Marie Severin — Fighting Fire…
Sub-Mariner #44, December 1971
Summer came very late to the Southern California Coast this year, so in honor of the warm weather and cool surf, we’ll stay with The Human Torch and The Sub-Mariner for a few more posts.
This great battle page, penciled by Marie Severin, and inked by Jim Mooney, features Sub-Mariner vs. the contemporary Human Torch, Johnny Storm. This a feud that started in Fantastic Four #4 in 1962 (Torch is the one who discovers an amnesiac Namor living in NYC) and continued intermittently through the silver and bronze ages.
Along for the fun this time is the giant sea-beast Krago, woken from his slumber by Subby’s enemies to wreak havoc among us, and to have Namor blamed. Krago is apparently NOT related to Giganto, another giant sea-beast Namor himself brought along in FF #4. How many species of giant sea creatures are there anyway? And to think I was worried about the occasional shark.
What can you say about the late great Marie Severin, easily one of the most versatile talents to ever work in comics? Penciller, inker, colorist, occasional letterer, caricaturist, production artist, cover designer, satirist… and so on. Hands down, an amazing career, made even more so because she needed to make her bones — more than once — in a thoroughly male-dominated industry.
Marie passed away almost exactly a year ago, and many well-written tributes speak to the scope of her career: Marvel.com, The Comics Journal, and the New York Times all provide good starting points to this remarkable creator.
