Yesterday, Irene and I visited Marie Severin and whisked her away to Blackstone Steakhouse to celebrate her 80th birthday. As I’ve told you before, we both love Marie. She’s the nicest person we ever met in comics, one of the most talented, and easily the funniest. When Irene and I realized during our last visit that such a momentous milestone was moving toward her (uh-oh—one evening with Marie and I’m alliterating like Stan again), we decided that attention must be paid.

So we told Marie that unless one of her friends had already made plans, we wanted to take her out to dinner. Heck, if a friend had already made plans, we’d take the friend, too! But luckily for us, Marie was free last night, and so we had her to ourselves for a long and hilarious evening. Here we all are after having demolished an amazing meal:

Before heading to the restaurant, we spent an hour or so at her apartment, and one of the things we did was show her printouts I’d made yesterday morning of sites which had wished her a happy birthday. She was astounded by the outpouring of love, and astonished by some of them, particularly the lengthy write-up at fanboy.com of her career. When I read her part of it aloud, such as the sentences—

“Tomorrow is the 80th birthday of a living legend in the field of comics—yet sadly in my humble opinion not enough people today know the name Marie Severin. Yet like a Stan Lee or a Jack Kirby by all rights Severin should be one of a handful of names that every fanboy (and fangurl too) knows.”

—she was humbled, and for a brief moment was speechless, too. (And those of you who know Marie know that with her, the state of being speechless can only be momentary!) And then she said, “Why, I’m no Jack Kirby … ”

But don’t you see, Marie—in our hearts, and in the hearts of many others, you are!

Here’s the birthday girl moments after having blown out her candle:

After dinner, we went back to Marie’s apartment, where we talked late into the night, until we realized we were all yawning (well, except for Irene, who must be part vampire, because she only grows livelier the later it gets). But even then we found it hard to part. We went from talking seated in Marie’s apartment to talking standing in her apartment to talking in the lobby of her building to talking in front of the complex, but we were finally able to bear to say goodbye, and so we all hugged and promised to see each other again soon.

So happy 80th birthday, Marie! May there be many more!