working at Eaton but in 1965, the house of cards collapsed again. “He was fired from Eaton,” says [Everett’s daughter] Wendy. “He was such an acute alcoholic at this point, and had such difficulty with authority figures, that he couldn’t hold a job.”^*
— ‘Fire & Water: Bill Everett and the Birth of Marvel Comics’, by Blake Bell, Fantagraphics, 2010

Everett joined AA, got sober, and was welcomed back to Marvel. He ended his career producing a wonderful series of Sub-Mariner comics, before dying from heart disease at age 55. While working on this post, I’ve been looking at both the book cited above and this new volume of Everett’s work from his Fifties peak.

^* Wally Wood developed similar trouble with alcohol and authority figures.