John Romita... And All That Jazz

presents

...And All That Jazz!

by Roy Thomas & Jim Amash

Introduction

By Stan Lee

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JOHN ROMITA ...And All That Jazz!

by Roy Thomas & Jim Amash Introduction by Stan Lee

TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina www.twomorrows.com

John Romita ...And All That Jazz

by Roy Thomas & Jim Amash Designed by Christopher Day Front cover art by John Romita Front cover coloring by Tom Ziuko Proofreading by Christopher Irving Dedication From Jim Amash: To my wonderful wife Heidi, who never complains— and to my mother Genevieve, and to my late father Joseph, who I wish could have seen this book From Roy Thomas: To Dann, who knows how much these people, and these memories, mean to me

Special Thanks To: Jack Adler, Heidi Amash, Daren Auck, Bob Bailey, Jean Bails, Nick Barucci/Dynamic Forces, Michael Baulderstone, Al Bigley, Dominic Bongo, Jerry K. Boyd, Mike Burkey, Glen Cadigan, Nick Caputo, James Cassara, R. Dewey Cassell, Michael Catron, Paty Cockrum, Tom DeFalco, Al Dellinges, Michael Dunne, Mike Esposito, Danny Fingeroth, Greg Fischer, Shane Foley, Nancy Ford, Bruce Jay Friedman, Steve Giacomelli, Stan Goldberg, Gary Groth, David G. Hamilton, Heritage Comics Archives, The Hero Initiative, Joe Kubert, Alan Kupperberg, Bill Leach, Stan Lee, Bruce Mason, Yoram Matzkin, Bob McLeod, Al & Judy Milgrom, Steve Mitchell, Brian K. Morris, John Morrow, Frank Motler, Jim Murtaugh, Barry Pearl, Joe Petrilak, John Romita, John Romita, Jr., Virginia Romita, Alex Saviuk, Marie Severin, Jeffrey Sharpe, Keif Simon, Don Simpson, Joe Sinnott, Anthony Snyder, Robin Snyder, J. David Spurlock, Britt Stanton, Aaron Sultan, Marc Svensson, Greg Theakston, Joel Thingvall, Dann Thomas, George Tuska, Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, Hames Ware, John Wells, Robert Wiener, and the late Lester Zakarin.

Title page art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. (Thanks to Dominic Bongo)

Published by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614 www.twomorrows.com

Stan Lee text ©2007 Stan Lee; Roy Thomas interview ©2007 Roy Thomas; Jim Amash interview ©2007 Jim Amash Softcover ISBN 9781893905757 • Hardcover ISBN 9781893905764 First printing, July 2007 • Printed in Canada

JOHN ROMITA ...And All That Jazz!

Table of Contents

Introduction by Stan Lee: A Few Boring Words about John Romita . . . . . . . .5 Preface by Roy Thomas: Romita Revisited . . . . . . .6 Preface by Jim Amash: John Romita – An Artist’s POV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 John Romita: Fifty Years on the “A” List . . . . . . .12 interview conducted by Roy Thomas

“Captain America Was a Dirty Name!” . . . . . . . .64 interview conducted by Jim Amash

John Romita: The 2006-2007 Interview . . . . . . . .73 conducted by Jim Amash

Afterword by Amash & Thomas . . . . . . .189

Romita pencil art courtesy of Mike Burkey.

[Mary Jane Watson-Parker TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

What’s Half A Century Between Friends?

In 2003, Roy Thomas, as editor of Alter Ego magazine, was sent by collector Robert Wiener a truly astonishing package—containing black-&-white photocopies of the art for John Romita’s first 6-page “Captain America” story, done in 1953 for Young Men #24. Even more amazing was that, instead of the splash we’d known for half a century, these copies turned out to sport John’s unused and neverpublished splash panel, which had been replaced by one by more established artist Mort Lawrence. Being the greedy cuss he is, Roy not only determined to print the original splash as an A/E cover—he even persuaded his kind-hearted 1960s-70s colleague to draw new images of The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, so that the cover could feature all three of Timely/Atlas’ major 1950s heroes, utilizing art done

by John in both 1953 and 2003—exactly fifty years apart!

Thanks, Bob, for something Roy’d been hoping to see ever since he learned that Romita had drawn his own, unseen splash panel for YM #24! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Introduction

A Few Boring Words About John Romita

by Stan Lee

I

t’s impossible to write anything interesting about John Romita.

The man has no faults, no flaws, no failings of any sort that would make juicy reading. There’s no way to write about Jazzy Johnny truthfully without sounding as if he’s being recommended for canonization.

Let’s look at the record: His skills: He can draw anything! He can draw anyone! He can draw any type of strip, whether super-hero, romance, mystery, or you name it— and he’ll do it as well as or better than any other artist!

His dependability: I’ve worked with him for years. Well, actually, he did most of the work, I mostly kibitzed. But in all that time he was never late with a strip—nor was the quality ever less than superb.

The Usual Suspects To accompany this summer Valentine from Stan to John, here’s a pencil sketch for an actual Valentine’s Day card done by JR some years back—plus a photo of a fantastic foursome at the Stan Lee Roast at the Chicago Comic-Con, 1995. (Left to right:) DC & Dondi artist Irwin Hasen… Roy Thomas… John Romita… & Stan Lee. Pic courtesy of Nancy Ford; photographer unknown. [Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

His personality: If you look up the word “nice” in the dictionary, it’s a cryin’ shame if the first definition isn’t “John Romita, Sr.” I’ve never heard him say a bad word about anyone. Never seen him refuse to help another artist with a drawing. Never seen him less than cheerful and cooperative. Never seen him be impatient with fans. Never seen him even frown at anyone—except me, and I probably deserved it.

His retirement: He claimed to be taking a well-deserved retirement years ago. Since then, he’s probably been as busy as ever, drawing special projects, helping other artists, doing sketches for charity and even for fans, visiting comic book conventions and appearing on panels, and probably doing a lot of other things I don’t know about because, being the kind soul that he is, he doesn’t want me to think he’s more in demand than I am.

So, like I said, there’s nothing interesting I can write about ol’ Ring-a-Ding. What can you say about someone who’s perfect?

Although, come to think of it, there is one thing. In case I forget to mention it, he hates those nicknames I’ve given him. So, if he’s actually capable of hating anything, I guess maybe he really is human, after all.

That does it. Now, I can only hope that this somewhat peculiar paean of praise doesn’t embarrass one of the greatest guys I know.

Excelsior!

FIN JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 5

Preface by Roy Thomas

Romita Revisited I

t was, as they say, an embarrassment of riches.

Ever since the 11th issue of Alter Ego, Vol. 3—the magazine others and I put together every few weeks for TwoMorrows Publishing—Jim Amash has been the mag’s associate editor and major interviewer. In these nearly six years, only two of its 60 or so issues since then has appeared without its featuring a long or short interview of Jim’s—usually a long one.

But Jim had truly outdone himself in his telephone talks with John Romita, major Timely and Marvel artist, as well as Marvel’s art director for the better part of three decades. It was humongous, as well it needed to be, to cover both John’s own star-spangled career and all his reminiscences about the artists and writers and other professional comics people he’s known since he entered the comic book field in the very late 1940s. And this despite the fact that I myself had done a reasonably long interview with John back in A/E #9, while Jim had talked to him briefly about the 1953-54 revival of “Captain America” for A/E #35.

John, after all, had not only done sterling work on “Cap” and other features back in the 1950s, but had returned to Marvel in 1965, just in time to pick up the fallen artistic reins of Daredevil where wondrous Wally Wood had let them drop. He was also the man to whom writer/editor Stan Lee turned at the beginning of 1966 when Steve Ditko forsook the Amazing Spider-Man title he’d co-created, and the one who quickly helped Stan turn it from Marvel’s secondbest-selling comic into its undisputed #1 seller. Stan turned to John, to boot, when Jack Kirby left Marvel in 1970 and Fantastic Four was in dire need of a top talent to take over the company’s flagship title. John also designed or co-designed numerous major Marvel heroes and villains, including Luke Cage and a certain mutant named after a small but vicious Canadian carnivore… all the while either drawing the allimportant Spider-Man, or helping to supervise the Wall-Crawler even when he himself wasn’t applying pencil or pen to paper.

John was, in short, one of Marvel’s absolutely pivotal people—in the first tier behind original creators Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko—and at least as important to the House of Ideas as any later creator name you can mention, if not more so. In fact, in that area, there are precious few names that should even be mentioned in the same breath with his.

Thus, the more Jim and I and publisher John Morrow looked at what we had—still a pile of audio tapes at that point—the more we realized that maybe this interview shouldn’t go into Alter Ego at all, but should be put together with those two earlier conversations to become the first TwoMorrows “interview volume” (“intervolume”?) about a Golden/Silver Age artist. In the end, that’s what we decided to do… even expanding the earlier talks slightly by adding a bit more art and editorial commentary, and by making some of the art bigger than it had been printed in the magazine versions.

What follows is not intended as a full biography of John Romita.

That task remains to be done—and it is to be hoped that, one of these days, someone will undertake that mission with the same skill and fortitude that our friend and associate Bill Schelly brought to his 2003 biography of comics/science-fiction writer Otto Binder. It is, perhaps, more in the vein of a much-expanded equivalent of the 1996 Marvelpublished tome The Art of John Romita… at least up to a point. But this book, we believe, goes far beyond that long out-of-print earlier one.

6 | ROMITA REVISITED

Spider-Man—Rock On! Romita pencils from a rock album of 1972. With thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

For, this volume is not only about the man whom Stan Lee christened “Jazzy Johnny” and “Ring-a-Ding Romita”—it’s also about all the talented pros he’s known, and his commentary on both them and their work and times. Thus, you’ll find not just Romita here, but also Lee and Buscema (both John and Sal) and Severin (two of them, too) and Kane and Kirby and Ditko and Trimpe and Andru and Colan and … well, you name the Marvel Comics pro of the past few decades, especially one who was active in the 1970s or before, and chances are he/she is mentioned herein. Since John also spent nearly a decade drawing for DC, and occasionally dipped his pen into other waters, to boot, there are likewise anecdotes about Kanigher, Kashdan, and others.

Jim and I labored long and hard to try to eliminate most repetition from the new interview, which of necessity had to cover some of the same ground I had plowed in my earlier one. However, we had to leave in a few duplicatory sentences here and there, since Jim usually came at any subject at a slightly different angle from my own, eliciting additional information from John. We suspect and trust that the reader will forgive such minimal repetition as he or she may notice.

manager of sorts—and always did it well.

And more: unless one wishes to nitpick concerning a bare handful of his very earliest stories, produced in the first year or two of his career, there is simply no bad John Romita art to be found.

Anywhere.

Of how many artists can that statement be made?

Numerous people have contributed to this volume, and Jim and I have made every attempt to acknowledge them as we roll along. But one avid Romita admirer deserves to be singled out above all the others.

Over the past decade or two, Mike Burkey has amassed perhaps the largest existing collection of John Romita’s art… even as he serves as a comic art dealer and John’s de facto agent. Mike currently owns some 3000 pieces of art penciled, inked, or both by John R. He generously made much of that collection available to us.

For every piece of art that appears in this book, there were several more—many of them equally beautiful, some of them even as important—that we simply did not have room to print. For that, we thank each and every one of the generous souls who provided art for this interview volume… but Mike Burkey, most of all.

One parting note: you’ll notice that nowhere in this issue, unless it is a direct quotation from somewhere else, does the phrase “John Romita, Sr.” appear.

One Man’s Adventures From almost the very beginning, John was good! This splash appeared in Men’s Adventures #24 (Nov. 1953)—a month before he began drawing his very first super-hero series, “Captain America,” in Young Men #24.

Thanks to Bruce Mason. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

As for myself—well, I was sorely tempted (and originally did intend) to write a short piece solely about my own experiences working with John, especially during the years 1965 through 1974, when we were both on staff and were two of Stan’s closest associates.

