A Sunday visit with “Mirthful” Marie Severin
Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.
My wife attended the New Jersey Romance Writers convention this weekend, and as I’ve done many previous years, I tagged along … but then split immediately, making a beeline for Manhattan on Friday and Saturday for good food and good friends. (About which more later.) The highlight of the trip wasn’t any of that, though-it was what occurred Sunday, when we trekked out to Long Island and spent the afternoon with the person we love most from our time in comics (other than each other)-Marie Severin.
If you know anything about comics, you already know and love the public side of Marie. But Irene and I, from working with her in the Marvel Bullpen, got to know Marie in a more personal way. She’s warm, friendly, and one of the funniest people we’ve ever met.
And at age 84, she’s still the same Marie we’ve always known … except for more snow on the roof. Which could also be said for me, and Marie actually did comment on how much whiter my hair has gotten. And she’s someone who should know. After all, she’s known me professionally for nearly forty years! I’d encountered her even earlier, having gotten sketches when I was but a comics fan, but those are encounters only I remember.
But she’s still happy, still sharp, still as quick with a quip as ever.
One of the things Irene did during our lunch at a nice Italian restaurant was to read Marie all of the kind things you emailed to us when it was her birthday a couple of months ago. Marie was, as always, amazed that you cared, that anyone remembered the work she did when others were much more prolific. We made sure she knew that yes, you did care.
We spent five hours with her, catching her up on how everyone she ever knew in the comics field was doing. I cracked open my iPad to show her how digital comics apps worked, and she got the hang of it immediately, swiping and double-tapping through comics pages like a kid. I pulled up a YouTube clip of Stan Lee so she could see what our former boss was like these days, but it turned out she’d already seen it as part of the recent PBS documentary on superheroes.
Turns out Marie was even more with it than we’d thought!
And, as anyone who ever met Marie could tell you-we laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
Why do you think her Marvel Comics nickname was “Mirthful”?
And another question-how did we get so lucky as to have her be a part of our lives?