Marie Severin - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Marie Severin was born August 21, 1929. She grew up in an artistic household where her father, a World War I veteran, eventually became a designer for the fashion company Elizabeth Arden during the 1930s. In her teens, Severin took "a couple of months" of cartooning and illustration classes, and attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York "for one day and said, 'This is a college', and I wanted to draw and make money".

Severin was working on Wall Street when her comics-artist brother, John Severin, needed a colorist for his work at EC Comics. Marie Severin's earliest recorded comic-book work is coloring EC Comics' A Moon, a Girl... Romance #9 (Oct. 1949). She would contribute across the company's line, including its war comics and its celebrated but notoriously graphic horror comics. She has repeatedly refuted the often told tale that she colored especially gruesome panels a dark blue as a sign of protest.

At EC, Severin worked on the comics' production end, as well as "doing little touch ups and stuff" on the art. When EC ceased publication in the wake of the U.S. Senate hearings on the effects of comic books on children and the establishment of the Comics Code, Severin worked briefly for Marvel Comics' 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics, until an industry downturn circa 1957 prompted her to seek work with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She recalled in 2001, "I did a little bit of everything for them — I did television graphics on economics I did a lot of drawing. I did a comic book that my brother did the finished art on... about checks".