Marie Severin was born in
East Rockaway, New York, on
Long Island, the second and last child of John Edward Severin, born in
Oslo, Norway, who immigrated to the United States at age 3, from
Syracuse, New York, Her older brother,
John Severin, was born in 1922. The family moved to
Brooklyn, New York City, when Marie was 4. The family lived in an apartment in the
Bay Ridge neighborhood at the time; it is uncertain if this was the family's original Brooklyn locale from Severin's childhood or if the family moved to that neighborhood in the interim. Due to the high school's staggered schedule, Severin's class graduated in January 1948, rather than in mid-year as typical. In her teens, Severin took what she recalled as "a couple of months" of cartooning and illustration classes, and attended
Pratt Institute in Brooklyn "for one day and said, 'This is a college', and I wanted to draw and make money". She continued living there after her father died. In a 2001 interview, she recalled she broke in as a colorist She would contribute coloring across the company's line, including its
war comics and its celebrated but notoriously graphic
horror comics, and also worked on the comics' production end, as well as "doing little touch ups and stuff" on the art.
Blue-panels assertion Frank Jacobs, in his 1972 biography of EC publisher
William M. Gaines, wrote, "There was Marie Severin, Gaines's colorist, and a very moral
Catholic, who made her feelings known by coloring dark blue any panel she thought was in bad taste. Al Feldstein|[EC editor Al] Feldstein called her 'the conscience of EC.'" Severin repeatedly refuted that assertion, which became part of comics lore, while also saying she sometimes used coloring to "kind of shield" some gruesome content, noting, ==Silver Age==