The Chromatic Queen

Marie Severin

by Katherine Keller

About two years ago, I saw a very fascinating panel on coloring and comics hosted by fellow Tart Laura DePuy and Marie Severin. I couldn't wait to interview that lively, feisty woman who knew so much about color, comics, the history of the industry, and art. Unfortunately, Marie was extremely busy that convention, but I was able to catch up with her at the 2001 San Diego Comic Con and speak with her. (Special thanks to Laura DePuy for helping me phrase several of these questions.)

If this interview seems disjointed, or if you wonder why I didn't ask follow ups to several questions, I spoke with Marie in artists alley. Typically I would ask a question, and while she answered, fans waited. Then she would speak with her fans and draw sketches for them. The interludes between questions could some times be up to 20 minutes — Marie's table was very popular. I thank her (and her fans) for being so gracious.

Sequential Tart: What is your first memory of art? Yours or someone else's. I know your father was a graphic designer.

Marie Severin: My father always gave us paper. My brother would always be drawing — we lived out on Long Island — and when I was little I just picked up the pencil and started drawing. It was a man with raggedy pants, I don't know why. [Laughs] I have no idea why, but he had torn pants. I must have seen something, I was only three or four. That's my first remembrance.

We always had books — this was during the depression — but we always had books, and pencils, and paper. My father must have brought stuff home from the office. I never drew on both sides of the paper, only on one. I never even thought of turning it over, because when I went to school, kids would say, "Why don't you turn it over?" I'd say, "What?! It's a drawing." [Laughs]

ST: Growing up in an artistic household, what kind of encouragement did your parents give you? Were you and your brother ever competing in your drawings?

MS: No, in fact, he'd always say things, like, "Dad, look at her, she's got a real fluid line." And my dad would say, "Yeah, she's more like the French style." I had no idea what they were talking about. We enjoyed each other's drawings. We would sit, passing them back and forth.

I remember, my First Communion, I wouldn't take my white dress off. I never had a full lacy, fluffy dress, before and my mother was, "Marie, it's getting nine o'clock. Don't you think you'd better get ready for bed?" "But mom ...." And my father was helping with a poster that I was supposed to be doing for school, and I walked by and knocked over the Rich Art red on to my communion dress.

ST: Oh nooooo ....

MS: My mother says, "Well, thank God, we can finally get it off her." It ended up being the most beautiful pink! It was gorgeous! I liked it even better — it was like having a whole new dress.

But, what were we talking about — yes, encouragement. My father would help me out if I had to do posters for school, because the nuns took full advantage of the fact that my brother and I could draw all these things. I did a lot of drawings for the art class. I was showing off, I liked it. Dad would always teach us — a little at a time. A little perspective, a little line, a little this, a little that. But he was always fairly frustrated, because when he came home from World War I, there just weren't any jobs. He was always doing things like heads for the newspapers, drawings for makeup, things like that. To get a job, he finally became a designer for Elizabeth Arden in the '30s. He always enjoyed that we were carrying on. My brother was always drawing all over the place, oh, he was fabulous.

ST: What comics do you remember seeing as a child?

MS: My favorite was Batman, but in the beginning it was my brother's western comics. He was older than I, so the comics that were around, I thought they were wonderful, what with the Indians and all that stuff. Then on my own I got into Batman and Superman. Then, when I was about 10 years old, I got into movies — movie books. The movies were my life.

That's why I think that most of the guys like Gene Colan yesterday at that panel were talking about the continuity of storytelling — we picked up so much of that in the movies. In those days, the movies didn't assume that you knew what was going on all the time — know what I mean? There were two parts to a movie: the adult part and then the car chase for the kids. That's what I used to love in the movies, but I also loved all the glamour, the satin and the four posters [beds] and I'd think, "When I grow up wouldn't it be nice to have a room like thaaaaat." I wanted to look like Katherine Hepburn, later on Joan Fontaine, because I thought she was so ladylike. But, enough about movies ....

ST: You talked about how you learned to draw and how your father helped you, and how you took art classes at school. Beyond high school, did you have any other formal training?

