The Comedy Of John Severin (book review).
I said I was going to investigate John Severin’s other work and this volume, ‘The Comedy Of John Severin’, certainly does this. In the introduction, Mark Arnold points out that much of the content here comes from Giant Cracked # 46 from 1987 which must have made gathering the best material rather easy.
Of course, a lot of the humour is period pieces now and you would have to know a lot of the TV from the 60s onwards to know who some of these people and American politicians are that John Severin lampoons.
Even so, what will strike you is the variety of styles he employs that would you be hard pushed to realise it was all off the fingers of one man. When you consider ‘Mad Magazine’ had a ‘bunch of idiots’, ‘Cracked’ had John Severin and, for a time, Jack Davis, doing most of the work.
With the afterward, Mort Todd does reveal not all writer credits are known and only one, Stu Schwartzberg, is in the credits of the story, ‘Help! I’m In The Pacific’. I did wonder if Severin’s sister, Marie, did any material for ‘Cracked’ and, yes, she drew ‘Lone Rancher’, shown in this book.
Purely as a sampling, you do have to admire how versatile, good and fast John Severin was, putting out 100 pages a month. Bear that in mind you new comicbook artists who can barely make 20 pages on a regular basis.
GF Willmetts
April 2022
(pub: Fun Ideas Productions & Comicfix/Mort Todd, 2020. 106 page illustrated softcover. Price: I pulled my copy for about £13.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-69898-780-4)
check out website: www.morttodd.com