However, upon perusing this book’s contents, I realized that either Jim’s or my interview had already covered most of what I would have said. So we decided to let those candid conversations speak largely for themselves…with any added commentary I might have being confined to an occasional footnote (when Jim or John specifically suggested that I write one) and to the accompanying captions, which of course were also gone over and added to by Jim.

That is by design. Since at least 1953, I have been looking for the signature “John Romita” on artwork as a guarantee of quality, and I couldn’t see adding an appellation standing for “Senior” at this late date. The “Jr.” on his son’s name seems to me a clear enough differentiation between these two supremely talented but quite variant artists.

This is certainly not to slight John Romita, Jr., who has become one of the best and most influential artists in the field… but it represents my own firm conviction that John Romita needs no qualifier of any kind attached to his name. I suspect John, Jr., would agree.

And now, I’ll step aside and let my collaborator Jim Amash say a few choice words about the art of John Romita… after which we’ll both get out of the way and let Jazzy Johnny speak for himself. You’ll like it that way.

FIN

But, I do want to say this: John Romita, insofar as one man can claim to know another with whom he’s had primarily a professional rather than personal relationship over several decades’ time, seems to me to be about as fundamentally decent a person as I’ve encountered in my more than forty years in the comic book field. Situations may have dictated that he spent his artistic life realizing the artistic and commercial aims of others—be they Martin Goodman or Stan Lee or a DC romance editor or Sol Brodsky or Jim Shooter or whoever—but John remained consistently true to his own vision of what a comics professional should be. While also advancing his own quite legitimate agenda of artistic integrity, he did whatever was required of him—as an artist, as an art director, even as a

Two For The Show Mike Burkey (left) and the Jazzy One, in a drawing by JR. Visit Mike’s website at www.romitaman.com. He can be reached online at mikeburkey@aol.com or at P.O. Box 455, Ravenna, OH 44266. [©2007 John Romita.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 7

The Superhero Women Can you believe that John Romita used to be “insecure about his depictions of women”? This 1977 drawing, which appeared in a Philadelphia Comic Art Convention program book that year, was done as the basis of the cover painting for the Simon and Schuster trade paperback of the above title. The book collected stories of Marvel-published super-ladies. [Red Sonja ©2007 Red Sonja Properties, Inc.; other heroines ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

8 | JOHN ROMITA: AN ARTIST’S POV

Preface by Jim Amash

John Romita An Artist’s POV

J

ohn Romita started out with the typical artistic influences of his time: N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Alex Raymond, Harold Foster, Milton Caniff, Noel Sickles, and Jack Kirby. This diverse mix of stylistic inspirations and John’s personal vision took some time to gel, but once it did, the John Romita look became an essential part of the Marvel house style for many years.

John’s development really started at the School of Industrial Arts.

His classmates were future cartoonists Joe Giella, Al Scaduto, Sy Barry, Emilio Squeglio, Les Zakarin, and Wilton Graff, the son of cartoonist Mel Graff. Wilton Graff sat next to John in class, drawing

in the Caniff mode with great ease, impressing upon John the necessity of drawing in a clear, definable style.

John’s biggest influence was Milton Caniff. “I wanted to be like him. Lee Elias and Frank Robbins worked in his style, and I wanted to be like them, too. From Caniff, I learned how to spot blacks. I learned that drawing a hand and getting its anatomy right was important, but not as important as getting the correct gestures that a hand makes. Most illustrators didn’t have their characters interact in scenes, but Caniff drew people who looked at each other when speaking, and showed their reactions. His characters were actors on

Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here!

A John Romita montage of many of the Marvel heroes he’s drawn over the years. One of them—Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, a.k.a. Power Man—he basically designed in the early 1970s. Looks like this could’ve been a calendar shot. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey.

[Conan ©2007 Conan Properties International, LLC.; other heroes ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 9

Shock Therapy Romita’s pencils and inks for the last page of the lead story from Captain America #78 (Sept. 1954), in Timely’s mid-1950s superhero revival; scripter unknown. Masterful artwork, combining aspects of Kirby and Caniff—but, despite the admonishment not to miss the next “thrill-packed issue,” there was no CA #79…and the ol’ shield-slinger went on the shelf for ten years. Romita, inexplicably, blamed himself for the series’ failure. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

effects immediately upgraded both his work and confidence: “It was a six-month drawing course crammed into one day.” If John’s lack of confidence hampered his work at times, it was undetectable.

Artists are always their own toughest critics.

The 1950s were a tumultuous time in comics.

Companies folded left and right, forcing many people to find different lines of employment. For a brief time in 1957, John’s main employer, Timely Comics, all but folded its tents. To make ends meet, John took on a newspaper route, but eventually found a relatively safe haven drawing romance comics at DC. The story content was mind-numbingly vapid, but at least John was working. He adapted his style to conform to staid editorial dictates. While his storytelling was pedestrian in comparison to his Timely work, the subject matter furthered his understanding of the importance of glamorization.

It was hard work. John, always insecure about his depictions of women, was forced to refine his delineations of the female form. Years earlier, a visit to artist Carmine Infantino resulted in John drawing better-looking, simply-designed women.

Now he was looking at artists like Bob Oksner and Don Heck for inspiration and information. It paid off. The “Romita women” became glamorous Madison Avenue types. His “street smart” females had a sultry intelligence to their beauty. His “girls next door” were enticingly realistic symbols of what guys wanted and what girls wanted to be.

“Authenticity and glamour were what I tried to inject into my work. I took all my influences, mixed them in, and as a finishing touch, I put myself in to make the work look pretty.”

paper, and I learned from that. Years later, I got the opportunity to pay tribute to my idol, and those stories are my favorites [Amazing Spider-Man #108 and 109].”

When Les Zakarin started procuring comic book jobs, he prevailed on John to ghost-pencil stories that Zakarin would ink. John was still in the formative stages of stylistic identification, but drew well enough to handle the production demands. When John branched out on his own, he was still trying to find his artistic voice. Timely editor Stan Lee gave him the daunting assignment of drawing “Captain America.”

Having been a fan of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby’s Captain America Comics, John mixed that style in with his Caniff-influenced rendering, creating some of the best, most active storytelling of his early career.

In the struggle to improve and meet deadlines, both Stan Lee and John looked for solutions. Stan set up a meeting for him with Timely’s star artist, Joe Maneely. The afternoon John spent with Maneely opened his eyes to a new way of working. The beneficial

10 | JOHN ROMITA: AN ARTIST’S POV

John was stereotyped as a romance artist at DC. Most of the editors dismissed love comics as something only young girls liked, and the comparatively lower sales of those books furthered their disdain. For various reasons, John eventually found himself without work at DC, and called Stan Lee at Marvel. Stan, knowing what John was capable of (perhaps more so than John himself), immediately hired him.

John’s indoctrination to the “Marvel style” was crucial to his development. With guidance from Stan and using Jack Kirby as his storytelling template, John broke out of the DC romance mode with a new approach (for him) on Daredevil. He soon moved over to The Amazing Spider-Man, doing his best to imitate departing co-creator Steve Ditko. John was ill at ease with the transition. He felt the ghosts of Wally Wood on Daredevil, Steve Ditko on Spider-Man, Jack Kirby on Captain America and Fantastic Four, in the midst of maintaining and improving the quality of his drawing. “Following Jack on the FF was hell. I knew I couldn’t measure up to what he did, and got off the book as soon as I could.”

John added his own brand of sophisticated glamour to Marvel.

Who else would have based Mary Jane Watson on actress Ann-

The sweat and anxiety John experienced during his artistic growth was costly. His production slowed down, partly because of the struggle to do better, and partly because he was so much in demand at Marvel for other projects. He went from freelancing to being the art director at Marvel, and along with John Buscema and Joe Sinnott epitomized the “Marvel Look” in the Bronze Age. In the forty-plus years since Steve Ditko left Spider-Man, Todd McFarlane has been the only artist besides John Romita of real stylistic importance to the series.

Looking back, John doesn’t think he’s totally succeeded in creating his own artistic world: “Stan Lee wanted to see movies on paper. In my opinion, he wanted us to be as photographic as possible, but he settled for what he could get. My natural inclination was to draw in the glamorous Madison Avenue art style, that toothpaste-advertising look; the kind that people like Ken Bald were good at. My work had grit covered with a veneer of toothpaste.

Margaret? Certainly not Ditko or Kirby. At times, his work may have looked too pretty to Stan, who originally thought John made Peter Parker too good-looking. As time went on, John’s attention to detail and texture became more emphatic. His inking style became more aggressive, as his cityscapes changed from idealized structures of concrete to worn edifices of a crowded environment. Suburban dwellings and their interiors looked like places people wanted to live in. His characterization of villains became more menacing, while remaining visually attractive. His repertoire of individualistic faces increased, creating a more nuanced look. John learned how to draw the grim and the grit, without losing the glitz.

“I tried to make my work as convincing as possible. I tried to reflect the times. Ditko didn’t worry about that, but he didn’t have to.

Ditko, like Kirby, may not have kept up with current fashion styles, but they were able to create their own worlds, their own points of view. I was never able to do that. I always fell short, because I never got my style to where I wanted. Whenever I tell people that, they think I’m crazy, but I say, ‘You may like what I did, but you didn’t see what I pictured in my head.’”

What the public did see was superb comic art created by a man totally dedicated to his job.

FIN

Smile And Say “Spidey!”

(Top:) Jim Amash give us a wide grin. Maybe it’s because, for once, he’s not staring at his drawing board. Besides inking various Archie comic books (including the popular Sonic the Hedgehog), Jim has been filling in for regular embellisher Joe Sinnott, inking Alex Saviuk’s pencils on the Sunday Spider-Man comic strip originally started by John Romita with Stan Lee. Directly above is the strip for Feb. 11, 2007. [Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 11

Fifty Years On The “A” List

A Candid Conversation With Marvel Artist/Art Director Supreme Why Is This Man Smiling?

A 1996 Romita Spider-Man sketch, flanked by Jazzy Johnny hard at work in 1967 amid furniture he made himself (“I must’ve been crazy!” he says).

Art courtesy of Mike Burkey. Photo courtesy of and art ©2007 John Romita. [Spider-Man TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

R

OY THOMAS: Okay, John, just to get it out of the way— you were born in Brooklyn in 1930, right?

JOHN ROMITA: Yeah. Just maybe five years too early—no, too late. Because one of my biggest regrets is that I wasn’t in the first generation of comic artists. While I was in junior high school, Joe Kubert, who’s only a few years older than me, got in on it, doing “Hawkman”!

RT: Of course, if you’d had your wish, you’d be a decade older.

ROMITA: Yeah, I’d be eighty now. [laughs] I started drawing when I was five. Parents and relatives say, “Ooh” and “Ahh” and how great it is, and you continue drawing because you like to get the pats on the back.

12 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

JOHN ROMITA Conducted by Roy Thomas Transcribed by Brian K. Morris I was a street performer when I was about ten. The gang of kids I hung out with used to scrounge bits of plaster from torn-down buildings, because we couldn’t afford chalk, and I would draw on the streets. Once I did a 100-foot Statue of Liberty, starting at one manhole and finishing at the next. That was the distance between manholes in Brooklyn.

RT: “From sewer to shining sewer,” huh?

ROMITA: People were coming from other neighborhoods to see it and hoping it wouldn’t rain. I also used to draw Superman, Batman— all the super-heroes that were coming out. [Virginia Romita says something in the background.] Virginia reminds me, as she always does, that I also became the source of little drawings of nude girls for all the boys in the neighborhood. Guys would beg me to do them,

You Name ’Em—Romita’s Drawn ’Em! John’s preliminary pencils to the wraparound cover of the 1996 Marvel one-shot Heroes and Legends. Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

and she would say she was disappointed in me for doing those drawings. She was nine when I was eleven. Actually, she caused me to stop doing them.

