The Artistry of John Severin

"I was kind of thrilled when John Severin inked me, because I liked his work for EC comics and he was one of my idols." - Herb Trimpe

A distinguished artist whose career spanned nearly sixty years, John Severin's work also spanned genres: whether it was horror, or comics, or satire, or westerns, or sword and sorcery, or war, his style added eye-catching detail and a sense of realism to the images he would depict. Most of the work I've seen from Severin came from his assignments as a finisher, rather than pencilling; I'd even go so far as to state that it wouldn't be surprising to discover how many of us are able to identify his inking at a glance. That said, he proved to be capable of handling the dual roles of penciller and inker in a good number of publications and stories, while all the while carving out a fruitful and varied career for himself--well-regarded by his peers and by the industry as a whole.

Severin passed away at 90 in early 2012 (followed 6½ years later by his sister, Marie, also a giant in the industry). As much for those of you who haven't had a great deal of exposure to his work as for those who have had that privilege and might wish to simply reminisce, following is a brief collection of panels which hopefully offer a fair sampling of his talent. (Though you'll find it fairly obvious just which body of work stands out for me the most!)

The Gods Must Be Crazy

We've come to the end of our roundup of the last of Marvel's large-format books from November of 1971 to be reviewed at the PPC--and of all of Marvel's characters who would be suited to such a format, few would arguably be more visually impressive than this gentle, inoffensive green behemoth who evokes serenity and happiness wherever he sets foot.

And if you're buying that malarkey, I have a gamma bomb I'd like to sell you.

All right, it's made of legos, but still.

With a large page count to accommodate, artists Herb Trimpe and John Severin (the definitive penciller/inker team for the incredible Hulk, in my humble opinion) more than fulfill their obligation in this issue, covering enough bases to give a new Hulk reader a decent amount of background on the character while also demonstrating what makes the Hulk so unique in Marvel's stable. Yet Hulk #145 isn't all smooth sailing, inserting as it does a story within a story of the Hulk being conscripted into appearing in, of all things, a Hollywood film being shot in the Sahara Desert. There's nothing new about a Hulk tale being a little offbeat on occasion; try picturing the Hulk being fawned over and holding his temper while attending a party thrown by the cream of Manhattan society, for instance. Yet you may find that "Godspawn," this issue's central story, is virtually dealt into everything else that's taking place, rather than the other way around--which may be intentional on the part of first-time Hulk scripter Len Wein, given how it only offers a glimpse of itself before disappearing for nearly half the issue.

Hell ls A Very Small Hulk!

You'd think the insidious organization known as Hydra would have learned from their previous debacle to never again tangle with the incredible Hulk, but you'll understand in a moment why they were confident they would be in the driver's seat when the green behemoth is literally handed to them. Having developed the deadly biological weapon known as Virus Nine^*, Hydra is almost ready to make their move to deploy it. But there are certain individuals who are both necessary to their plans and who would each also prove to be obstacles--charter Avengers who reunite as allies for the first time, though the mightier of the pair would find himself doing his smashing from a little lower in stature.

^*Isn't it comforting to know that Hydra's scientists had eight failures in cultivating this virus before succeeding. They're not exactly A.I.M., are they.

When Monsters Meet!

With Halloween just around the corner, it's the perfect time to bring forth the monsters! And for that, we need look no further than the incredible Hulk, who has often been called such--only this night, he battles one that may be more deserving of the name, even before the transformation that leaves him in the streets slithering for prey.

Cry Hulk! Cry Havok!

Judging by the ruins of this splash page, the first real test of the new Hulkbuster Base as a research/containment facility for the incredible Hulk is a washout:

The Hulk has just been in a pitched battle with a being called the Inheritor, a failed experiment of the High Evolutionary--and now, in the sub-levels of the base where radiation-draining equipment ended the Inheritor's rampage, the Hulk attempts to evade the armed forces which seek to recapture him. And more than that--he seeks his freedom!