MS: I went to cartoonists and illustrators classes for a couple of months. I think my brother paid for that. My parents wanted me to go to the Pratt Institute and they got me in and I went for one day and said, "This is a college" and I wanted to draw and make money. So, unfortunately, I didn't pursue it. Probably I wouldn't be here today, I'd be doing some sort of arts and crafts if I had [laughs]. I've always wanted to do stained glass windows — I've mentioned that in many interviews. I've always been fascinated with colors. As a kid in church, I'd just sit and watch the colors change; instead of paying attention to the mass, I was just watching the colors change.

ST: Did you ever get to make a stained glass window or design one?

MS: Sort of. Out of cellophane. I cut up bits of it and I put them together with glue.

ST: What made you think "Comics! Yeah, I want to do this?"

MS: Money. My brother was in comics and he needed a colorist, and I was working on Wall Street. I didn't know what I wanted to do — I was going to go to art school, and then I wasn't going to go, and then this and that. I became a colorist at EC and I discovered that I was in it and storytelling and it was fun.

ST: Earlier, you talked about doing a lot of drawing. What kind of training did you have in doing coloring?

MS: I don't know, because it just came naturally. I think it has something to do with my father having been a painter. Originally, he was a painter and he didn't make any money at it, he would just do it. So art was all through the house and we got an appreciation. My mother also did design.

ST: Okay, to recap, you broke in as a colorist.

MS: Yes, 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. They were a wonderful crew because they were all excellent at what they did.

ST: Colorists had a very limited palette, compared to modern computer coloring where they millions of colors to work with. When you started out, how many colors did you have, and when did your palette expand?

MS: 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. 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. Any way, the whole process was very primitive. That's why the artwork looked that way, because it had to be thick and thin, easy to print on cheap paper, and colorwise, too, so it was a cheap medium, a ten cent item, and you made the best of it with what you had.

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. They would send a "flat" they called it, of the books, the whole book, and you would check that the color was in the line, that they interpreted it correctly. Sometimes they'd leave out [a plate] or mix up the red plate with the blue plate, and it was very rare, but it something like that happened, you'd have black people who would turn out green. It was awful, it happened even later on with Sgt. Fury. The black guy on the team ended up green — they switched one of the plates on the flats, which meant that for four pages in the book wherever he appeared, he was green. That wouldn't happen with computers. With computers, the whole thing might blow up, but at least you wouldn't get weird stuff like that, that would look like it was on purpose. But, it would be adjusted, because they [EC] had a system where they followed through, I followed through. Of course in those days, we didn't have that much time, but they made time, because Gaines and Feldstein had a thing about the books looking as best as they possibly could for that amount of money. And it worked, they're classics now because of that. The artists felt that way — penciling, inking, storytelling they did their best. They were making their own mark in the industry.

ST: So, when did you get up to — what — 64 colors?

MS: You mean in the printing?

ST: Yes. When did you?

MS: They worked like that [48 colors] for a long, long time. You got 25, 50 and 100 percent of each color. Three tones of yellow, three tones of red, three tones of blue. That was your range of color, and then you got into a 30 percent yellow and a 40 percent yellow. And I didn't pay that much attention. I just started intensifying some of the colors and marking it [for the printer] and that made it a little easier. But now, they have something like 3000 colors and I just don't bother anymore. I just color it and hope that it will turn out as close to the color as possible — and it does.

ST: So when you were able to use 30 and 40 percent colors, it wasn't a difficult transition then?

MS: Oh, it was a pain in the neck because you had to code extra stuff. The way I had been doing it, I was adjusting the lights and darks to find the best way they would look together, and now I had a large range, which was okay. But, you had to think a little more. Now, even though they've introduced the grays, a lot of times I color through the book, I put all the flesh tones on the borders and mark it. The costume of somebody, I'll do that. Other wise, you go nuts coding. I don't know how the separators can maintain — their eyeballs must be popping all over the place, looking at the original, looking at this or that, or doing original [color], the thinking involved. That's why I admire them so much, because it comes out well, really it does.