When they did plays at the school auditorium, I was stuck with doing the backgrounds and scenery. Once they taped a huge roll of wrapping paper along the entire school corridor, and I did a mural down both sides of all the heroes I knew of, even Zorro, Flash Gordon, and Tarzan.

RT: The comics pros a little older than you had grown up before Superman, so when they started drawing super-heroes, it wasn’t as natural a thing to them.

ROMITA: Yeah, but they probably did Washington and Lincoln, like I did. I became a celebrity in school. I used to carve Lincoln heads, Mickey Mouse, things like that, out of cakes of soap. When I was 1213, my buddies thought we were gonna go into business. They actually broke into the basement of a Turkish bath to get me a boxful of soap, so help me! I can still see this one kid half a block down the street in the tenement section of Brooklyn—you could see for two blocks, no trees, no nothing—there’s a policeman talking to him, and

this kid—his name was Louie McDuff and he was a real weasel—was practically in tears. I can see him pointing to my house and telling the cop, “That’s the guy who told me to get the soap.” I never asked him to get the soap—I just stayed there in the cellar. I thought I was going to be arrested for stealing a box of soap!

When I was choosing a high school, somebody told me about the School of Industrial Arts in the city, where you were taught by professional artists. That captured my imagination. My local priest wanted me to go to a Catholic high school and later become a priest, but I wasn’t going to give up girls.

But one of my buddies, who was doing full-color posters when I was just doing line-art stuff—truthfully, he was much better than I was—he advised me, “John, you shouldn’t waste your time going to the School of Industrial Arts. You’re not polished enough.” He went to the same school I did, and he never, ever made a living at artwork. [laughs] RT: Some people have talent but never get it together to actually do anything with it.

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 13

Titans Two John R. says he envies Joe Kubert, who’s only four years older than himself yet got in on the early Golden Age of Comics and was drawing “Hawkman” by 1944, while John broke into print only near decade’s end. Maybe that’s what these two great talents are discussing at a get-together a few years back—or maybe they’re comparing notes on the fact that, between them, they have three sons who are currently top comic book artists!

(Center left:) At age 15-16, in 1942, Kubert drew super-heroes for Harvey Comics (“Volton,” et al.). His first DC work was a “Dr. Fate” chapter in 1944’s All-Star Comics #21, and his first “Hawkman” effort appeared in The Big All-American Comic Book later that year.

Both tales are currently in print in hardcover volumes from DC. The page here is from Joe’s second Winged Wonder story (“The Painter and the $100,000”), as he became that series’ regular artist with Flash Comics #62 (Feb. 1945); the splash of this 9-pager was seen in Alter Ego #44. With thanks to Al Dellinges. [©2007 DC Comics.]

(Below:) John says the earliest story for which he did full art was “It!” from Strange Tales #4 (Dec. 1951). That effort was reprinted in the hardcover Marvel Visionaries: John Romita Sr.; a panel from it can be seen on p. 21 of this book. Some of Romita’s earlier penciling, done for inker Les Zakarin, is on view on pp. 19 & 20. But John did full penciling and inking on another story in a comic dated Dec. 1951: “Out of My Mind,” for Astonishing #7. With thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

14 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

movies being done, and I loved it.

RT: You never had a singing career like a couple of others in your family?

ROMITA: I had three sisters and a brother. Every one of them could sing and dance, and I can’t dance and I can’t sing. But I grew up loving music.

RT: You’ve said you bought two copies of Superman #1, in 1939?

That’s why you’re rich today—you kept that spare copy, right?

ROMITA: [laughs] I kept one copy in a wax paper bag, the closest In Marvel Two-in-One Annual #1 (1976), set in 1942, John appeared at age 11—but we shouldn’t have given him so equivalent to plastic we had, but much baby-fat! Art by Sal Buscema & Sam Grainger. Script by Roy Thomas. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] eventually it disappeared. I traced the other one until the cover was ROMITA: On my 17th birthday I graduated from high school and I destroyed. I kept pressing harder and harder, until I could do that got a job right away. This wealthy anesthesiologist at Manhattan drawing by hand.

General Hospital was creating a new branch of medicine called pneumatology, and he hired me at sixty bucks a week, which was a RT: Were you aware, in ’39 and fortune to me, to do a medical exhibit from scratch. I designed and ’40, of the early Timely illustrated and lettered and cut out the boards and pasted and hung Comics? them on frames in the hospital corridors. I had no experience, but I did the whole damn exhibit in six months.

ROMITA: I remember Human

Special Delivery

While I was working in the hospital, several other doctors, including a plastic surgeon and a heart specialist, asked me to illustrate their books. There were only one or two top guys in the country doing medical illustrations, so I figured there’d be no competition. I thought I was going to be a medical illustrator! But when I finished the exhibit, none of these doctors had written a single chapter of their books, so I had to go out and earn a living.

RT: They probably never even wrote their books.

ROMITA: I guarantee you, they never did. They didn’t need the money.

RT: Backing up a bit: In 1976, in a story with The Thing and The Liberty Legion, set in 1942, we showed you as a kid, saying you “deliver[ed] packages for some of the doctors around here”—in Times Square. We also had you spotting some Nazi planes overhead, since you said you knew the silhouettes and markings of all the planes at that time.

Torch, I remember Sub-Mariner, and then Captain America. One of my favorite companies was Lev Gleason. Charlie Biro’s stuff [for Gleason] appealed to me. His Daredevil was my favorite character. He wasn’t blind; he just had that split red-and-blue costume.

RT: It’s funny that Biro’s Daredevil was one of your earliest heroes, and Marvel’s Daredevil was the first hero you drew in the ’60s.

ROMITA: I told that to Stan in ’65, and he said he thought

ROMITA: Yeah. I delivered packages when I was fourteen, but not for doctors. I worked in the Newsweek Building for some minor-league outfit that used to mimeograph biographies of big band leaders like Louis Armstrong and Glenn Miller. Their customer was this agent uptown on 57TH Street. I would run 200300 copies off on mimeograph and take them to the client, so he could hand them out as press releases.

I’d go into the Brill Building, on what was called Tin Pan Alley. All the offices had music coming from them—people selling songs on the piano, songwriters pushing their songs. And when I’d go up to the 20th Century-Fox art department, I could see the posters from my favorite

Biro & Tuska Two of John’s early faves were Charles Biro’s Daredevil and George Tuska’s anything! Here’s the cover of Daredevil #6 (Dec. 1941)—plus a handful of Tuska panels from Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay #60 (Feb. ‘48), by way of Mike Benton’s invaluable 1993 Illustrated History of Crime Comics.

[Daredevil & CDNP art ©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 15

He Wuz Framed!

In early 2001, the recently officially “retired” John Romita had hoped to draw a brand new piece of art for the cover of Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #9. However, he was kept so busy with special projects for Marvel and others that at the last minute he had to beg off. So we assembled one of our trademark montages: a 1980 self-portrait, and a Romita-drawn frame composed of many (though far from all) of the Marvel super-heroes he’s done at one time or another. The framing art, according to Romita connoisseur Mike Burkey (who provided it), was previously used only as the back cover of a 1970s trade paperback. [Self-portrait ©2007 John Romita; Red Sonja TM & ©2007 Red Sonja Properties, Inc.; other art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA

16 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

and the Pirates stuff—well, it’s probably partly because of Noel Sickles. They shared a studio for a time. Caniff helped Sickles with storytelling, and Sickles helped Caniff learn how to turn out a daily page without laboring over it. If Sickles hadn’t gotten tired of his own Scorchy Smith, there’s no telling how big it might have become, because that strip was an adventure story on the quality level of a Hitchcock movie. I’m telling you, the stories, the visuals, were so great—I don’t know about the dialogue, because Caniff had his own dialogue, that probably surpassed everybody.

I had to scrounge up old Famous Funnies comics to get all of Terry! Each issue reprinted maybe two or three Sundays, or maybe two Sundays and the dailies in-between.

RT: Moving to the Kirby half of my Caniff-Kirby equation—you were probably one of those kids who liked Simon and Kirby without knowing who did what.

Three of A Kind JR says: “I saw George Tuska at the MegaCon this April [2001]. He’s still drawing. He and Nick Cardy and I posed for pictures. It was wonderful.”

[L. to r.: Tuska, Romita, & Cardy; photo courtesy of John Romita.]

Biro was a genius. I maintain that Biro did a lot of the stuff that Stan did later, but it wasn’t noticed, even though he was putting a lot of personality into his comics.

George Tuska did a lot of work for Biro. When I met Tuska in the late ’60s, I said, “I’ll tell you how far back I’ve been noticing your work. I remember ‘Shark Brodie’!” That was a back-up feature, a hobo adventurer connected with the sea. He was always on a dock somewhere. Actually, I’d seen Tuska years earlier, when I was delivering a horror story to Stan in the ’50s. I saw this big, strapping guy, and I didn’t know it was Tuska till afterward. He looked like a superhero himself!

RT: Doing Crime Does Not Pay stories for Biro, Tuska was one of the most influential artists in the field. Later, for several years in the ’70s, he was one of only two artists who could draw any Marvel book and it’d sell. You were the other one. I remember he did two issues of Sub-Mariner and sales shot up. They went back down as soon as he left!

ROMITA: I was aware of everything Jack did from the time I was eleven. I’d tell my buddies, “This guy is great! Look at this stuff that’s popping out of the pages. Look at how he does that!” They thought the comics were some kind of tricky photo technique. They would say, “Aw, you’re crazy. Nobody’s going to do all those drawings by hand.” Years later, I used to hear that echoing, and say, “What am I, crazy, doing 120 drawings for how many stories?” [laughs] RT: You found out how many drawings people can do, right?

ROMITA: I learned the hard way. But for a while I definitely felt I was doing comics only on a temporary basis. In the Army I did fullcolor illustrations and posters. The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Ladies’ Home Journal—there were about a dozen magazines that had double-page illustrations to make your mouth water; but that field was slowly dying. My final year in art school, I studied magazine illustration and had given up on comics. I wanted to be a magazine illustrator.

RT: Not a baker? [laughs]

ROMITA: I remember. Everything he touched was great. He once did a thumbnail version of a Spider-Man from a plot by Stan. I was supposed to blow the thumbnails up and lightbox them—all contrived to save me time.

It was a very interesting-looking job, with a lot of people in overcoats, and some beautiful shadows; I was dying to do it. But Stan said, “No, it just doesn’t look like a Spider-Man story,” and he decided not to use it. I could kill myself for losing those thumbnails.

RT: Two of the comics artists most influential on your style—especially during the period I became aware of your work back in the early ’50s with “Captain America”—were Jack Kirby and Milton Caniff. That wasn’t just my imagination, was it?

ROMITA: No. Milton Caniff was my god. Before I got into comic books, his Terry and the Pirates was my Bible. I used to spend hours looking at those pages. I still have two or three years of Sundays in an envelope. I still look at them and admire and sigh. Everything I’ve ever learned, I think, was established in those pages.

He did some beautiful work later in Steve Canyon, but the Terry

A Tuska Tableau A recent George Tuska illo of heroes he drew during the 1970s.

[Heroes TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 17

Milton & The Pirates John (left) with his childhood idol Milt Caniff (center), circa ’70s. The longtime Marvel artist/production man at right jokingly titled this pic: “Hey, who’re those two guys with Tony Mortellaro?” The Terry and the Pirates daily for 2-8-38 featured two of Caniff’s trademark women—Burma and the ever-delightful Dragon Lady.

As for Tony—he often slipped the name “Mort” onto backgrounds when working with John. [Photo courtesy of John Romita; Terry art ©2007 Chicago Tribune-NY News Syndicate, Inc., or successors in interest.]

ROMITA: Well, not a baker—but I was going to drive the bread truck. My father was a baker, and he had a chance to open up a bakery when I was 14-15. He envisioned me delivering bread when I got my license. It sounded like a good family business. But we’d have had to relocate upstate, near Albany, and my mother didn’t want to leave her family and friends in Brooklyn. That was probably the reason, not me. But she said, “No, he’s going to stay in the city. He’s going to become an artist.” Can you believe it?

