Мари Северин: Художник комиксов и колорист Marvel и EC Comics

American comic book artist (1929 2018)

Marie Severin (/m//ə/'/r//iː// /'/s//ɛ//v//ər//ɪ//n/; August 21, 1929 – August 29, 2018) was an American comics artist and colorist best known for her work for Marvel Comics and the 1950s' EC Comics. She is an inductee of the Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame

Marie Severin was born in East Rockaway, New York, on Long Island, the second and last child of John Edward Severin, born in Oslo, Norway, who immigrated to the United States at age 3, from Syracuse, New York, Her older brother, John Severin, was born in 1922. The family moved to Brooklyn, New York City, when Marie was 4. The family lived in an apartment in the Bay Ridge neighborhood at the time; it is uncertain if this was the family's original Brooklyn locale from Severin's childhood or if the family moved to that neighborhood in the interim. Due to the high school's staggered schedule, Severin's class graduated in January 1948, rather than in mid year as typical. In her teens, Severin took what she recalled as "a couple of months" of cartooning and illustration classes, and attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn "for one day and said, 'This is a college', and I wanted to draw and make money". She continued living there after her father died. In a 2001 interview, she recalled she broke in as a colorist

blockquote| for all the war books at EC with [Harvey] Kurtzman. I went on to color all their books, they were happy with it, and I learned a lot about production color and how everything worked. I believe the color chart for the printed pages had a range of up to 48 colors. I had the full range; I would mix colors — golds, greens, blues, and so on — and you would intensify them so that the separators could see the difference. What they liked is that I really studied which colors looked best and sharper next to one another, the subtleties of it. I would also proofread the colors.

In 1959, when the industry had picked up again during the period fans and historians call the Silver Age of Comic Books, Severin again worked for Marvel Comics in production. Severin recalled in 2001 that when Esquire magazine requested an artist to illustrate a story "on the college drug culture", Marvel production manager Sol Brodsky offered Severin rather than one of the regular artists, who were on deadline. Her illustration for the magazine led Marvel editor in chief Stan Lee to assign her the feature "Doctor Strange" in Strange Tales, replacing Bill Everett, who had succeeded character co creator Steve Ditko. With Lee, Severin co created the fictional cosmic entity the Living Tribunal in Strange Tales #157 (June 1967). Severin was Marvel's head colorist until 1972, at which point she turned most of her coloring duties over to George Roussos so that she could do more penciling assignments. She continued to expand from colorist to do penciling and inking, and occasionally also lettering, on various titles. She drew stories of the Sub Mariner and the Hulk, and the covers or interiors of titles including Iron Man, Conan the Barbarian, Kull the Conqueror, The Cat, and Daredevil. Additionally, she worked on Marvel's satiric humor magazine Crazy Magazine, as well as the company's self lampooning comic book, Not Brand Echh.

In 1976, Severin co created Spider Woman, designing her original costume. She co created Howard the Duck villain Doctor Bong in 1977. Two years later she provided the art for the Spider Man and the Hulk toilet paper. In the 1980s, she was assigned to Marvel's Special Projects division, which handled non comic book licensing. She helped design toy maquettes and film and television tie ins products, and worked on the short lived Marvel Books imprint of children's coloring books and sticker books. During this time she also drew the Fraggle Rock and Muppet Babies comics for Marvel's Star Comics imprint. During the following decade, Severin penciled the "Impossible Tale" of the "Li'l Soulsearchers" in issue #31 (Aug. 1998) of Claypool Comics' superhero humor comic Soulsearchers and Company, inked by fellow Silver Age veteran Jim Mooney; and she inked Dave Cockrum's penciling in issue #43 (July 2000). She also inked Richard Howell's pencils on the story "Favor of the Month" in Elvira #144 (April 2005).

Severin retired but continued into the mid 2000s to make occasional contributions, such as recoloring many of the comics stories reprinted in the EC era retrospective books B. Krigstein and B. Krigstein Comics. The former won both the Harvey and Eisner comic industry awards in 2003. On October 11, 2007, Severin suffered a stroke, and was taken to Huntington Hospital, in Huntington on Long Island, to recover and recuperate. She died in 2018 at the age of 89.

Severin never married but she had a wide circle of friends. Her brother John Severin was an artist who worked for EC and Marvel; her niece, Ruth Larenas, is a producer for her nephew John Severin Jr.'s Bubblehead Publishing.

Severin won the Best Penciller (Humor Division) Shazam Award in 1974. The following year, she was nominated for both Best Inker (Humor Division) and Best Colorist. Severin spoke at a 1974 New York Comic Art Convention panel on the role of women in comics, alongside Flo Steinberg, Jean Thomas (sometime collaborator with then husband Roy Thomas), Linda Fite (writer of The Claws of the Cat) and fan representative Irene Vartanoff. She also participated in the Women of Comics Symposium at the 2006 Paradise Comics Toronto Comicon. Severin won an Inkpot Award at the San Diego Comic Con in 1988. She was the first inductee into the Friends of Lulu Women Cartoonists Hall of Fame in 1997. She was inducted into the Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame in 2001; she and Brenda Starr creator Dale Messick were the first women to be so inducted. Severin's work was among those included in the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art exhibition of women comic book artists, "She Draws Comics", July to November 2006. In consideration of her contributions to comics, ComicsAlliance listed Severin as one of twelve women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition. She received Comic Con International's Icon Award in 2017. In 2019, Severin was posthumously awarded the Inkwell Awards Stacey Aragon Special Recognition Award for her lifetime of inking artwork. Severin was also inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame alongside her brother John, and fellow Mad contributors Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Ben Oda.

The Big Book of Volume 9, 11–14, 17 (artist) (1997–2000)