News, however, travels fast, whether good or bad--and when it concerns Congressional funding for an armed base which botches the job it was created for, the news is looking worse by the minute:

Yet the Hulk cares about the allocation of taxpayer funds about as much as he does about the unfortunate ant that happens to find itself beneath his foot as he comes crashing back to Earth after one of his mile-devouring leaps. Especially this day, when he believes he's spotted his lost love, Jarella, in the distance and leaps to intercept her--and the ants, in this case, being a motorcycle gang whose members picked the wrong place and the wrong time to harass Lorna Dane of the X-Men:

With the Hulk frantically searching for the woman whose green hair reminds him of Jarella, Lorna continues on foot to meet with the man she travelled here to find--Alex Summers, otherwise known as Havok, who has isolated himself in this patch of desert in order to keep his destructive power in check. Power which only needs the woman he loves placed in harm's way to be unleashed:

The reunion is short, with Alex refusing to accompany Lorna back to the X-Men in order to begin training to control his power. And when Lorna races from the hovel in tears, a certain man-monster finally arrives and misinterprets the scene. With Lorna now in potential danger, Alex has all the incentive he needs to re-don his special suit which the man known as Havok needs so that he can hopefully avoid living up to his name:

It doesn't make matters any easier when the Hulk realizes that Lorna is not Jarella--nor when he spots an Army jeep in the vicinity and believes that Lorna may be in collusion with the soldiers who always hound him. It's a challenge of restraint for the Hulk--as well as a baptism of fire for Havok.

At this point, it's easy for any of us to advise Alex on what he did wrong in trying to put a lid on this situation before it got out of hand. It's clear he earnestly wanted to avoid a fight; however, when mixing your earnest words with insulting name-calling and challenges which might as well have ended with "...or else!", the Hulk is only going to react one way. So does anyone want to take a guess at how he's going to react by hearing Alex suggest that he should just quit?

However Alex might have answered that, he probably wasn't prepared for a reaction like this:

With Lorna's life on the line, and with Havok the only thing between her and certain death, Alex straightens up and sets to the task of controlling his runaway power enough to both tame the Hulk and save Lorna. It's the textbook definition of an "impossible situation"--but with Charles Xavier likely waiting back at his school with a truckload of demerits for Alex should he fail, the impossible yields to resolve and, this time, the right choice of words.

With his accomplishment here today, Alex decides to accompany Lorna back to Xavier's and give further training a shot. As for Banner--well, given how precariously that mesa is balanced, let's hope his sleep isn't a fitful one, eh?

Incredible Hulk #150 Script: Archie Goodwin Pencils: Herb Trimpe Inks: John Severin Letterer: Sam Rosen

The Alliance Of Doom!

DICK AYERS liked to laugh at the idea of a Marvel "Bullpen"--that would-be physical collective of cartoonists that, readers were led to imagine, happily churned out all those inspired pages of Hulk and X-Men and Thor and Fantastic Four from a single Manhattan dugout of Stan Lee’s clever invention. Like they were the perpetual-champ Yankees or something, all playing together in the House of Ideas That Stan Built. "There was no bullpen," Ayers would smile, before describing the humble Marvel offices of the Silver Age. (from an article in the Washington Post)

I was sad to hear about the passing on May 4 of penciller/inker Dick Ayers, who came aboard Marvel Comics at the time of its inception and whose body of work would take a braver man than I to assess. Ayers was like several others at the company (e.g., John Verpoorten, Syd Shores, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia) whose work was prodigious yet who stayed just shy of the limelight, and whose contribution to the workload and the finished product can't be trumpeted loudly enough.

It's difficult to pin down Ayers' definitive work at Marvel, since the man seemed to be everywhere, pitching in on this project or that. Perhaps it would be more accurate to simply say how much he helped to define Marvel itself. If I had to make a choice, I'd have to say he seemed to come into his own during his 10-year run on Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos following Jack Kirby's initial assignment on the book. I never did collect Sgt. Fury, as I'm not much for wartime stories as well as their unavoidable undercurrent of patriotism, but Ayers turned in consistently solid work on the title.

