first client, pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman. The original eight-page story was expanded by four pages for Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), the first publication of what Goodman would eventually call Timely Comics, the 1940s precursor of Marvel Comics. 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. 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. Everett drew his star character in Sub-Mariner Comics, published first quarterly, then thrice-yearly and finally bimonthly, for issues #1–32 (Fall 1941 – June 1949). Everett entered the U.S. Army for World War II military service in February 1942. He attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Belvoir, during which time he met Gwenn Randall, who was working for the Ordnance Department at the Pentagon. The couple married in 1944, when 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. With money inherited from a great-uncle, Everett took some time off and traveled before settling in Fairbury, Nebraska, his wife's hometown. "This was when I renewed my association with Martin Goodman, working by mail on a freelance basis, picking up the Sub-Mariner where I'd left off four years ago". His first recorded post-war credit is writing and full art for the 12-page story "Sub-Mariner vs. Green-Out" in Sub-Mariner Comics #21 (Fall 1946) – the third of three Sub-Mariner stories that issue, for which Syd Shores drew the cover. Everett was soon providing Sub-Mariner stories regularly for the solo title as well as for The Human Torch, Marvel Mystery Comics and even Blonde Phantom Comics. Additionally, he drew the title feature in the three-issue spin-off series Namora (Aug.–Dec. 1948). Early pseudonyms included Willie Bee and Bill Roman. Atlas Comics By now, Timely Comics had evolved into Marvel's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics. Like most superhero characters in the postwar era, the Sub-Mariner had faded in popularity, and his solo title had been canceled in 1949. But after a nearly five-year hiatus, he briefly returned with Captain America and the Golden Age Human Torch in Young Men #24 (Dec. 1953), during Atlas' mid-1950s attempt