Sometimes I think some books are over colored, though. It's not necessary to have 14 gradations on a kiddie book. You just don't need it.

ST: What about color theory? How do you use color to help tell a story?

MS: Oh, the time of day's important, the mood of the panel, the mood of the story —

ST: How do you help convey the mood?

MS: Well, if somebody just killed somebody, disemboweled them, whatever, or if fury is building up in the story, I use deep reds and stuff like that for the violence in the background if it's just a head shot; it's acceptable. It's like music in the background. I think of coloring as the music in comic books. It gives that little oomph to it.

Some artists don't need color. Some do. The original comics always needed color because they were drawn for a cheap publication and the guy couldn't do the rendering like, say Gene Colan could do all this gorgeous shading, and the rates were much cheaper, too.

With mood, it depends upon what the writer is heading for, what the art is trying to convey. If it's a happy mood, happy colors. Usually that's helped by the artist, who might draw ... let me think ... flowers because it's a love scene. But usually the opportunity is there to shade into, go into pleasing colors, or dead colors, or violent colors depending on the mood of the story, which can be something like a shocker. Y'know, somebody walking through the park and then they're assaulted, and I'd make things all black and blue.

ST: You mentioned making things a "dead color". What do you mean by that?

MS: Well, say somebody wakes up and there is his buddy in a war-scene, and he's laying on top of him and there's blood all over and he's thinking, "What am I doing here?" Well, you would want to have maybe a mud color background, or an inky brown, or you'd put these really somber colors, violently dark, mud or grays, or murky blues and things like that to convey the idea of "Uhhgg, am I blue." That helps to also convey fear, but fear can be bright colors too. The electric shock of fear and stuff like that. But when you get into a mood of sadness and death, and the loss of someone you care for, then you're into dark sad colors.

ST: You've talked about how pencillers and inkers had to rely on your colors to help carry the story.

MS: Some. This could happen some time when the writer would insist on 50 things going on in a panel description. For example, you have to show where the guy is on a circus grounds or something, but he's also being followed by somebody in the shadows or something who's holding a knife, and the moon is out, and that's important for something that happens in the next panel. So sometimes it's not going to be artistically a beautiful thing — he [the artist] has got all of the things, so you try to color it to match the mood and tell the story. The shadow where the person is with the knife, and the bright lights of the circus stuff in the background, where the character is, but you have to do all this — the design you're stuck with is the artwork, and the artist might have been stuck with what he had to put in one panel because of the writer.

ST: Nowadays, when people need to do "special effects" in coloring, it's all done with the computer. Laura, for example, has this one thing she does whenever the writer calls for "the snowflake" and it's an effect she can just drag to and drop in. But in your day, they had to do line outs, knock outs, and so on. How did you do these things?

MS: It was much more primitive than what is done with the computer. The computer has such precision and control and getting colors to really print the way you want it.

We would do what you called "red-lining" if you wanted an effect like snow coming down. I remember poor John Romita one time, he had to do a whole splash or a cover in a snowstorm. And I said, "Just a white panel, John, just white! And a balloon." [Laughs] But nooooo they wouldn't let us do that. So what you'd do is you'd red-line where you want the snow flakes. You'd draw Spider-Man swinging through the city and it's snowing and there's snow on the buildings, and big enough that it can be seen in a little panel, you'd red-line circles. And those red-lines are indicated on the border of the page "drop this out, color" and it's dropped out, the red-lines are taken away on the black plate after the black plate is struck and the rest has been colored. So, where you had — I'm not explaining this right. Okay, say you had 15 big snowflakes outlined in red, and you've got Spider-Man with the red face, the colorist will leave the snowflakes white, but they'd have a black outline because it's on the black and white artwork. The printer will scrape out the red-lined circles on the black plate, and when it's printed, it will be Spider-Man, with his red face, dark blue sky, and all these white dots without any lines or outlines on them, because it's impossible for the colorists and the separators to indicate snowflakes in the small area. We'd red-line so that it would be accurate where the colorist wanted them, and when it was printed it would appear as white snowflakes with no black outlines.