Ayers certainly also put in his time on Marvel's super-hero books, no question. One story that usually comes to mind for me is the two-part Incredible Hulk story involving Dr. Doom and his goal of using the Hulk to strengthen and expand the borders of his tiny nation, and thus his grip on Europe itself. Fortunately, Doom doesn't have to go about locating and confronting the Hulk himself--only Bruce Banner, who, after an encounter with the Valkyrie, finds himself being hunted down by a massive sweep of law enforcement in New York City:

To a starving man--or, in this case, a man having no other options for escape--any life buoy tossed his way is going to be grasped without much scrutiny:

Well, you and I are more well-read than this cocky police officer, so by now we can take a good guess as to who Banner's savior is going to turn out to be.  Of course, it's none other than...

Radical Chic

If nothing else, "They Shoot Hulks, Don't They?", Roy Thomas's adaptation of the title of the 1935 novel "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", will make you curious to read Horace McCoy's tale of a group of desperate dance contestants/Hollywood wannabes (or even to see the later 1969 film). (It sounds fascinating.) But as for the Hulk tale, you may end up scratching your head if you attempt to make some connection between the two. There's no real similarity between Gloria Beatty, the woman who's shot by her husband because of his likening of her to a lame horse, and any character in Thomas's story, nor does the odd collection of dance contestants resemble the pretentious group of Thomas's wealthy socialites.

That said (and it's an important point to get out of the way, right off the bat), the Hulk story is a rather fun read--and, as it notes, a sort of bookend to a similar tale of the Sub-Mariner taking over "Prison Island" in the waters off New York City (another Thomas story) and the overblown response of public opinion and intervention which pour forth as a result. In the Hulk's case, that media hornet's nest is stirred up when he seeks nothing more than a secluded spot to rest, albeit a very visible secluded spot:

Naturally, the area is cordoned off, tension mounts, and even "Thunderbolt" Ross buzzes the statue and tries to get the Hulk to leave. But all the security in place has reckoned without the Parringtons, who see in the Hulk's plight an opportunity to elevate their social status in a good faith but misguided effort to help this less fortunate creature:

The Parringtons understandably make little to no progress in relating their wishes to the Hulk. But their daughter, Samantha, has better luck:

And so the Parringtons take the next step with the Hulk, which to them makes perfect sense: holding a cocktail party/fundraiser, with the cream of society in attendance.

I don't think the Hulk is impressed.
(Which, to this crowd, is probably worse than the threat of being smashed.)

In The Hands of Hydra!

At the end of the issue of Incredible Hulk which introduced the character of Jim Wilson, poor Jim had to be feeling pretty low. After establishing mutual trust and friendship between himself and the green goliath, Jim made the decision to assist Iron Man and the army in capturing the Hulk, in the honest belief that it would end up helping both the Hulk and Bruce Banner. Yet, Banner's predicament seems to be worse than before: not only has he been physically rejoined with the Hulk, but there's a good chance that he's trapped within the brute for good this time. As for the Hulk, he remains in military custody, chained and drugged.

And so Jim departs the base with a guilty conscience:

Jim, of course, has the edge on Talbot--knowing the neighborhood as he does, as well as having plenty of experience slipping out of tight spots. So slipping away from a tail is *ahem* child's play:

Others have said that artist Herb Trimpe proved to be the definitive artist on Incredible Hulk, but I'll go them one further by adding that John Severin's inks finishing his work made the art on this book truly stand out. There's a sense of realism to Severin's finishes that brings sharp focus to Trimpe's scenes, which applied not only to gritty neighborhoods and the monstrous appearance of the Hulk but also to the high-tech hardware at which Trimpe excelled. And speaking of which, let's have a look at what's got Jim so startled after he scaled that fence:

Thanks to Jim's resourceful benefactor, he's able to leave Talbot scratching his head at his sudden disappearance. But talk about going out of the frying pan and into the incinerator, as Jim arrives at his destination:

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to see how Jim slips out of this tight spot.