RT: Clearly, she had faith in you. What were your other pre-comics jobs in the late ’40s?

ROMITA: The first one, a couple of months after the hospital exhibit, was for $26 a week with Forbes Lithograph. I took home $21 after taxes, working forty hours a week and also having to go in sometimes on Saturdays. They did speculation stuff, mostly on companies like Coca-Cola. You know the festoons they used to have behind soda fountains,with a big picture of a girl and some flowers drawn strung up, and then on the end they’d have Coke bottles?

Well, designing those festoons and printing them in their litho plant was Forbes’ main business. I was there from the middle of ’47 until at least the middle of ’49. I did a lot of full-color comprehensives and a lot of touching-up of Coke bottles to the point where, I think, if I had to do one tomorrow, I’d be ready! [laughs] You know how they used to do the water dripping down the side of the bottle? I had that technique down perfect, because I had to match the style of Haddon Sundblum and Harry Anderson, who were the best Coke artists in the world. The sunlight and the reflected firelight on Santa Claus’ face—those were all Haddon Sundblum. He was a genius, and I dreamed of doing that stuff. If not for comics, I’d probably have become a lithographic illustrator.

RT: Which brings us at last to comic books. You mentioned at the 1995 Stan Lee Roast in Chicago how in ’49 you started out

Classic Kirby John says, “I was aware of everything Jack did from the time I was eleven”—which is roughly the time Captain America #8 came out from Simon & Kirby and Timely.[©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

18 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

As Crime Goes By Two Timely crime-comics pages, circa 1949-50, ghost-penciled by John Romita and inked by Lester Zakarin, who lined up the assignment. Repro’d from photocopies of the original art, courtesy of JR. We’re not certain of the comic, issue number, or date, alas. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

penciling for a guy who was really an inker, but who pretended to Stan that he was penciling material which you ghosted for him. Don’t you think it’s time you finally told us who that artist was?

ROMITA: The reason I never gave his name was, I didn’t want to embarrass him. His name was Lester Zakarin. I met him for the first time in forty years in 1999, at a convention in New York, and he told me he wasn’t offended by any of the interviews I’d given. I’d always say that this artist I was ghosting for would tell Stan he could pencil, but actually I’d do the penciling for him, and he just inked my pencils.

But Stan was one of the few editors who’d ask guys to make changes. And when he asked Lester Zakarin to change something, he would panic. So I would go into the city with him and I’d wait at the New York Public Library, which was very close to where Timely was, at the Empire State Building. Zakarin would get the corrections from Stan and tell him, “I can’t draw in front of people. It has to be absolutely quiet. I’m going to a friend’s office. I’ll do these corrections and bring them back in the afternoon.” Then he’d meet me at the library, and I’d do the corrections, and then he’d go back to Stan. [laughs]

Zakarin At Work A caricature of Les Zakarin, drawn by his friend and colleague Ray Osrin in the late 1940s. This art was sent to us by Les, who was interviewed in Alter Ego #27 and passed away in 2003. [©2007 Estate of Ray Osrin.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 19

Credit Where Credit Was Due Actually, though John had totally forgotten that fact by 2001, Les Zakarin did add John Romita’s name to his own in the credits on at least four Timely splash pages, all cover-dated 1951, after the initial “ghosting” period. Clockwise from above left: All-True Crime Cases #44 (May)… Two Gun Western #8 (June)…

Crime Cases Comics #7 (Sept.)… and Strange Tales #3 (Oct.). Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo for scans of these pages. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

20 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

crazy about it. And the rest of the guys wanted to kill me because he now wanted them to do all that extra work. [laughs] RT: When did you actually meet Stan?

ROMITA: When I went in with the “It” job. We went over the story.

He was the first editor I had run into who paid attention to what you did. Most editors just looked at the work and grunted or told you it was no good or it was okay. But Stan immediately started giving me feedback—and, in fact, he’s the one who triggered me into doing that damn photographic style.

Maybe that was the story I remember where this guy kept trying to take his mask off, and it turned out he shredded his own skin off his face. [laughs] He was like a Ku Klux Klanner with a mask—a vigilante beast—and after his crimes, his conscience got to him. It was probably an Edgar Allan Poe rip-off. He kept looking at himself in the mirror and seeing the mask and tearing it off, and there was another one under it, so he’d tear that one off, and so on. And at the end, they said, “We don’t know what happened to this guy, but he pulled all the skin off his face.”

“Kids! What’s the matter with kids today?”

A climactic panel from Romita’s first pencil-and-ink job for Timely—or for anybody else. The story, titled “It!,” first saw print in Strange Tales #4 (Dec. 1951). This tale and the one below were both printed in full in the 2005 hardcover Marvel Visionaries: John Romita Sr. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: A nice little morality tale.

ROMITA: Right after that first story—it had some weaknesses, especially in the inking—Stan calls up [Timely artist] Joe Maneely and tells him, “I’m going to send this guy out to spend a day with you.

RT: Sounds like Woody Allen in The Front. But you never denigrated that guy; in fact, you always maintained he was a good inker.

ROMITA: Well, I did say the guy couldn’t draw at all. It’s nice of you to be so charitable. Somebody asked me if that’s the same Lester Zakarin who worked with Bob Bean. Bean was one of the guys who used to stand outside Stan’s office looking for work when I did. I also met Jack Abel and Davey Berg and Ed Winiarski that way.

RT: Who else do you remember from the late ’40s and early ’50s?

ROMITA: I’m trying to remember names. I don’t think Tuska ever had to wait for anything! We were hopefuls, and we’d wait sometimes two hours back in ’50 and the beginning of ’51. They’d tell me about the other people in the business. I met Gene Colan then; the next time I saw him was 10-15 years later. I remember meeting maybe a dozen guys, sort of like a rotating cast, at Stan’s and at other places, like Avon.

I started working for Stan before I went into the service in ’51. I remember the first time I went up there. He had this beautiful blonde secretary—he always had beautiful secretaries—and I said to her, “Stan Lee doesn’t know my name, but I’ve been working for him for over a year. If he’ll look at the work done by Lester Zakarin, he’ll see my penciling.” She came out a half hour later with a script. I said, “When do you need the pencils to check?” And she said, “No, no.

Stan just said to go ahead. When you get the pencils finished, we’ll get it lettered, and you can ink it.” And I was about to tell her, “I don’t ink,” and I thought, “No, I better not. She might not give me the script.” So I just said, “Oh yeah, sure. I’ll ink it.” I almost died. That was the first professional inking job I did.

RT: That’s the horror story, “It,” about the baby that turns out to actually be a murderous alien?

ROMITA: That was the first time I put pen to paper. Soon after, I came up with this crazy technique with all the shadows. Stan was

John Was No Longer An U nidentified F leeing O bject…

Perhaps the first time the Lee and Romita names appeared together in print was on this splash from Menace #6 (Aug. 1952). Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 21

When Knights Were Bold Some of Joe Maneely’s most memorable work was the Black Knight series he created with Stan Lee three years before his untimely death. Splash from BK #1 (May 1955). Note Maneely’s fine-line backgrounds, as discussed by John R.—who drew the “Crusader” story in Black Knight #4. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Give him as many pointers as possible.” And the next day, I think, I went out to Flushing, probably from 10:30 in the morning until about 4:30 in the afternoon. I watched Maneely; and while he’s talking to me, giving me pointers, he turned out like two or three pages, one double-spread with an entire pioneer fort in Indian country with Indians attacking from the outside, and guys shooting from the inside.

He didn’t need reference, he didn’t need anything. He just sat there, and between 10:30 and, say, 12:30, he had penciled this doublespread in, very roughly. After lunch—I think I just went out and got a hot dog—I come back and he’s starting to ink it, and he finished the damn double-spread before we finished the afternoon session! He was just a staggering talent!

no shadows at all. He influenced me tremendously, and I think I learned more in that one day than I did in ten years of previous work.

RT: He died in 1958, when he fell off a train. Bill Everett told me he and Maneely used to drink their lunch and “lose Fridays” sometimes, so some people think that may have been a factor. But who knows?

ROMITA: He was 38 years old, I think. If he’d lived, not only would he have been up there with Kirby and Ditko when Marvel got started, but he’d have been Stan’s ace in the hole. I jokingly said once that, if Joe Maneely had lived, half of us would have been out of work! [laughs] RT: And Ditko and Kirby could have handled what he didn’t draw! A few guys like that could be a whole art department. Some people don’t let anything stop them, including doing research or worrying too much over things.

Maneely is the first guy I realized could put in bone structure with a pen line. In other words, he didn’t make everything round. He had these nice bone structure prominences on people’s faces and clothing.

The word “crisp” immediately popped into my mind. He would do the whole thing with a thin pen line; then he would take a big, bold brush and do all the blacks. And for years after that I worked that way. I was a brush man at heart, but I couldn’t stop working the way he did for a while.

ROMITA: That’s exactly what Jack always told me. He used to say, “You’re too technical. Don’t worry about it. If it’s a little bit off, it’s not the end of the world. The thing is, keep it alive.” And he was dead right. I could be very accurate, and the work would die.

RT: His thin-line backgrounds gave his stuff a feeling of depth many comics didn’t have.

RT: So you worked for Stan until you got drafted, during the Korean War?

ROMITA: He could get away with it, because there was a rather clean reproduction in those days. So for years I did my backgrounds with

ROMITA: Yeah. I got drafted in the Spring of ’51. I tried to get out to Governor’s Island, which would keep me from going overseas like the

22 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

coward that I was. [laughs] I pushed up my induction date; it’s what they called “voluntary induction.” Instead of waiting to be called, I showed my artwork to this Air Force captain who was the art director on Governor’s Island, and he said, “I’d love to have you here.

If you can manage to get to”—I think it was Camp Upton, in New Jersey—“then I can get you assigned to Fort Dix. But if you don’t get to Camp Upton, you could end up going to Georgia, and then you’re stuck on their infantry list.”

I did manage to get to Camp Upton, and he put in the paperwork to reserve me. So I got assigned to Governor’s Island and to do my Basic Training at Fort Dix in Jersey. That was July of ’51. I had worked with Stan, maybe over six months. I’d done maybe 10-12 stories for him.

RT: So you were in the service when you and Virginia were married?

ROMITA: Yeah. That was a year and a half later, in November of ’52.

If you had nine months to go, you could be sent overseas—but as soon as you went under nine months, they couldn’t send you overseas. My term was going to be up in seven months, and we got married. So on my honeymoon I go to Canada as a serviceman. We go through the Canadian border and Virginia says, “Gee, it’s funny to leave the United States.” First time we’d ever done it. And I said, “Oh my God, I’m a deserter! They could put me in irons for 25 years!” I’d never told them where I was going on my honeymoon. I could have never come back if I wanted to.

“This is Korea” This story which depicted President Harry Truman, came out after the war had ended with a truce, and congratulated our G.I.s for “a job well done!”

Art by John Romita, from Battle #26 (Feb. 1954). Courtesy of Michael J. Vassallo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Reds Scared “Romita’s War”—not to mention Timely’s—spilled over into Captain America, months after a truce was declared in Korea. This POWcamp tale from #77 (July 1954) is printed from Roy’s bound volumes, so a bit of art is cut off—though not JR’s signature. But Namor and the Torch were fighting the Reds, too, as per these Everett and Ayers panels from Young Men #26 (Sub-Mariner) and Human Torch #38 (Aug. 1954). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 23

RT: A decade and a half later, a lot of young men would be going that same route, only on purpose. You kept on working for Timely through a lot of this period?

