Romancing Romita

CINESCAPE chats with legendary comic book artist John Romita Sr., the man who redefined Spider-Man and brought romance to Peter Parker's life

By Arnold T. Blumberg     June 27, 2001

For many fans of the Silver Age of comics and Spider-Man in particular, there is no more memorable artist than John Romita Sr., a man who brought his distinctive romantic touch to every title he illustrated. Beautifying the surreal world of Peter Parker first delineated by Steve Ditko, Romita joined Spidey's "father," Stan Lee, and ushered in a new, even more spectacular era for the wall-flower wall-crawler in the late '60s. Romita's touch was also felt in numerous other titles for Marvel and DC, from DAREDEVIL and THE FANTASTIC FOUR to oft-forgotten DC love stories that showcased Romita's trademark female characters and their heart-wrenching lives of unrequited affection and relationships gone awry.

Surprisingly, it's only in recent years that the man Stan Lee once dubbed Johnny "Jazzy" Romita (when he wasn't calling him John "Ring-A-Ding" Romita, that is) has even realized the enormity of his contribution to the medium. "I always thought I was rather generic," says Romita, noting that he has been told by fans that they can spot his style and actively seek out his work. "I'm amazed by that. I didn't get a lot of feedback back in the '60s and '70s. I always felt taken for granted. When I took over DAREDEVIL it went up in sales, and when I took over SPIDER-MAN it went up too. I knew that I could sell books, but I always yearned for people to tell me how much they liked my artwork."

Today, Romita has no trouble finding people to shower him with acclaim, even if comic book artists from his era are often under-appreciated by modern readers. Marvel Comics, the company where he spent the vast majority of his career, is doing what it can to remedy the situation by releasing a special 192 page trade paperback collection, titled SPIDER-MAN VISIONARIES: JOHN ROMITA SR. The retrospective publication will include Romita's first story arc for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, issues #39 and #40, featuring the revelation of the Green Goblin's true identity and a 'final' showdown that would establish the Goblin once and for all as Spidey's ultimate arch-foe. Other reprints in the volume will showcase one of Romita's villainous creations, the crime boss known as the Kingpin, and Romita's own personal favorite tale, a Vietnam adventure with Flash Thompson that drew from Romita's love of Milton Caniff's newspaper strips.

And that's not all, as Vanguard Productions publishers of the AMAZING WORLD OF CARMINE INFANTINO and THE JOHN BUSCEMA SKETCHBOOK will release a hardcover art book, THE JOHN ROMITA SKETCHBOOK, in time for Christmas 2001.

Romita's first brush with the webbed one came in the pages of DAREDEVIL #16-17, after Romita was told by Lee that he was to replace Ditko as the Spider-artist. The DAREDEVIL two-parter was a test run, but to this day, Romita has a surprising choice for his favorite hero. "With DAREDEVIL I felt more in control. I always felt out of control with SPIDER-MAN, like I was ghosting Ditko until maybe a year or two later when I started to be more myself on it." Early on, Romita even believed Ditko would return to his creation. "I thought Ditko would leave for a couple months and then come back. I was rooting for it because I didn't want to give up DAREDEVIL. I was starting to enjoy it so much, and to this day he's still my favorite character. I always feel like a guest artist on SPIDER-MAN, believe it or not, after 25 years."

Even though he may not feel at home with Spidey, Romita certainly made the character and his supporting cast like family for many readers. Romita does admit that the secondary characters were enjoyable to draw, as he made them his own by modifying their design following Ditko's departure. "I made Aunt May my own and I did Mary Jane from scratch, and I changed Gwen. I loved the cast of characters." He did, however, regret making Parker's world a more polished place. "I always envied guys like [Jack] Kirby and Ditko because they created their own world. I tended to be very sanitaryall the roof tops were brand new." To combat his tendency to 'sanitize' Spidey's New York, Romita hired a background man (Tony Mortellaro provided backgrounds for many issues) to make things 'cruder.' But Romita wasn't the only one who railed against the inevitable beautification of Peter Parker's life. "Stan used to harp on me to make Peter Parker less glamorous. I kept telling him I wasn't doing it on purpose, and after a while he said 'Oh the hell with it. Just do it the way you want.'"

