Marie Severin, comic book illustrator

Marie Severin, one of the first women to become a major comic book illustrator and who helped produce “Dr. Strange,” “The Incredible Hulk” and other classic works for Marvel Comics, died Aug. 29 at a hospice facility in Massapequa, N.Y. She was 89.

The cause was a hemorrhagic stroke, said a friend, Daniel Friedman.

Severin spent more than 50 years as an illustrator, handling all three of the major visual tasks in comic-book production: penciling, inking and coloring. She worked closely with Marvel’s editor in chief Stan Lee for decades and in 2001 was named to the Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame.

In the 1970s, Severin was a co-creator of Jessica Drew — better known as the superhero Spider-Woman — and designed the character’s skintight red-and-yellow costume.

“Marie Severin did it all — penciler, inker, colorist, character creator,” historian and publisher Craig Yoe, the former creative director of Jim Henson’s Muppets, wrote in an email. He called her “one of the last of comics’ greatest generation.”

Severin began her career in 1949, when her brother, John Severin, asked her to help with comic books he was illustrating for EC Comics. She was often relegated to what was seen as the secondary role of colorist.

Traditionally, a comic book began with pencil sketches, which could be altered before eventually being drawn in final form by the “inker.” The pencilers, inkers and writers who provided the story line were considered the creative forces in comic books.

Then the colorist — Severin’s initial role — took over. Using a palette of 48 colors in that pre-computer age, she mixed dyes and applied hues to a series of black-andwhite line drawings, thus giving comics much of their eye-catching vibrancy.

“It’s like music in the background,” Severin said in an interview with a website called TheSequentialArt.com. “I think of coloring as the music in comic books.”

Despite the high level of artistry, comic books were seldom considered a serious or collectible art form — even by the people who created them — until years later. The original artwork that Severin labored over, often under intense deadlines, was then sent to compositors and eventually printed on cheap, coarse paper to be sold to children for 10 cents.

“I would mix colors — golds, greens, blues and so on,” Severin told TheSequentialArt.com. “They never printed quite as vivid because, remember, in those days the paper was almost a tan to begin with, and if it wasn’t, it would turn so in about six months.”

After her brother moved on to Mad magazine and other publications in the 1950s, Severin joined Atlas Comics, which later became Marvel Comics, and was known at the time for its illustrated horror books. In 1954, a Senate committee held hearings on whether comic books contributed to juvenile delinquency, and the industry was forced to censor itself and cut back on the freewheeling images of earlier years.

Severin then worked for the Federal Reserve System as a designer and illustrator before rejoining Marvel Comics in the late 1950s.

“I was always drawing, but in my early years they didn’t know me as an artist, just as the colorist who could touch up stuff and fix lettering, “she told TheSequentialArt.com.