ROMITA: Yeah. I became a corporal 7-8 months after I got to Governor’s Island, and I was allowed to live off the post. I got an apartment in Brooklyn. I was going to Governor’s Island by ferry every morning, and every night I would go home. The whole thing is like a dream to me. Once you reached a certain status, a “Class A” pass allowed you to leave the post any time you were not on duty. So I would go uptown to Stan’s to deliver packages and talk to him about a new script and then come down and get back on the ferry and go to work again.

RT: That was Romita’s War, huh?

ROMITA: [Marvel letterer] Morrie Kuramoto, years later, told me he always wondered who the hell that soldier was who was always delivering artwork! And I alienated all the Midwesterners in the recruiting mill there. These guys were all my buddies, ’cause when I first got there, I was in the barracks with them.

We’d do G.I. parties together, we’d scrub floors. When I got married, I was no longer there, so that alienated me a little bit. Then somebody ratted, told them I was doing comics uptown—and when they heard I was making more in a week than they would make in a month, even the master sergeants, I no longer had any friends in there. [laughs] I was in the Army for 24 months exactly. They offered me a master sergeant’s rank, and my father got angry when I decided to not stay in the Army. He said, “You got two years done. All you got is another 18 years, and you can retire with full pay. How could you turn down a deal like that?” I told him, “It’s not me. I want to get the hell out.”

RT: Adults who lived through the Depression—as opposed to kids, like you were—tend to have ideas about financial security that go far beyond what most people could appreciate nowadays.

ROMITA: Well, my father was a fanatic about it. During my young years, he’d say, “I know you don’t want to be a policeman and I don’t want you to be a fireman, but you can certainly join the Sanitation Department.” Meaning, Civil Service was the answer. “After twenty years you can retire and take another job part-time and live like a king”—that was his theory. When I was in the Army, I became a corporal, then a sergeant, and then they offered me a master sergeant’s rank at $488 a month. To my father, that was a fortune. I made more in comics, but he didn’t buy it.

RT: Maybe he saw 1957 coming. Which is more than most Timely people did! [laughs] ROMITA: When we had black days, my father would say, “If you were still in the Army, you wouldn’t have to worry about all this.”

Anyway, I got out in July of ’53.

RT: You must’ve jumped right away into that “Captain America” work.

ROMITA: I was doing war stories while I was in the Army—and

24 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

Anybody Got A Pair Of Scissors?

Yeah, we kinda thought this might get your attention. No, it’s not one of those naughty sketches John drew at age 11 for his beady-eyed buddies, but a full-size pencil drawing of Medusa (in between costumes) that he generously did for Rascally Roy circa 1967, with the proviso that it never be published.

Thanks for letting us change your mind, John—even if we had to censor it a bit for a “family book”! [Medusa ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Westerns. And then, yes, I think I started “Captain America” just after I got out.

RT: Stan told me once that Timely’s comics were being kept out of Army PXs during the Korean War, because its war stories basically said war was bad—a little like what EC was doing. Were you ever aware of any feeling against Timely?

ROMITA: I didn’t hear any grumbles, but I didn’t spend a lot of time at the PX. But I know there was a lot of public annoyance because of the Commie-fighting stuff. A lot of critics were down on Captain America being a Commie-fighter.

RT: As a kid of 12-13 when Young Men #24 brought back Torch, Cap, and Namor, I thought all that Red-bashing was great.

Go West, Young Men! The classic Young Men #24 (Dec. 1953) launched an Indian Summer of Timely super-hero comics, but Captain America and Sub-Mariner got distinctly second billing on Carl Burgos’ cover. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: I thought the Torch went on longer.

RT: No, although one left-over 1954 “Torch” story popped up, drawn by Dick Ayers; we printed it, two decades late, in the 1970s Human Torch reprint mag. But the Torch and Cap solo titles were cancelled within a few weeks of each other, at most. Sub-Mariner lasted another year, probably because of that TV deal that was pending in 1954-55 for Namor, which Bill Everett told me about.

ROMITA: Right. That I heard. Stan told me about that once when I confessed to him that I felt I was the guy who kept Captain America from succeeding. He said, “No, there was no problem.” He liked it.

RT: There was a brief revival of super-heroes in comics in that period, because of the Superman TV show. Mike Sekowsky drew a new hero called Captain Flash who lasted four issues... Simon and Kirby’s Fighting American went seven... Charlton’s Blue Beetle didn’t last long, either. None of them lasted over a year at most.

Matter of fact, the 23 super-hero comics that Timely/Atlas put out

ROMITA: I did, too. But there was a period during the war when the American flag itself became a liability. There was a backlash from all the peaceniks, or whoever, saying we had no business going to Korea to fight, nationalism and chauvinism were destroying our American way of life, etc.—and Stan took the rap. Captain America was almost an American flag with legs, so he got a lot of adverse publicity. I believe Stan told me that’s why he dropped Captain America first, because Human Torch and Sub-Mariner had none of that.

RT: Actually, Bill Everett had tons of Red-bashing in Sub-Mariner.

So did the Torch. It went on right up to the end of the revival. In fact, the very last Torch issue had a story set in a North Korean P.O.W. camp. But Captain America lasted every bit as long as Human Torch! Both heroes were in seven anthology issues— Young Men #24-28 and Men’s Adventures #27-28—plus both appeared in three issues of their own comic.

Three To Get Ready...

Young Men #26 (April 1954) is the only time in the 23issue revival in which Cap, Sub-Mariner, and the Torch appear together, even briefly. But how did Namor wind up so much shorter than the other two? Art by John Romita. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 25

Thar’s gold in them Caniffornia hills!

Russ Winterbotham & Art Sansom’s Chris Welkin, Planeteer with its Caniffinspired cast (as seen in this daily clipped out of a 1952 newspaper by 11-year-old Roy)—Frank Robbins’ Johnny Hazard (1945)—Lee Elias’ Beyond Mars from sometime in the ’50s—and a decidedly Caniff/Sickles-style panel from Ray Bailey’s Bruce Gentry, which ran from 194552. [Chris Welkin ©2007 NEA Syndicate; Johnny Hazard ©2007 King Features Syndicate; Beyond Mars ©2007 the respective copyright holder; Bruce Gentry ©2007 Post Syndicate or successors in interest.]

from ’53-’55 is way more than anybody put out except DC. You may feel your Captain America was a failure, but that combination of Caniff and Kirby, I think, really worked well.

ROMITA: I set out to do an absolute swipe of Kirby, but I never succeeded. Caniff kept sneaking in there.

RT: I loved the combination. The women and the shadows were very Caniff, which I recognized even at 13. I was also following a newspaper strip that had started in 1951 called Chris Welkin, Planeteer; it was sort of Terry and the Pirates Go to Mars. It was drawn by Art Sansom and written by Russ Winterbotham. It had a Dragon Lady character, Chris Welkin was like Pat Ryan, and there was a kid who was like Terry. There was a lot of good Caniffinfluenced stuff coming out between the ’40s and the ’60s.

ROMITA: I know, I know. Along with Frank Robbins and Lee Elias, there was Bruce Gentry, by Ray Bailey, who ghosted Caniff for a while.

RT: You worked for Famous Funnies and Steven Douglas, who was one of the first and most important comic book editors. When was that?

ROMITA: That was my first job, and it was with Lester Zakarin. I spent two weeks penciling a 15-page romance story for Steve Douglas, who I found out was a philanthropist: He bought artwork from beginners, knowing he’d probably never use it. He was financing our education. He was a hell of a guy. There’s a special place in heaven for him, I’ll tell you. I don’t think Lester Zakarin ever got to ink it, because Douglas put it on his pile; he had a stack of artwork on his desk that must have been a foot high.

When he died, I wanted to go to the services, just to tell his wife what a blessing he was to guys like me. He was one in a million. The thing is, I never should have taken a romance story. I had spent all my

26 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

life doing airplanes and horses and heroes and war stories. I tried to do women for the first time in that comics story, and I almost went nuts! In those two weeks I must have fallen asleep 3-4 times at the drawing board, working past midnight, and I’d wake up freezing cold because all my circulation was gone. And I would have a line running all the way down the page where I fell asleep. I wasn’t prepared to do a love story, and Douglas was right in never using it. But he paid me $200 and it never got into print; so to me, that was a miracle.

RT: Couldn’t you have fallen back on all those nudes you did as a kid?

ROMITA: This was a whole different ball game, because I had to do girls with dresses, trying to dance, and strolling slowly. If I’d done my kind of woman, I’d have done the Dragon Lady with a knife in her hand. [laughs] RT: Milt Caniff warped a whole generation’s image of women! But I believe you also got an assignment from Simon and Kirby at about that time....

ROMITA: That was even a little earlier. When I was still working at Forbes, I answered an ad in The New York Times. It said, “$40 a week, cartoonist needed.” The address was 500 Fifth Avenue, which was within walking distance from where I was working. So I go up there at lunchtime, and I didn’t know Simon and Kirby were behind the ad. I talked to somebody—it may have been Joe Simon, for all I know, ’cause I didn’t know anybody in the business then. He said, “Draw up a page and ink it and bring it back tomorrow.”

I went home after working the rest of the day at Forbes, and I killed myself. I worked four or five hours penciling something. I think

Cap, Be A Lady Tonight!

(Above:) Romita’s original sketch to the cover of C.A. #77 (July 1954), since lost—juxtaposed with the published cover—and an, er, “homage” cover for Ajax/Farrell’s revived Phantom Lady #2 (Feb.-March 1955). John’s octopus got upgraded into a shark! [Captain America art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Phantom Lady art ©2007 the respective copyright holder.]

I even swiped it from Alex Raymond, for some reason. I wanted to have something polished. I tried to do the inking like Raymond, too. If I’d known it was Kirby, I wouldn’t have done that. I worked like a dog. It probably wasn’t as bad as I thought, but I really hated it and I was mortified by it. I never took it up there. That must have been 1948 or ’49.

So about five years later, I’m talking to Jack Kirby, and I tell him, “I almost worked for you.” I had found out later that was a Simon and Kirby stable. They were hiring young fellows to do what they called “inbetween pages.” Jack and Joe would do the splash and maybe two other pages, then they’d slip in a kid’s artwork and they would ink it and maybe save it. And then they’d do another page and they’d slip in another kid’s artwork. And so they would do five pages and end up with a ten-page story. When I told Jack, years later, “I didn’t have the guts to bring it up,” he said, “God, all the years you wasted. You could have been a dynamite artist.” If I’d had the gall to bring it up, I probably would have been working for Jack from 1948.

A Bomb Rap A Kirby-style Cap and a Caniff-style female spy—fused in Romita art from Young Men #25 (Feb. 1954).

This Cold War classic’s final panel was “blown up” in 1965 by Flo Steinberg, Denny O’Neil, and Roy Thomas from Photostats they found in the Marvel offices. RT’s framed copy still hangs on his wall. When you see a repro of that panel minus the caption (as in The Art of John Romita), it’s been repro’d from that retouched stat! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 27

I remember Carmine [Infantino] and Joe Kubert did a Western for Avon while I was working there. I think it was Jesse James. That might be the job they said they did in a day or two, but to me it was like a work of art. And Everett Raymond Kinstler did covers for Avon; he later became an illustrator.

These guys knocked my socks off, which didn’t help my ego. It was very embarrassing to bring my artwork in. But I only did a few issues for Avon.

That’s another place I used to run into Jack Abel and Ed Winiarski and other guys. John Forte was there, and Tony Di Preta, who later did Joe Palooka. Colan did some Westerns for Avon, too, I think.

RT: When did you draw for Avon?

ROMITA: While I was working for Lester Zakarin, I would have time between jobs, and he had a list of all the editors in the city, all the companies in the city, maybe half a dozen. I went up to Avon Comics, whose editor was a guy named Sol Cohen. He was a nervous wreck who spoke a mile-aminute, had no patience, and was cruel—as cruel as could be. He treated young artists like dirt. He used to tell me, “You call this artwork? This is crap. This is no good. This is garbage.”

