Tales To Astonish # 89 Pg. 8

Bill Everett was one of the Golden-Age/early Silver-Age artists that it took me a while to warm up to. When I first started collecting original comic book artwork in the mid-1980's I was exclusively influenced by my favorite artists whose work I would see in the new comics I was buying off the 7-11 spinner racks. Artists such as John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Frank Miller, Marshall Rogers, and Michael Golden were the ones I especially liked.

As I progressed in the hobby, I became more aware of the previous generation of comic artists such as Neal Adams and Berni Wrightson whose work blew me away. Further exposure to Golden-Age and pre-Comic Code comics opened my eyes to the EC artists and Golden-Age artists such as Lou Fine. Bill Everett was a Golden-Age artist whose work I eventually discovered and I really enjoyed his short run on the Bronze-Age Sub-Mariner books. I later found out he also did additional stories featuring Namor in Tales to Astonish.

I grew to appreciate Bill Everett's inks over other artists, especially Jack Kirby's work, but I have long-desired a page featuring Namor that was penciled and inked by Bill Everett. Once again, peerless Paul Handler helped me fill a gap in my collection by agreeing to a trade for this terrific page. The large panels show off Everett's lush inks and the wonky robot and gigantic Killer Whale are great elements to my eye. The icing on the cake is the appearance of Namor, even though relatively small, makes this a page I am thrilled to have in my collection.