From ew, John Severin, a prolific illustrator and comic book artist who was instrumental in creating the initial look of both MAD and CRACKED magazines, passed away on Feb. 12, according to a statement released by his family. He was 90.
Along with his work with MAD and CRACKED — both of which Severin helped to found in the 1950s — the World War II veteran also worked on Marvel comics like The Incredible Hulk and Kull the Conqueror. He was also a highly regarded illustrator of several western and historical titles for EC Comics. He was still working as recently as 2003, on a limited-run series that re-imagined Marvel’s western hero the Rawhide Kid as gay. That same year, Severin also was inducted in the Hall of Fame of the Eisner Comic Industry Awards.
2 comments:
This may sound callous but Severin was my least favorite of the original 1950s Mad artists (Wally Wood, Bill Elder, Jack Kirby and Severin). So far as I remember (or saw at the time), none of his stuff made it into those "Super Special" reprint/inserts or into those ubiquitous paperbacks. When I first started going through the old Mad issues in detail (first by means of the Russ Cochran reprint books and then, later, with the CD-ROM collection that's now on my iPad) I was always like, "Who's this guy?" Whenever I saw Severin's art.
I know you're supposed to keep your mouth shut unless you have something nice to say in these situations, but I'm taking a wild guess that I'm pretty much alone on Horrorthon in knowing who this guy is. Anyway RIP. He wasn't that bad! In any other context he'd be a titan. "Original quartet of mid-fifties Mad artists" is a brutally high standard.
No, I remember this guy, because I was into the flurry of Star Wars spoofs Cracked did, which were all drawn by him. His work had that satisfying touch of representationalism which, when you're young, is easy to equate to "really good!" (See also Arthur Adams and Brian Bolland.)
But I support Jordan's point, because I actually had no idea he ever worked for Mad. I wouldn't have thought he had the particular zany chops required (pretty much because of that same element to his art that I just mentioned).
However, he was a perfect frontman for Cracked, second banana that it was.
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