The Monster, The Madman, and The TKO

Remember the good old days when Dr. Doom faced his enemies mano-a-mano? No Doombots standing in for him--no augmented power siphoned from someone else--just Doom's pure science and ruthlessness against the grim determination and fortitude exhibited by whatever hero faced off with him. And that's what fans got in this first match-up between Doom and none other than the incredible Hulk:

Only in the Hulk's case, instead of determination and fortitude we got rage and, well, rage. Given the position the good Doctor was in, I don't think he was going to quibble about the difference.

It was actually the Hulk's alter ego, Bruce Banner, whom Doom encountered in Part One of this story, while Banner was on the run and out of options. Doom offered Banner sanctuary--and, at the right moment, sedated him and put him under the influence of his subliminal inducer in the hopes of controlling Banner and, though him, the Hulk. Latveria, the postage-stamp country that Doom ruled, was at the time beset by other nations that wanted to eliminate its threat or just simply annex it--and so Doom, thinking big as always, was going to turn the tables on them by using the Hulk's might to assist him in invading all of Europe. In addition, through Banner he could harness the power of the gamma bomb as a weapon of mass destruction.

But Doom had a weak point in the form of the woman he loved, Valeria, who felt similarly toward him but was suspicious of Doom's ambitions. Realizing the danger to innocent people, she freed Banner from the inducer's influence and thus foiled a test Doom had arranged of the Hulk acting as a delivery mechanism for a gamma bomb strike on foreign troops. Once the bomb had detonated in a remote area, the Hulk returned to face Doom:

Though more brief than Doom's classic battle with the Thing, and less replete with Doom's advanced personal weaponry, you can't help but be reminded of that earlier battle in his engagement of the Hulk--his expectations of science overcoming brawn, and his complete confidence in eventual victory over what he considers a simple-minded opponent. Yet where the Thing prevailed by simply refusing to go down, the Hulk's might makes Doom's defenses seem nonexistent:

But Doom is also handicapped by his concern for Valeria, who is left to fend for herself in the midst of falling rubble and debris which the battle unleashes. In seeing to her safety, Doom leaves himself open to the Hulk's advance on him. And when the Hulk encloses Doom in a deadly vise, he brings this fight to a swift conclusion:

Aside from his battle with the Over-Mind, I can't recall when Doom was ever decisively put down in a knock-down drag-out. Frankly, I thought if anyone could or would pull it off, it would be the Hulk. The Hulk I remember only grows bored with fighting when the fight is over, not while his enemy is still threatening him. He wouldn't care a whit about Doom's pride--the Hulk would smash. But what the Hulk does here is the same thing that Thor did when his own battle with Doom had run its course. And Doom reacts here in the same way he did then, with a "this fight's not over until I say it's over" approach:

From a reader's perspective, it seems clear that we're meant to focus more on the drama playing out with Doom and Valeria, particularly since we find Valeria right in the midst of this battle when any other person would be scurrying for cover. And indeed, for anyone who's followed the on-again off-again story of Doom and Valeria, it really is a fascinating dynamic between the two in this story, just as it was in the others--and it's difficult to see how a story involving Doom and the Hulk could be stretched into a two-part story otherwise, even with Banner playing a prominent role. Valeria, if memory serves, does not have a pleasant end to her story when she and Doom eventually settle things between them. But one running theme which seems to recur in their meetings is that Doom is who he is--and we see that again here when he waves off her care and concern in favor of re-engaging the Hulk, even though his prime concern during the fight seemed to be seeing to her safety.

As for the Hulk, perhaps he walked away from the battle for as simple a reason as not wanting to kill--and stopping short of killing is behavior he often exhibited under writer Roy Thomas's tenure on the book.  At the end of this story, Thomas had the additional excuse of the Hulk taking pity on the relationship between Doom and Valeria.  And that's all well and good--but given this issue's cover, the ferocity of the Hulk, and the guile and weapons of Dr. Doom, weren't we all hoping for more than a TKO here?

