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John Vest On Bill Everett And Early ‘70s Marvel
posted January 26, 2009
 

In the autobiographical text page in Tales Of The Zombie #3 Steve Gerber mentioned he was writing three Bill Everett creations -- the Sub-Mariner, Daredevil, and the Zombie. He made an oblique reference about having more in common with Everett than either realized.

I enjoy these Sub-Mariner issues from Bill Everett's final run now much more than I did when they were originally published. And the golden age Sub-Mariner stories like the one in Jules Feiffer's Great Comic Book Heroes are really full of life. The Sub-Mariner's ill tempered, irascible nature and his contempt of human society age very well.

I liked other Marvel comics I bought around 1972 including the Daredevil and Black Widow run, the Barry Windsor-Smith illustrated Conans, and the genre comics that had the new Steranko illustrated covers. There were wonderfully crazy things in the early 70's Marvels like Nick Fury mentioning the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers in The Avengers and the Thing using moves on the Hulk he learned from watching Dory Funk Jr. The post Jack Kirby/pre Wolverine period of time for Marvel had a spontaneous, free-for-all kind of quality never really seen in their titles again.