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Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.81: Marie Severin

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5 years ago

August 21, 2021

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No.81: Marie Severin

Marie Severin was one of the cornerstones of Marvel Comics in its Silver and Bronze Age heyday. Without question her contributions to the publisher were highly significant, her relatively low profile belying the difference she made during her career there. Words: Andrew Colman…

photo courtesy of Greg Preston

Very much the company woman at Marvel Comics, who like her friend Flo Steinberg (the only other woman at the House of Ideas during the 1960s), kept the engine running during the hothouse years. Severin was capable of doing everything from colouring, inking, pencilling and lettering – the ultimate utility person whose considerable skills were often overlooked. Following her brother (celebrated horror artist John Severin) into EC Comics in the 1950s, Severin was there just before the arrival of the New Trend, colouring titles such as A Moon, A Girl, A Romance, while quickly developing expertise in that field. She continued working at the company on its horror and war titles until the Comics Code enforced its closure, returning to the medium with Marvel Comics in 1959. After five years she graduated from colouring and inking to pencilling, working primarily on Doctor Strange in Strange Tales, as well as the Sub-Mariner and The Hulk in Tales to Astonish. She also worked on other second-tier characters such as Iron Man and Daredevil.

Her versatility as an artist was particularly to the fore in Marvel’s humour titles, such as in-house parody books that sent up Marvel heroes like Not Brand Ecch, Spoof and Crazy, where her witty and humorous art style imbued each of these titles with Mad – like knowing subversion. Very much the team player and all-rounder, Severin understood, if not defined, the Marvel House Style as well as anyone in the Bullpen, often undertaking post-production assignments, sometimes at very short notice. The best example of this was when she was asked to redraw Hulk’s face for the cover of Incredible Hulk Annual 1 as Jim Steranko’s original didn’t chime well with Marvel’s editors.

In the mid-1970s, Severin co-created Spider-Woman, not to mention Howard the Duck’s infamously verbose nemesis, Doctor Bong. After this she worked in other areas for the company, while also moving onto other publishers. However she will always be associated with the Marvel Age of Comics, her underrated and fluid pencils gracing many classic late 60s books.