Although Romita remained on the SPIDER-MAN title for about six years, he was often called upon by Lee and others to provide touch-ups or production support on many other titles and projects. Citing his versatility as his biggest asset, Romita admits it was also, at times, a curse. "I was a journeyman comic artist and I could do anything they wanted. At one time I thought that may have been a curse because it kept me from being more ambitious." Ambition aside, Romita kept working. "I'd do CAPTAIN AMERICA for six months, and when Kirby left, I did THE FANTASTIC FOUR for four months. With those interruptions, guys like Don Heck and John Buscema and Gil Kane would fill in for issues of SPIDER-MAN."

Following his run on SPIDER-MAN and after leaving the comic line entirely around 1980, Romita moved on to work with Marvel's books and promotional projects, including a four year run on the SPIDER-MAN syndicated newspaper strip. He designed the Spider-Man balloon for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and oversaw the creation of costumes for models to wear at various personal appearances. "I did Spider-Man first," Romita recalls, "making sure there was continuity around the back of the costume, because a lot of artists only draw the front. I used to spend the bulk of my week choosing colors and making sure the materials were holding the colors properly." From Art Director to seamstress, Romita was a guiding force in Marvel for decades, even mentoring dozens of new artists through a special apprentice program that saw the students dubbed as "Romita's Raiders." Romita's advice and instruction has been indispensable to many of Marvel's current illustrators, and he offers his well-defined philosophy to all.

"I teach artists to check their egos at the door and go into the story for one purposeto make people forget these are drawings." The trick, according to Romita, is to make the art transparent. "By page three, I want you interested in the story and believing something is happening." For Romita, flashy, stylized artwork is a violation of that ideal. "It's like stepping in front of the footlights on a Broadway stage. You do that and you burst the bubble of believability. The audience is entranced in a play and then the actor will lose his lines and look at the audience and smile and the whole illusion is gone." Romita illustrates his point further. "When Neil Adams did a beautiful double page spread, he was almost showing off a little bit, and the reader would say 'Wow, that's a great drawing.' To me that's sacrilege. I don't want them ever to remember it's a drawing."

For Romita, his desire to be a better artist was often hampered by his apparent limitations. "Many of my contemporaries were twice as fast as me. I have to think about it too much. I'm a perfectionist. It kept me back for years, but I was always good enough and just fast enough to get the deadlines." Even incentives from Lee didn't succeed in making Romita draw any faster. "Stan used to offer me bonuses if I could pick up speed. He would tell Kirby or Buscema, 'if you can speed Romita up, I'll give you a bonus.'"

His speed may have been a limiting factor, but his vaunted versatility was invaluable, honed by his years on DC's romance titles in the late 1950s. "[Love stories were] very difficult because you didn't have a lot to work with. There was very little going on in the story." The repetitive nature of most comic book romance tales did force Romita to innovate, however, sharpening his artistic skills. "I think it developed muscles in me that I never had. It gave me an ability to make interesting pages when nothing was happening. I would manufacture all sorts of ways to make the shots look dramatic, silhouettes and flowing hair and flowing bandannas. With SPIDER-MAN, I was able to inject that trick and that's how the personal life stuff got to be so important."

Romita's run on Spider-Man has become one of the fondly remembered eras in superhero comics and an achievement that other writers and artists aspire to emulate. Today, Romita continues to work at a slower pace, contributing covers and occasional interior art despite his 'retirement' a few years ago. The white page that once daunted him as a young illustrator still stares back at him after half a century, but this comic book visionary is finally, in some small measure, learning to accept that he has a knack for creating worlds that all of us enjoy. And yet, Romita still has a hard time understanding the impact he's had on comics...but he's starting to get the idea. "I realized all those years that fans were complimenting me by telling me how much they loved the stories and how memorable they were. They never noticed it was artworkthat means I was fooling them. To me it's like a good movie. You forget where you are and you're immersed in the movie. If you're in a bad movie, you start looking at the exit signs, so it took me fifteen to twenty years to realize they were complimenting me by not complimenting my artwork. It gives me great pride."