It's the same with yellow explosions, orange stuff ... gradations that they can now do beautifully, we used to have only a little blending in the book, but most of the time if they had an explosion or an electric shock, we'd red-line the thing across the page, like "BANG!" and you'd have a red background with a yellow outline of the lightning bolt, or blue, or whatever you wanted, that's how it would be separated. And, it looked jazzy as long as it wasn't overdone. If you did a lot of this red-line in a book, it loses its shock value, it's impact on the storytelling. Here and there it's a good idea, but not all the way through.

ST: What are your thoughts on modern computer coloring?

MS: Some of it is absolutely amazing. It certainly looks great. It certainly is a challenge, and there are so many advantages to it. It saves time because the colorist — in the old days, first the artwork would be shot, and then the colorist would get the black silver prints in the old days, and then later that became a Xerox, and color it, and then it got passed on. Each thing, each stage took time, and then it finally got to the separator, and it could take him [the separator] up to a week sometimes, but now the colorist on the computer is doing all of that in one shot. It must be a wonderful production time saver. But it all depends on one person, and they better be pretty darn good. And in Laura's case, she is.

But, like I said, it depends on one person, and if they over color, it begins to look ridiculous, because it's not necessary. It takes away from the storytelling when it's too much.

ST: What advice do you have for a colorist just starting out? What kind of art or technical background do you think is important? Coloring is part of the art, it's not just production.

MS: It's a feeling. If you like color, and a lot of people loved to color, all kids love to get a crayon and push it all over the place ... it's part a mood, and a certain amount of intelligence. If you read a story and you liked the story better than seeing the movie, it's that sort of thing. Many times if you see a movie or a comic and there's something bothering you, just something, a lot of times, the coloring is off. I won't go so far to say that it can ruin a book, but it certainly enhances.

To a young person thinking of going into color, read the story, read it twice. Know what your limitations are, because number one, if it's a costume thing, your heroes will be in the bright primaries, and your villains in the dull greens, and your backgrounds are going to have to compliment them. You have to learn to think along those lines.

Look at other comics, and what coloring you think is good. Analyze it. Why is it good? "Oh, I can see what's going on ... that's why it's good." It's not so much the mood; we know what's going on with the story, but mood helps. Read the story, try to feel the mood, and think about the coloring that you like and emulate that. There are so many whys. If you can answer them, you're okay.

ST: When did you break from coloring into penciling?

MS: I was always doing little touch ups and stuff at EC, but not much. I could draw. I did mostly just production, and when the comic industry went down I left EC. The coloring — the books were going into pictovision so there wasn't any coloring there. I could've hung on and done other things there, but I went out and worked for Stan Lee [at Marvel], and then everything hit the fan with the code. The books were being slashed to death, killed.

I then worked for the Federal Reserve Bank. A friend of mine had a job there. I did a little bit of everything for them — I did television graphics on economics which was a real challenge. I did a lot of drawing. I did a comic book that my brother did the finished art on. It was about cheques, you know when they were beginning the little numbers on the bottom of them, for when they ran it through the machines.

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. But I learned a lot. When I came back to Stan [at Marvel] he didn't even look at my portfolio, "Oh Marie, it's so good to see you. We need somebody in production ...." I was doing enough artwork that Sal Brodsky noticed it and they wanted a spread in Esquire magazine on the college drug culture. They wanted [Jack] Kirby — I think they wanted Kirby, and Sal said, "I don't want to use Kirby, we'll miss a deadline. Marie, see what they want." So I went over and I got the commission, and when that came out, Mr. Goodman saw it and he told Stan, "What is she doing in the production department? Give her some art work." Then [Steve] Ditko quit, and there I am on Dr. Strange. I was like, "Whaaaat?" I got the Dr. Strange last issue and I'm looking at it, thinking, "Okay ...." It came out pretty awful, but he gave me more work. And I lasted ... [laughs] I must have been worth something, they kept me on for 30 years. That's how I got into the drawing — it had to be on a fluke.