I did love stories for him, and he had somebody ink it who must have used a toothbrush or a whiskbroom on it. I labored over a love story, and this guy went over it with a big, heavy hand and mutilated everything. The second story I did, I complained to Cohen about the inking: “You know, I could ink this better than this guy.” He says, “Who the hell do you think you are? This guy’s a professional.

You could never ink as good as him as long as you live!” He tried to tear down my confidence, but I knew better. I mean, that guy was a terrible inker!

28 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

I worked for one guy who was a real strange duck. I sometimes think he didn’t really have an office but was using somebody else’s office at lunchtime, when I would deliver work to him. The outfit was called Trojan Comics. He was doing bondage covers. Every time I did a Western cover for him, there were no horses on it. Instead, there was a girl with half her blouse torn away,

Commie Smasher The cover and all three titlehero splashes from C.A. #78.

How could John R. ever have imagined his art was responsible for the failure of Cap’s 1950s revival? But note the lack of inked stripes on Cap’s shield. The single red and white stripes in the printed issue were laid in crudely by the hardpressed ladies at Eastern Color! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Stan would call them in and have them do corrections on the spot.

RT: Your cover for Cap #77 is the pier scene with a guy dangling over a big octopus.

ROMITA: By the way, that guy hanging there was originally Bucky.

If you look at the sketch, it not only was Bucky, but I even had two possible positions for the head.

RT: And already, I see Cap’s shield has only two stripes, with no inked lines in them.

ROMITA: I sold Stan a bill of goods on that one. Actually, I was good at drawing circles. I could draw them freehand, and guys would think I was using one of those aids they call an ellipse. But I didn’t want to spend time drawing all those circular stripes on Cap’s shield, so I talked Stan into having them just color-held, with no black lines.

It didn’t work out very well, though. [laughs] RT: They evidently didn’t use color-hold markings, ’cause the red stripes wandered all over the place. They were just blobs of color!

Do you know anything about the decision to bring Cap and the other two heroes back in ’53?

ROMITA: I don’t remember Stan telling me anything about it. I was just so excited that he’d let me do “Captain America”! I was paralyzed with fear, but excited, and I was feeling so lucky to get the chance that I never even questioned it. I was just thinking that it foretold a good period of steady work; that’s all I cared about.

An Abel Inker?

Romita inked by Abel?

Could be. From Captain America #76. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

tied up on a chair, with some villain approaching her with his gun, and the hero comes crashing through the window, or something, to save her.

I did maybe two or three Western covers for this guy, and he paid me $45 a cover, more than anyone else paid at the time, so I couldn’t stop doing them. I don’t remember that guy’s name.

But I know he was a nebbish.

RT: It turned out not to last very long. But I can see where it looked like the coming thing, because by the time those books were cancelled, there’d been five different comics titles starring the “Big Three,” counting the two anthologies. Young Men had even gone from bimonthly to monthly!

ROMITA: I think I inked all the Captain America stories until Jack Abel inked the three stories in the last issue [#78]. I think we did something with a Korean prison camp, too.

RT: Getting back to that mid-’50s super-hero revival: When I showed you the splash for the first “Captain America” story in it [Young Men #24], you said it was by Mort Lawrence, though you drew the rest of the story. You thought he might’ve been slated to be the original artist.

RT: You actually drew two POW-camp stories—one in Cap #76—and another in #77, which you signed. The one in #76—with the charming title, “Come to the Commies!”—is not signed. Did you sign stories when someone else inked them?

ROMITA: I think he started the story and Stan stopped him, for some reason. When I came in, the splash was done and it was signed “Mort Lawrence.” Stan asked me to do the rest of the story. I’m not sure if there were any panels underneath the splash or not.

RT: The two other panels on that page in the printed book are by you. In fact, the only “Captain America” work in 1953-54 that wasn’t by you was that first splash—one story totally drawn (and signed) by Lawrence— and I presume the first of the three covers of the Captain America title—#76, which has that thin-line approach for backgrounds we were discussing—and there’s a cartoony smile on Cap’s face.

ROMITA: Stan probably had somebody touch it up. Whoever was out in his waiting room,

ROMITA: No.

Let A Smile Be Your... Shield Les Daniels’ praiseworthy 1991 tome Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics lists the cover artist of C.A. #76 as Syd Shores, but we’ve still got our doubts. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: Then you must have inked all of the last issue, because all three “Cap” stories in #78 are signed by you! Besides the two stories Lawrence worked on, there are only four “Cap” stories out of the 16 in that whole revival that aren’t signed by you: the first and last stories in Captain America #76—the lead story in #77—and the

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 29

one in Young Men #27. All four of those look like your art, though, even the splashes.

ROMITA: Maybe somebody else fixed them up. I remember vaguely that I was hurt that Stan rejected one of my splashes.

RT: Now that you mention it, the two unsigned stories in Cap #76—“The Betrayers!” and “Come to the Commies!”—do look as if they could have been inked by Jack Abel. They have a thinner, less bold and thick line than you were using then.

ROMITA: I remember the one with the prison camp, because the reference I had for the Communist uniforms was like a pinstripe or cross-stitch, like a pinstripe suit—and Jack did a very fine line on it, finer than I would have, very delicate, and I was conscious of it.

When Comics Went To The Dogs Contrary to John’s memory, the cover of Western Kid #1 (Dec. 1954) is definitely his work. Joe Maneely did the next six! At right is one of the Gil Kane Rex covers John used for inspiration. Thanks to Frank Motler & James Cassara. [Western Kid ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Rex ©2007 DC Comics.]

RT: I don’t expect you to have total recall, but I’m determined to learn everything I can about those 1950s issues. If not you, then who else am I gonna ask? Stan?

Like he says, he does good to remember what he did last week! We don’t even know who wrote the “Cap” stories, though you’ve said you think Stan wrote some of them.

Not to start you feeling like a failure again, but do you have any theory as to why, even though Cap was the most popular of Timely’s “Big Three” back in the ’40s, he got less play than the other two in the ’50s?

Young Men #24 has a 9-page “Torch” and an 8-page “Sub-Mariner”—but only a 6-page “Captain America,” tucked in between them. And the division in the other six anthology issues was 8-7-8, with “Cap” always a page shorter than the other two. Also, the Torch was cover-featured on all seven anthology issues—and there wound up being fewer stories of Cap than of the Torch, let alone Sub-Mariner with his TV option.

ROMITA: I have no idea. Maybe Mort Lawrence had done a whole issue and Stan decided not to print it. Dick Ayers was working steadily for Stan at that time, and maybe he was turning out more stories than me. I know

A Real Dog-And-Pony Show Here’s one of those scrumptious “man-dog-horse” fights John remembers from Western Kid in the 1950s: the Kid grabs one owlhoot… the dog Whirlwind tackles another… while the Kid’s horse Lightning leads a whole herd against the rest of the bad guys. You can’t write or draw a better Western scene than a bunch of outlaws with their hands raised, facing a bunch of stallions! Repro’d from an Australian reprint, courtesy of Michael Baulderstone. See the entire story in Marvel Visionaries: John Romita Sr. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

30 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

that Dick was always his first choice, or sometimes the only guy available to him when he wanted to get work done.

RT: Yeah, but Dick only began drawing “Torch” stories four months after they started. Russ Heath, of all people, drew the first one, in Young Men #24; then Carl Burgos did them in #25-28. Ayers’ first work was in Human Torch #36—where virtually every one of his Torch figures had a Burgos Torch pasted over it! Makes me wonder why Burgos, who created the character, didn’t just do all the “Torch” stories.

ROMITA: Maybe he was too busy. He was on staff, working 9-to-5 in the office. And, in fact, he did do cover sketches. I don’t know if I told you, but he did cover sketches for Captain America. In fact, Burgos may have had something to do with that first Captain America cover [#76] whose artist you couldn’t identify.

RT: Yeah, it does have a little of the look of Burgos’ work. Maybe even Maneely’s.

ROMITA: On the Electro cover [Captain America #78], I distinctly remember that Burgos gave me a sketch. I don’t remember if I changed it or not, but he was giving me cover sketches for about a year. I believe the one with the octopus is the only cover sketch I did. Burgos was sort of like a cover editor.

RT: He’d do the sketch, but you’d do your own drawing, right? You weren’t working over his layout?

Go Western, Young Man! John Romita’s serves up horse operas, two decades apart.

(Left:) Splash page of a “Kid Colt Outlaw” shoot-out from Wild Western #24 (Oct. 1952). Repro’d from a black&-white English or Australian reprint.

(Above:) John’s new cover for Western Kid #1 (Dec. 1971) paved the way for an issue full of 1950s reprints inside, of what JR felt was perhaps the most generic cowboy hero ever. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, with thanks to Bob Bailey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 31

“Gun-Shy!” John feels that “the best stuff I ever inked” was some of the “generic Westerns” he did—but he thought they were “lost forever.” Not quite! Here, courtesy from an Australian b&w reprint, with thanks to Shane Foley, is a Romita story from Frontier Western #7 (Feb. 1957). As it turns out, John confirmed that this is the very tale, above all, that he was thinking of! “It remains,” he says, “one of my fondest memories.” The Grand Comic-Book Database credits the script to Stan Lee, though, since there’s no byline for him, that is more problematical. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: No. They were very rough sketches, on bond paper, not full-sized pencils. The one I did from scratch [#77], I scaled up.

RT: Credits were less common in comics in that period, after the Siegel-Shuster DC lawsuit in the late ’40s. Was signing your covers your idea, or did Stan suggest it?

ROMITA: Well, he never objected to it. If you remember, for a while, all the Westerns were signed by Stan Lee and not necessarily by the artist. It was probably the artist’s choice. But over at DC, I was given the impression—it was mostly subliminal and sort-of unsaid—that they considered it egotistical to sign your artwork.

RT: God forbid. [laughs] ROMITA: Really! They thought you ought to be a pro and not go putting your name all over everything. It worked out okay. This way nobody could blame you if you did bad stuff. For the whole eight years I worked for DC, I don’t think I signed any of my romance work.

RT: I was devastated when those Timely ’50s heroes were discontinued because, except for the stories being too short, I just loved them. Why did Timely always cram in four stories—for example, three “Cap” stories of six pages each, plus one five-page “Torch” filler? DC in that period would have three 8-pagers in, say, Superman and Batman.

32 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

ROMITA: Timely used to do 3-to-5-page fillers in the Westerns, too.

I think Stan’s system was to get a lot of stuff in inventory, so he could juggle. If they sold extra ad pages, he could use a 3-pager instead of a 4-pager. I think what Stan had up his sleeve was, if the full books didn’t last, he could use any inventory he had in an anthology book.

RT: If so, it didn’t work. All the hero books except Sub-Mariner were cancelled at almost exactly the same time. And the remaining seven issues of Sub-Mariner didn’t have any “Cap” or “Torch” stories—just sea-related fillers. Anyway, your art kept getting better throughout the revival. Your Chinatown story in Captain America #77 had real mood, with lots of black shadows and a lot of the feel of Caniff.

ROMITA: Oh, it was definitely Caniff! I started trying to do Kirby, and I wound up with Caniff! [laughs] And I’ll tell you, when I was doing brushwork, I was at my best. Whenever I tried to do penwork like Jack Abel, I had trouble.

The best stuff I ever inked—it’s lost forever; I can’t find any copies of it—are my Western things. Not The Western Kid, but the earlier years, when I was doing generic Westerns. I did some with a number five brush, because I had heard that Tuska used a number five brush!

It’s a big watercolor brush for big bold lines, and I did a 7-page Western story over a weekend for Stan. It was a pencil-and-ink job, seven pages, which, for me, was like lightning speed. I got it on a

time, had a “Wonder Horse” named Tony. He was a trick horse who would bow down; he would pick up notes and stuff them in his pocket or take notes out of his pocket and give them to a girl, things like that. Champion, of course, was supposed to be the most intelligent horse. Trigger became a star, too.

