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Scott Allie told some great stories about John on Twitter today:

"Oh no. We've lost John Severin. One of the absolutely highlights of my life and career has been working with him. Everytime a package from John came in, Dan and I would just lose our minds looking at the detail, the raw drawing ability. Few artists were turning in pages that made such an impression, certainly no one who'd been doing it longer than either of us were alive. One of the greatest moments of my life was pulling up to John's house on a road trip through Colorado. He met me at the door in a suit and tie, on a Sunday afternoon, and took me in to the master bedroom where Michelina was resting as his daughter brought us lunch. I pulled out my laptop and showed them pictures of Sid who Michelina made me promise to bring by in person sometime. Then John took me to the art studio —his desk, in a corner of the huge dining room area, piled high with books and photocopies. At a little flat desk, not a drawing table John had a page of Witchfinder. He's ruled out all the panels in ink, in his strange way, uneven puzzle pieces fitting together. Then, with ink, he'd started filling in the first panel. No layouts, no roughs, no pencils, he just went in with ink and started drawing. It was an angel looking down on a girl as she stood up and dropped her book. Thanks, Big John, for all the comics. Thanks, Michelina.

One of the other amazing things about John's pages is the way he'd go crazy with paste up. If he didn't like part of a drawing he might slice out a very neat window in the page, paste another piece of bristol onto the back of the board so that just a redrawn detail would come through. Or he'd draw on this thick, plastic-y vellum, and paste that over part of a drawing. Sometimes there would be paste up on top of paste up. It made some of the originals messy as hell to where li'l old me would wonder how the hell this would print. But John of course knew exactly what he was doing. Even just throwing it on the photocopier, all the pasteup lines would vanish, the copy would be clean as hell and of course the scanner would produce an even cleaner copy. He knew exactly what he was doing. It wasn't about creating a pretty, frame-able original. It was about getting the job done, no matter how many redraws he needed.

I know this is self-indulgent, but I'll share one more John Severin tidbit. The recent miniseries we did with John, Witchfinder was created specifically to give us another chance to work with Sev. We had no plans for a Hellboy-related Western but the chance to do it with John was all the reason we needed. Arcudi & Mike came up with a story & Arcudi started turning in scripts. Sev called while working on issue 2, shortly after my visit. On page 5, Arcudi gave the character Kaler an Allin-Springfield rifle. But on page 18, Kaler was shooting across an open field at a barely seen sniper. Sev politely asked if it was OK to change the Allin-Springfield to a gun that'd work better at long range. The Allin-Springfield was not a long range gun—couldn't shoot straight across 100 yards. No experienced gunfighter would try this shot with this gun. Sev asked if it were okay to use a different gun. He told me what kind of gun it would be, but I don't remember. He assured me that if the story took place in 1880 his gun was available in Utah. Artists (& writers!) take note: This from a guy who wasn't doing thumbnails, based on my visit but he wanted to make sure Kaler had the right gun on page 5 for the gunfight at the end of the issue. I told him I was grateful for the insight & that Arcudi & I didn't know our asses from a rifle—I'm sure I didn't use that phrase with Sev. He could change whatever he wanted with details like this. I immediately called Arcudi. The greatest joy for a comics writer is seeing your work made better by a great artist. I've never seen Arcudi so happy & impressed as by the pages Sev created from his scripts.

OK, one more thing. Just got off the phone with Michelina Severin. She sounded good, said, "We all gotta come to His station sometime." John was with it & doing well right to the end, when he passed away in bed beside her at home on Sunday. No hospital. They'd had a big party for John's 90th birthday, the day after Xmas & fans sent a cake with 90 of John's covers on it instead of candles. Their thanks go out to all of you."

Those aren't my memories.