John Romita, Sr., 1930-2023

A Romita full-page spread from Amazing Spider-Man #50 (July 1967). Romita had been on the book for less than a year, and the Ditko influence can still be seen, yet it is hard to imagine Ditko himself doing a full-page panel like this.

Here at FA we note with sadness the passing of John Romita, Sr., whilst also observing that ninety-three is a good age to reach, and he had the blessings of a long and satisfactory career behind him. Romita was one of the last survivors of the creators who worked with Stan Lee and shaped Marvel Comics in the early and mid-1960s.

John Romita began his comics career in 1949. Having spent a period working for Martin Goodman’s Atlas Comics, by 1958 Romita was working for DC, where he mostly drew romance comics. Despite his desire to illustrate superhero books, that opportunity was never offered to him by DC. In 1965, the romance market began to collapse, and Romita was offered no more work by DC. Consequently, he began working for Marvel, who did offer him superhero titles.

In 1966, Steve Ditko left Spider-Man, and, having already drawn the character in a guest appearance in Daredevil, Romita took over. Spider-Man is the character with whom Romita is most associated. He took Spidey from Ditko’s scrawny, freaky figure, always a kid outsider, and filled him out and made him more of a grown-up. Romita built on Ditko’s version, obviously; indeed, in the first few issues of his run, you can see Romita imitating Ditko’s style. But he also brought his experience as a romance artist.

Romita bringing his experience in romance comics to the moment that it is finally revealed to Peter Parker, and to the readers, what Mary-Jane Watson looks like. From Amazing Spider-Man #42 (November 1966).

This is most obvious in his depiction of Peter Parker’s love interests. Mary Jane Watson had been teased in the comic for over two years, but always she had just left, or was off-panel, or once had her face obscured by a mutant sunflower. It was Romita who got to finally introduce her as the red-headed bombshell that we all know her as. Similarly, though Ditko had first drawn Gwen Stacy, her look that we remember is Romita’s. (It was also, according to some versions, Romita who first suggested that Gwen Stacy should die.)

Indeed, there’s a strong case for saying that the look of Spider-Man that we remember to day is fundamentally Romita’s, based upon Ditko. He was the Spider-Man artist, one way or another, from 1966 to 1977, either pencilling, or inking, or doing layouts, or sometimes ‘correcting’ another artist’s work, i.e. making conform to the official Marvel ‘look’. He then drew the Spider-Man newspaper comic through to 1980. In that period, Amazing Spider-Man became the best-selling Marvel title, and Spider-Man the company’s flagship character. This was also the time of the Spider-Man animated series, not the first Marvel cartoon, but the first really successful one, and probably still the most culturally influential (as references in modern Spider-Man movies demonstrate); this too essentially reproduced a simplified version of Romita’s style (though still with some Ditko influence). Spider-Man’s prominence made Romita’s style almost Marvel’s house style, which became actuality as Romita became first Marvel’s unofficial art director, and then their official one.

John Romita, Sr., at the 2006 San Diego ComicCon International.

Romita’s career in the 1980s and 1990s had a much lower profile than before, but he had already made his mark. Last year, I said on this site that Neal Adams was the missing link between Jack Kirby and the likes of John Byrne and George Pérez, and I stand by that. But one should also note Romita as the missing link between those later artists and Ditko. This is particularly true of Byrne, whose early Spider-Man work, in Marvel Team-Up, is very much in Romita’s mould.

Romita married Virginia Bruno in 1952. Their younger son, John Romita, Jr., is, of course, also a comics artist. His early work is heavily influenced by his father, but in more recent years, he has very much developed his own style.