Incredible Hulk #144 Script: Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich Pencils: Dick Ayers Inks: John Severin Letterer: Artie Simek

The Sixty-Year Swimsuit

I haven't checked in on Sub-Mariner for a long time. In all honesty, it's kind of hard to keep up with the guy. Is he still the ruler of Atlantis? Is there still an Atlantis? What's his current mood vis-à-vis the human race? Is he just being plugged into any series that needs some conflict? Or is he as directionless as ever?

Is Namor just a nomad?

From this picture, it looks like he's a card-carrying member of the X-Men, given that their insignia is all over his clothing:

That's another thing that's a little odd about Namor these days--the Sub-Mariner wearing clothing. We know why he started wearing clothing--his body chemistry altered by a deadly nerve gas, Reed Richards designed a life support suit for him to wear which would keep him hydrated whenever he left the water. Though I'm not sure why Reed felt Namor would need a glider membrane. In a race to save Namor's life, I'm not sure I'd be spending my time with fashion touches like glider wings and color matching:

But long after the need for the suit no longer existed, Namor at some point decided to wear some measure of clothing based on the original suit's design. And I must admit, the look "suits" him, heh heh. I can't say I'm sorry to see the green swim trunks consigned to the dust bin of comics history. I don't think there was ever an explanation for Namor being outfitted in a simple pair of swimming trunks, particularly a prince of Atlantis who would some day ascend to the throne. It wouldn't exactly do to receive dignitaries looking like you should have a towel hanging over your shoulder--and there were probably surface dwellers who thought this guy yelling in their streets was asking for a Mai Tai. Dressed thus, Namor wasn't going to win any awards for being the most dramatic looking figure Marvel presented on the printed page.

Yet that said, there were many artists who drew the Sub-Mariner at that time who still managed to convey an imposing figure. Among them, Bill Everett and Jack Kirby, respectively:

Everett's Namor, in the beginning, spent a great deal of his time in the sea, or otherwise had water dripping from him, so perhaps that's one reason the swim trunks remained a constant and even migrated to Namor's second life in the Silver Age. When Kirby and writer Stan Lee began portraying the character, Namor almost immediately abandoned his Golden Age innocence and became a more antagonistic (if misguided) figure--yet, curiously, he remained dressed in the same casual style, which the formality he now conveyed was at odds with. I would have expected some kind of change in Namor's garment, to be in line with his more aggressive posture.

Namor's next two artists of note were Gene Colan and Marie Severin:

Colan's Sub-Mariner took on a more broad-shouldered and muscled look than the slight build that Kirby had given him in the beginning. Kirby's later work would improve on Namor's build significantly by the time of his final art on the character in Fantastic Four #102; but while Kirby's Namor was more action-oriented, Colan seemed to focus more on the impression Namor's build would give in a panel (a difference in style which can be seen in a battle with Iron Man which both artists worked on). Severin's panels of Namor were also heavy on action, so I was really surprised at her portrayal of him here--though frankly, I can see much more of inker John Severin's work in this image than Marie's.

When Sub-Mariner was given his first solo series, interestingly it was artist John Buscema who was tapped to be his artist, signalling that the emphasis on action was going to be continued with Namor:

Buscema's work on the title would later alternate with Marie Severin, before his brother Sal would take over as regular artist. And where the Sub-Mariner book is concerned, I could write a half-dozen sentences just like that--with artists (and writers) coming and going, perhaps calling into question the suitability of Namor to helm a series of his own. Ross Andru also came aboard for a few key issues which would prove to be a turning point for the character:

I can't say I'm a fan of Andru's work, cringing as I did on a regular basis during his run on Amazing Spider-Man. But inked here by Jim Mooney, he turns in one of the finest portraits of Sub-Mariner that I've ever come across. In that regard, he's got some stiff competition from artist George Perez, who turned in a spectacular image of Namor from an Avengers story:

It's been awhile since Namor had a run in his own series, having more success in a string of limited series and of course appearances in other books. But it looks like his various handlers have decided to abandon the green swim trunks for good, after a run of about sixty years. Whether or not that signals an end to Namor's status as Marvel's resident nomad remains to be seen.