ST: When you were given a script and drawing a page, did you ever color any of your own work?

MS: Oh, I always tried to color everything I did. It needed all the help it could get [laughs]. I always liked to do that. I draw for the color of it. I think of it while I'm drawing it.

ST: Oh, that answered the next question I was going to ask. "Do you draw in terms of color?" In that case, comics have always been a rather male dominated field, and you, like Ramona [Fradon] are one of the two reigning queens. How many other women were there at Marvel at the time doing art, and did you ever have any problems with "the Bullpen" or anything like that?

MS: Not really, the guys, they say that women gossip, well networking is male gossip, and they "networked" all the time. But, just like we wouldn't want a guy when we were sitting around talking about somebody's shoes, or a certain eyeliner, they weren't interested in having a woman around, and sure, I'd have lunch with them once in a while, but the conversations were always male; it was just normal. So, you're sort of out of it. I didn't have any real problems. In the EC days, remember, everybody wore ties and shirts except [Al] Williamson who would come in with his gang, and they'd all be coming in from baseball and they'd all look like the way people dress today. But the office was high-heels and stockings and dressed up and the guys were in business clothes.

Later on, I remember Stan Lee came out of a meeting in the '70s, and he told me, "Marie, you know what — I was the only guy in the meeting with shoes on." [Laughs] They were all wearing sandals and shorts, and Stan started lightening up a little, wearing dungarees and such. He was still of the old school — nice plaid shirt.

ST: Which creator did you have the most fun working with? Why?

MS: The first one, of course, was at home, working with my father and brother. I think in comics because I was hired to work with Harvey [Kurtzman] I was enlightened as to what a funny man he was, he was really delightful. Most of the guys who were really creative — although I didn't work with Kirby, I would have loved to have been in the studio with him and just watched him — anybody who's creative you just love to watch. Good, bad or indifferent, it's just interesting how they do it. Like here, every now and then I look up from what I'm doing, and there's all these people just watching

And it's delightful, like with Ramona and I, we talk about comics, and I've never done that before, and she was saying last night that it's so nice to sit down and talk to another woman about this kind of stuff.

But back to it, the first one in the field would be Kurtzman. And as for all the other great artists I worked with, most of the time I really enjoyed just seeing how they did it.

ST: What project brought you the most personal satisfaction?

MS: King Kull, when my brother inked it.

ST: Why?

MS: Because I always wanted to see his inking on my stuff, and it really made it look the way I liked it. It added that male touch, that male strength to it. And of course, I loved Not Brand Ecch because I loved humor. I'm two sided like a coin. I like a little serious stuff and then I like the fun stuff.

ST: How did Not Brand Ecch get started? Now, that's a classic.

MS: I have no idea.

ST: Well, then what do you think about your contributions to it? Your name is practically synonymous with it.

MS: I think it's because I was the silliest person working on it. I really broke forth with the humor. I mean, before, I was doing cartoons insulting everybody in the office, but here I was getting paid for it. I loved it. Really, I still can't take superheroes that seriously, so here was my chance to get it all out.

ST: When did you first come to the San Diego Convention?

MS: '96. David Siegel badgered me, badgered me into coming [laughs]. I never thought I would want to come to one, come all the way out here. And ... I loved it.

ST: What was so great?

MS: First of all, I love the climate here. It's a big convention and it's very well run, see, I'd heard stories in the past about when it first started it wasn't that professional, but now they really know what they're doing. They treated me very nicely and it was good — it was profitable, and that's good.

I didn't know; I thought everybody thought I was dead. [Laughs] And I'm not, yet.

ST: Have you ever found a way to say no to "Networking Dave"?

MS: [Laughs] Not really, you know he's good, he's really good. He knows what he's doing and he's so very sincere about it. He's no dummy. He's a smart guy.

ST: Any final comments or words of advice for professionals of your generation coming to San Diego?

MS: If you don't like to be around a lot of people, don't come. I love it. It's like being on a big airplane, and talking to all the people.

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