Marie Severin was essentially home-trained. “My father taught me,” she says. “He was a really good artist. He’d trained at Pratt Institute...but my mother could draw, too.” In the Fifties, she was on staff (at EC) and worked for Bill Gaines on books like Crime Suspense Stories, Haunt of Fear, Panic, Shock Suspense Stories, and Weird Science-Fantasy. photo courtesy of Jonah Weiland, www.comicbookresources.com
“I worked closely with Harvey Kurtzman and my brother,” she says. “For a long time, I was really Kurtzman’s girl Friday...I picked up his pacing of humor.”
Marie’s
Marvel credits began in 1959, just before the “Marvel Age” officially kicked
off. She handled covers, pencils, inks, coloring—even lettering—basically,
everything Stan (Lee) couldn’t do. Her credits include Captain America,
Captain Marvel, Chamber of Darkness, Daredevil, Strange
Tales, Sub-Mariner, Tales to Astonish, and X-Men.
But it
was Marie’s EC background--her exposure to the old Mad books--that
helped launched her sub-career as Marvel’s peerless satirist on Not Brand
Ecch!
©
Marvel Comics Group
By the Seventies, Marie joined the rotation on Incredible Hulk with her pal Herb Trimpe and her big brother John. But her richest work was doing pencils under John’s inks on Kull, the Conquerer.
She’s been semi-retired for quite some time—but ...if you’re lucky, you might find Marie at a convention where her warmth and optimism will substantiate the oft-quoted epithet “the Nicest Person in Comics.”
(from, " Marie Severin: Comics’ First Lady," by Clifford Meth)
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