RT: He and Champion even had their own comics for a while! [laughs] ROMITA: The Westerns were fun, even though they were a lot of work. I learned how to draw horses. I did one “Western Kid” story I was very proud of. His horse Lightning saved a herd of horses that was being turned into a maniac outlaw herd on the open range. Some white stallion was doing some damage, and Lightning got out and handled the whole case himself. I did nothing but horses for five or six pages there. Lightning was a black horse. If he had been a white horse, it would’ve saved a lot of work. [laughs] I had a lot of black and feathering to do on that.

And the dog—you want to know something? The dog in Western Kid is almost invariably swiped from Rex the Wonder Dog. I had

You’ve Either Got Or You Haven’t Got Style The story in Suspense #20 (July 1952), from which these two pages are taken, is a primo example of John’s “photographic” style that had other Timely artists upset with him. They felt that if they tried to match that style, line for line, they’d starve to death. Fortunately for them, John soon realized the same thing! Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Friday, I went home, I started roughing it in, I penciled it on Saturday and inked it on Sunday and brought it in on Monday, much to my own surprise. But I did the best job I ever did inking because I was in a hurry. I don’t know if I signed it or not. It was one of those things where there was a bully in town. [NOTE: See preceding page. — Roy.] RT: I liked your Western Kid. Did you draw that from the beginning?

ROMITA: Yeah. Maneely created his outfit, because he did the first cover. He had this bright yellow shirt, with some kind of floral patterns on the pockets. It was probably supposed to be white, but Stan made it yellow because he didn’t like the blankness of it.

RT: How did you like having to draw not only a horse, but a dog, too, in every issue?

ROMITA: It became a nightmare. Invariably, whenever there was a battle scene, Stan would write that the dog would attack one villain, the horse would rear up and strike two other villains, and The Western Kid had to shoot two other guys down, or at least shoot the guns out of their hands. Every time I had them in action, I had the three heroes and four or five villains, so every battle scene in the street or in a bar turned out to be a damn epic! And I used to complain to Stan.

RT: I guess the inspiration for the dog was Roy Rogers’ Bullet.

ROMITA: Oh, definitely. Roy Rogers had a German Shepherd, I think. And, of course, he, The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry—they all had celebrity horses. And Tom Mix, before your time, before my

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 33

half a dozen issues of Rex by Gil Kane in front of me every time I had to do that dog! I used Gil’s work for animating him. Gil had this great ability to twist his body— RT: He was one of the best guys around for drawing animals in action. So how did things go bad for you at Timely?

ROMITA: Around 1957 was when Stan and I were at our lowest ebb in our relationship. In the last year, he cut my rate every time I turned in a story.

He was not even talking to me then.

He was embarrassed, because he had given me raises for two years every time I went in, and then he took it all away. I went from $44 a page to $24 a page in a year.

RT: As Gil was fond of saying, “Comics giveth and comics taketh away.”

beautiful brown hair, I forget her name but she was adorable—and she says, “John, I have to tell you that Stan says to stop work on the Western book because we’re going to cut down on a lot of titles.”

I said to her, “Well, I spent three days on it. I’d like to get $100 for the work, to tide me over.” She said, “Okay, I’ll mention it to Stan.” I never heard another word about the money, and I told Virginia, “If Stan Lee ever calls, tell him to go to hell.” [laughs] And that was the last work I did for him until 1965.

RT: Stan told me that Goodman would give him the word to fire everybody, and then Goodman would go off to Florida and play golf. [laughs]

ROMITA: Oh, I understand Stan’s pain, because I went through that, too, towards the end of working at The Man & The Jazzy One ROMITA: Virginia kept saying, “Well, Marvel in the ’90s, and it was no fun.

We guess John never did tell Stan Lee to go to hell! how long are you going to take the I remember I had just fought for and A late-’70s publicity photo, courtesy of JR. cuts until you go somewhere else?” gotten a raise for one guy in the And I told her, “I’ll hang on, I’ll hang on.” Then, when it came time spring—and then in the summer we had to let him go. And I’m telling that he ran out of money and had to shut down, or cut down to the him, “Listen, it’s got nothing to do with your work. They’re just bone, I had done two or three days’ work, ruling up the pages, cutting down everybody here.” But it was mortifying to have to do lettering the balloons, and blocking in the figures on a story—and that. I had to watch him get this incredulous look on his face, saying, here comes a call from his assistant—she had beautiful bangs, “Are you kidding me?” But, yes, that’s how the Timely thing ended,

Did They Get A Discount?

Stan Lee may have talked John out of going into advertising, but years later he drew plenty of commercial art for Marvel—including this piece for Slurpee displays at 7-11 stores. Repro’d from original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

34 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

bulk of my work.” She said, “We’ll try to get you more work.”

But I said, “I have to decide now because I can’t gamble. If you can’t give me the work Stan is giving me, then I’ll be out.” And then, six months later, he let me go through his secretary.

and I wound up going to DC. RT: Hadn’t you done a little work for DC during that last year before Timely collapsed?

ROMITA: Yeah. I did a couple of romance stories for them, trying to supplement my income; but it was too much hard work, because I was not fast enough to do two stories at once. So that would always cut into how much I did for Stan. Stan had me in once and said, “I notice you’ve been doing some romance stuff for DC.” I said, “Yeah, to get some extra money.” And he said, “Well, I gotta tell you, you know you’re on my ‘A’ list, meaning if I got two scripts, you’re gonna get one of them. But I’m going to have to take you off my ‘A’ list if you’re going to do work for DC.”

I was so mad, partly because he had kept me from making extra money. Stan didn’t know that I couldn’t really earn any extra money—[laughs]—although he had gotten an idea by then that I was pretty slow. But that really tore me up, because I was thinking, “Gee, I’ll never get into DC again.” And a little later I walked in there and they welcomed me with open arms and I went from $24 a page to $35-$38 a page.

RT: If they’d made that offer before, you’d probably have been there a year earlier.

So I called up Zena Brody, the romance editor at DC—she was a nice girl and a pretty good editor, too—and told her I couldn’t do any more for her, and she was very upset. She said, “Gee, I was counting on you.” She was talking about doing a steady series with me. I told her, “I’m sorry, but Stan Lee is giving me the

ROMITA: No, because I was making over $40 a page at Timely before the cuts started. It’s funny, too, because when I lost the work from Stan, Virginia had run right out and got a job!

Love That Romita!

John waltzed his way through two companies and three decades, becoming one of the best romance artists around. (Clockwise from above left:) My Own Romance #40 (Oct. 1954); with thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Young Love #51 (Sept.-Oct. 1965)—though here he’s inked by another artist.

With thanks to John Wells. [©2007 DC Comics.]

The cover of My Love #35 (July 1975), from a period when John would again be called on to draw in that genre—only, this time, it would be in between working on the likes of The Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four! Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 35

route is not enough money,” so she got a job.

And then a week after that, I brought in a bigger check than I had ever got at Stan’s!

Virginia had taken a job to fill in for vacationers, and she felt embarrassed to leave them in the lurch. So she stayed for most of the summer, and it killed her because it was a porkrendering place. They would reduce fat to chemicals. From what I hear—I have no sense of smell—it was the worst smell in the world. And she had to work in that building for two months, and I don’t think she ever got over it. [laughs] RT: When you went back to DC, was Zena Brody still there?

ROMITA: I believe she was just leaving, but she recommended me highly, so I worked for this other, very sweet girl who had a severe limp.

And then a very good person took over, Phyllis Reed. She and I worked together very well for years. She used me as her main artist. I would work out the cover ideas out with her, and she’d have the writers base the scripts on our covers.

And then I would get the story that fit the cover.

They’d use the cover as the splash on one story, which was usually the last story in the book. That saved them the cost of a page, so the cover cost the same as one of the pages. You’d get a 15-page job and only get 14 pages of artwork.

RT: Several Timely people like Colan and others went over to DC after the ’57 collapse.

“I Now Pronounce You—Pencil Layouts” JR’s rough pencils for a Marvel Age cover (we think) depicting the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Fantastic. At one time or another, John drew each of these mostly-Kirby-designed heroes for Marvel—but he can’t help wondering how he’d have fared on The New Gods or Mr. Miracle!

Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: Was it you or she who once had a route delivering newspapers?

ROMITA: I did that in ’56, but that was mostly for exercise. I was getting fat. I almost got a job on the docks. Some longshoreman friends were going to get me a longshoreman union card, and I figured I could work 2-3 days a week and get all the exercise I needed and make some extra money.

RT: You’d have had to watch out for all those Communist octopuses!

ROMITA: More that that: I’d have had to watch out for gang bosses that would have you beaten up if you tried to get work. But then I saw this newspaper route for sale—$4000 to deliver 300 papers a day—so I borrowed the money and I got the route. I used to get up at three in the morning and deliver papers until seven, then take a nap and get up again around ten or eleven and start working on comics.

That was like a year and a half before Stan cut me off. Even though it was a drag to get up seven days a week and deliver papers, it kept us solvent for a while. But when Timely folded, Virginia said, “The paper

36 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

ROMITA: Jack Abel was there, too. I met Frank Giacoia doing romances. I met Sy Barry. I worked with Sekowsky but I never met him; I inked a couple of his romance stories—very educational. Working on Sekowsky’s strong pencils was a great boon to me; I learned how to do a lot of things. There was Werner Roth, who later did X-Men.

I inked Arthur Peddy a few times. The only problem with him was, I had to shorten all the arms. He had the habit of making people’s upper arms so long and gorilla-like they would reach their lap. I never asked the editor; I just corrected them. I couldn’t stand them. Sort of like Rob Liefeld, back in the ’90s. I had to shorten the legs and arms on everything he did.

I inked almost as much as I penciled, for a while; but maybe that was before I left Stan. When Phyllis Reed came, I did all pencils and very little inking.

RT: Was there anyone besides Stan counted as an editor at Timely in the late ’40s or early ’50s? Don Rico seems to have functioned as one, earlier—at least Gil told me he handed out assignments— Vince Fago was editor-in-chief while Stan was in the Army—and Dorothy Woolfolk, or Roubicek, was there briefly in the mid-’40s.

But none of them was editing at Timely by ’49.

ROMITA: Don Rico wasn’t doing drawings then; I only knew him as a name on a script. Vince Fago—I remember the name, but I never dealt with anybody at Marvel except Stan until you took over. The only other editors I worked for were the romance editors at DC, and

Sol Cohen at Avon.

RT: You did a fair amount of horror and crime at Timely in the ’50s, didn’t you?

ROMITA: I have two pages from a racetrack gangster story I did in 1949. The Marvel book [The Art of John Romita] reproduces a gangster splash with an old 1920s car and machine-gun fire. Biro did period pieces, and so did Stan, from time to time. I did a story of the Revolutionary War, which is one of my pet stories of all time.

Stan wrote a very interesting 10-page story dealing with a family in Boston that was torn apart by the Revolutionary War. Half the family was Tory, and half the family was Patriot. That’s one of my stories that I use to show people what writers do to artists! I should have saved it.

The script called for a splash showing a street in Boston, and outside this house there was a balcony above the entrance. And on the balcony was the father of the family, and four sons and, I think, a daughter. The family was looking at the Battle of Bunker Hill in the background—so I had to show Bunker Hill and the other hill [Breed’s Hill], with gunfire and smoke from one of the M.C. Wyeth illustrations. Oh yes, and there was a division of Redcoats marching down the street! [laughs] So there’s a thousand soldiers, this family, and other people looking out the windows and

Ditko Days In 1965 John was surprised to learn Spider-Man was Marvel’s second-bestselling title. “I apologized to Ditko years later,” he says. Repro’d from photocopies of the original art, from Amazing Spider-Man #12 (1963). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

looking, in the distance, at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

And I called up Stan and I said, “How in the hell do you expect me to get all this into one drawing?” I think he even had a panel at the bottom of the page, too; it wasn’t even a full-page. It took me forever; it took me two days just to get reference. I should have used the Jack Keller system—have a lot of smoke obscuring things.

