Daredevil Bill Everett 1965

Published in The Bill Everett Treasure Hunt Discovery Gets to the Heart of a Genius by Michael Kenyon in the CFA/APA #118.

Behold. The pursuit is over. The journey complete. The ONLY Daredevil drawing to surface by the late, great Bill Everett. Bill's classic published pencil work on Daredevil 1 was limited to these pages. Other artists jumped in to finish (ink) some of the pages on the comic and kept the release date for Daredevil 1 on target. Bill had a heck of a time staying on Stan Lee's schedule.

This is the crown jewel of three wonderful drawings done by Bill for his daughter Wendy's high school friend back in 1965. The young man preserved the art until it was turned up in a search for collectible Marvelmania materials a few years ago. I had made contact with the eventual seller based on a previous inquiry over a rare yellow 1970's Spider-Man poster.

What gave me the leg up in negotiations for the art I think, was that I communicated my intentions to keep the three drawings together for historical purpose. That seemed to resonate with the seller, although negotiations went on for a week. He also wanted to keep the three drawings together because only one of the three had the artists signature on it. That’s understandable for some who worry art will be questioned if the artist didn’t sign it. For the very experienced collector the artist’s signature is the actual work itself. Does it stand up under scrutiny? In the end I lost out on one of three drawings. My contact let me know that he would sell one piece to a different collector and he would sell me the other two drawings. Despite being disappointed to not keep them all together, the two I got were the ones I had to have if I couldn’t get them all.

Mark Levy has the Namora and Human Torch drawing from 1965 in his CAF gallery. I have The Submariner drawing which is now posted here on CAF. And today I introduce a very rare find indeed. A Daredevil and Matt Murdoch drawing by Bill. I've published additional pic so you can see the similarity to published pages in Daredevil 1. Remarkable and uncanny.

Helping me along with this journey is Bill Everett's lovely daughter Wendy. We coresponded for over a year before I put the completed interview together to be published in the CFA/APA. She was able to verify the validity of the drawings as well as coroborate the provenance of her friend from high school obtaining the drawings.

This drawing represents my Indiana Jones moment.The pursuit, obtaining, and spending over a year researching and learning about Wendy and her father was a labor of love.

The ONLY drawing of Daredevil by Everett ever to surface, outside of the interior pages of DD 1.