George School of Art. His inability to focus, however, led him to drop out in 1935, after a year-and-a-half of the program. That same year, his father died of acute appendicitis, and the family, though remaining well-off, moved to an apartment back in Cambridge. Everett knew his father "always wanted me to be a cartoonist, and he died, unfortunately, before he saw that come true. But that was probably in back of the whole thing." Career Early work Everett soon became a professional artist on the advertising staff of the Boston newspaper The Herald-Traveler for $12 a week. Soon afterward, he left to become a draftsman for the civil engineering firm The Brooks System, in Newton, Massachusetts. From there he pursued work in Phoenix, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California, without success. He then returned east to New York City, where he again did newspaper advertising art, for the New York Herald-Tribune. He next became art editor for Teck Publications' Radio News magazine, then assistant art director under Herm Bollin in Chicago, Illinois. Fired for being, as Everett described, "too cocky", he returned to New York where he sought employment as an art director. With no luck at this and desperate for work, he ran into an old Teck colleague, Walter Holze, who was now working in the new field of comic books. As Everett recalled in the late 1960s, "He asked me if I could do comics. I said, 'Sure!!' At that point I was starving. I wasn't interested in the comics business; I was talked into it". Freelancing for Centaur Publications, Everett "sold my first page for $2 – writing, penciling, inking and all. 'Skyrocket Steele' was my first strip." Soon he was getting $10 and then $14 a page, a respectable sum during this late-1930s period near the beginning of what historians and fans call the Golden Age of comic books. Everett co-created the superhero Amazing-Man at Centaur, working with company art director Lloyd Jacquet, and drew the first five issues. Everett and other creators followed Jacquet to his new company Funnies, Inc., one of the first comic-book "packagers" that would create comics on demand for publishers. Everett recalled Sub-Mariner At Funnies, Inc., Everett created the Sub-Mariner for an aborted project, Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1, a planned promotional comic to be given away in movie theaters. When plans changed, Everett used his character instead for Funnies, Inc.'s