The things of mine Stan liked best were the horror stories. I remember one horror story I did; in the last panel I had the villain or somebody grasping a severed head, holding it up in triumph. I asked Stan, “Are you sure we can get away with this?” He said, “Oh, yeah. As long as it’s not red blood.” [laughs] RT: The Bill Gaines approach. How did you feel about doing horror stories?

ROMITA: I didn’t like them, although I turned out to be good at them. I don’t like horror stories. I still, to this day, don’t understand the attraction of Dracula movies. It was always a mystery to me that EC was so famous for their horror stuff. I hated them and I hated, even worse, blood and slashing knives. I just had to make a living.

RT: Other people, like Bill Everett, seemed to really like it.

ROMITA: He really did. He did some quality mood stuff. I had to inject as much mood as I could, like bottom lighting and gristle and stubbled beards and clenching hands. I put in as much black as I could to try to hide what I was doing. [laughs] RT: At least Stan never had this feeling that Charlie Biro had— that blacks were “cheating,” and that he wanted to see everything.

A Cast Of Thousands Dr. Michael J. Vassallo sent us this scan of the infamous (at least to John Romita!) splash page of the “Bunker Hill” story from Battlefront #10 (March 1953). [©2007 Marvel Characters.”]

ROMITA: That was one of his trademarks—that everything was High Noon in a Charlie Biro story. There were a lot of blacks in Stan’s mystery stories.

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 37

RT: In ’57, American News had failed and Timely had collapsed, so you’d gone to work for DC. But by 1965 that phase of your career was all over, right?

ROMITA: I ran out of work at DC. Phyllis Reed must have quit before I left, because my last year or so I worked for another editor.

He may have been let go almost at the same time that I left. He wanted kickbacks. He used to leave gift certificates on his desk for you to sign. [laughs] It was really blatant.

RT: When you went to work for DC in the late ’50s, did you do anything but romance?

ROMITA: I never drew anything else for them. In fact, it used to hurt me. Although I never spoke to the other editors—I think I said hello to Julie Schwartz once—I was hoping I would bump into them and they’d ask me to talk to them about some work. I was too shy, and much too lacking in confidence, to stay around and join anybody for lunch.

Before I came over to Marvel, Mike [Esposito] told me that DC wasn’t too happy with the finished faces he and Ross [Andru] were doing on Wonder Woman, so they were talking about me ghosting Wonder Woman’s face. But it never came to anything.

RT: Each DC editor had his own stable, and they didn’t poach on each other’s preserve, nor did they want an artist getting off the reservation. They were pretty territorial.

ROMITA: It was worse than that. Frank Giacoia used to get this: If you were unfortunate enough to be doing stories for two of them at the same time, each of them would watch you like a hawk. And no matter whose story you turned in second, you were in trouble; you’d lose that book as an assignment. I thought to myself, “Gee, I’d just as soon not work for guys who were that bloodthirsty.” I had been used to Stan, who was very benign and benevolent. And these guys, I heard, were cutthroats, and, boy, you better not cross them or you’ll never get work again.

RT: You had done lots of adventure comics and some Captain America comics that were

better than most of what DC was turning out at the time. Yet, when they started Doom Patrol in ’63, they gave it to Bruno Premiani.

Good as he was, he was more of a romance artist than a superhero artist.

ROMITA: Right, he was more like an illustrator. It hurt, because in my daydreams one of those editors would say to me, “How would you like to do Batman,” or something, “as a filler?”

I was itching for it, but I didn’t have the confidence to go in and ask anybody. It was my fault.

I’ve kidded Julie Schwartz many times: “You guys let me go. You never paid attention to me, and then a week later you offered me Metamorpho, but by then I had a handshake deal with Stan to do Daredevil.” By then I had inked one Avengers story and gotten the Daredevil assignment, so it was probably two weeks when [DC Editor] George Kashdan called me and said, “I heard you weren’t doing any work for us. I was on vacation. If I’d known you were without work, I would have offered you this book. Can you do it?

It’s yours if you want it.”

RT: Metamorpho?

ROMITA: Ramona Fradon had just left it. And he said, “Boy, I’d love for you to do Metamorpho.” And in my mind, aside from the fact that I had a handshake deal with Stan, Metamorpho was not a book I wanted to work on, even though I think I could have done a good job on it. The only thing that could have made me go back on my word to Stan was if they had offered me a major title—even a second-line character, not Superman or Batman—just a title that was recognizable. I was just too damned straight-arrow to do it, under those circumstances. Once I’d told Stan I would do Daredevil, I stuck to the deal as though I had signed a contract. So I don’t know if that was trying to save their ass to the bosses—“How did you let him go?” and all that stuff—but it took them about two weeks to notice I was even gone.

RT: I wonder if they’d noticed that, months earlier, Gene Colan had started drawing “Sub-Mariner” for Marvel.

But, of course, he did it as “Adam Austin.”

Roads Not Taken Batman, yes! But Metamorpho didn’t ring Jazzy Johnny’s chimes. He’d have been a perfect successor to Ramona Fradon on the Element Man—but Stan was far happier to see him return to Marvel in July of ’65! Batman convention sketch courtesy of Mike Burkey (and dig JR’s imitation Bob Kane signature!)—and Ramona’s cover for Metamorpho #3 (Dec. 1965), seen at top right. [Batman and Metamorpho TM & ©2007 DC Comics.]

38 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

ROMITA: He used the phony name because he was still drawing romances for DC. Somebody suggested I might use a phony name at Marvel—it must’ve been

European television stuff and doing storyboards for them. He was looking for an artist to ghost some of Flash Gordon, so he could do more writing. I sent him some love stories as samples, and he wrote back that he liked them very much and that as soon as he got organized and could make a transition, I would help him out.

Later he called me up and said, “I’m going to send you a script on Monday.” The day he was going to do it, the Journal-American [NYC newspaper] went on strike, and they could not pay him for Flash Gordon until the strike was settled. It went on for three or four weeks, maybe more. And he called me up from Europe and said he had to hold off because he wasn’t getting enough money to pay an artist to help him out.

RT: He wouldn’t have been able to keep water in his moat. [laughs] ROMITA: He probably could have afforded it. He just didn’t want to do it, because he didn’t know how long the strike would last. That cost me the Flash Gordon try-out.

I had a close call with Milton Caniff in the ’70s, too. He asked me to do Steve Canyon—I’d been recommended by Shel Dorf—and I sent a couple of Sunday samples, and he told me, “As soon as I get organized,” etc. And then he had an emergency operation. He was in the hospital, and he had already assigned some stuff on an emergency basis.

Pretty Scary, Huh, Kids?

Now it can be told! John’s first Marvel task was to ink Kirby’s Avengers #23 cover the way it looks above, as (eventually) seen in Marvel Masterworks, Vol. 27 (1993). However, in 1965 the Comics Code Authority decided Kang’s right hand looked a bit too, well, frightening ’way up there in the middle of the air, so it had to be moved down and to the left, as per the printed cover at right. See how the Code saved you from all those nightmares? [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

when I was doing work for both companies—and I wrote out “John Victor,” for my two boys. Then I said, “This is crazy.

Who am I kidding? Everybody’s going to know I’m doing it, so why use a phony name?” Remember “Gary Michaels”?

That was Jack Abel.

RT: You had a run of great luck with newspaper strips there, didn’t you?

ROMITA: Yeah. Actually, Virginia was rooting against it. She figured I’d become a clone of Caniff. And I also

RT: Gil Kane was “Scott Edward,” and Werner Roth was “Jay Gavin,” both named for their kids. “Mickey Demeo” was Mike Esposito, and Frank Giacoia was “Frankie Ray.” Stan and I would chuckle about how DC had had all these great hero artists buried in their romance department. It wasn’t that DC was disorganized. It’s more like they were too organized to utilize their artists well.

ROMITA: Also, I think they didn’t want to take on new artists. If they had enough good artists, they weren’t willing to break up their routine just to break in an artist who might be better down the line. I don’t think I impressed them enough in the romance.

But I did have a shot, back in the ’50s, at doing Flash Gordon for Dan Barry. Sy Barry and I had worked on a romance story together, and we became friends. He recommended me to his brother. Dan Barry sent me a letter from Austria. He was living in a castle there, I heard, and writing

A Titanic Team That Never Was John, Julius Schwartz, and Murphy Anderson at the 1995 Chicago ComiCon. So how come these three guys never got together during the 7-8 years John was at DC? Photo courtesy of John Romita.

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 39

me, and I think I can make it worth your while. It would be a terrific idea.” And I said, “You know, I got to think it over, Jack.”

I told Virginia, and she almost had a heart attack. She said, “First of all, if you go with Jack, you’re going to be a Jack Kirby clone.”

And I said, “Well, I don’t know how. I’m not going to be working on his artwork. He’s going to be writing and I’m going to be penciling”—although he might have broken them down for me. But he could break down a hundred stories for me and it wouldn’t affect me, because he didn’t do details on his breakdowns. He did silhouettes and rough scribbles. She said, “No, you’re going to end up working for Kirby. Your personality will be buried and nobody will know anything about you.” I couldn’t argue with it, but I was tempted.

I’ll never quite forgive myself for not giving that a try, notwithstanding Virginia’s protests, because there’s no telling whether I could have made a difference on Mister Miracle. He might not have gotten so exhausted on the whole thing.

RT: You’d also have been in line to be an editor, since Carmine was hiring artisteditors by then. We never know what might’ve happened on the road not taken.

In the very early ’70s, when Stan was having trouble with [Martin] Goodman near the end, he met with DC about going over there. I didn’t learn about it till later. He told me, “If I’d gone to DC, I’d have taken you with me.” Of course, I might’ve decided to stay at Marvel and become editor-in-chief a year or so early. Still, I’d probably have gone with him; I felt a great loyalty to Stan. Besides, DC had all these heroes I liked! Sometimes I even wonder—what if Mort Weisinger hadn’t been so impossible and I’d stayed at DC in ’65 instead of going to Marvel?

ROMITA: Imagine, you could have wound up editor-inchief of DC! Just like I often wonder what would have happened if I had accepted Kirby’s offer. It’s a wild gap in my life, and I would love to have seen how it would have worked out.

RT: You never have done any work for DC since ’65, have you?

ROMITA: No, I never have.

Here Comes Romita... Man Without Peer John’s hand-lettered comments on this historic pencil drawing say it all!

Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

had a close call with Kirby in the ’70s, of course....

Just a day or two after Kirby left Marvel, he called me up and said, “John, here’s the story—you know I’m going to DC.” I said, “Yeah.”

And he said, “Here’s what I’d like you to do: I would like you to come over with me and help me. What I want to do is, I want to write more than I draw.” In other words, he envisioned writing a line of books, like Stan, and he wanted to get me to draw some of his main characters. I might have worked on New Gods or Mister Miracle... probably Mr. Miracle. He said he’d love to have me do the pencils for his stuff, and we could set up some kind of a stable. He said, “I got some great inkers ready to work on your stuff. It would be great for

40 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

RT: Bob Kanigher edited mostly war stuff. Did you do any work for him?

ROMITA: I drew some of his romance stories. Phyllis Reed gave me her two main titles, Young Love and Young Romance. She had steady soap opera series in both books: “The Diary of a Nurse,” and another one about an airline stewardess. So I had steady characters—a brunette airline stewardess and a blonde nurse. The blonde nurse was based on Kathy Tucker from Terry and the Pirates. [laughs] I couldn’t help that.

All the captions were done longhand, as if out of the nurse’s diary.

I did the longhand, and Ira Schnapp, the letterer, would follow my lettering on it. I used to letter every word in pencil and outline every caption and every balloon. In fact, after a while, I was in such a hurry that I used to outline the balloons in ink and Ira would fit the copy

in an elevator going down and he said to me, “I like your stuff. The stories are really coming out good.” I said, “Gee, I’m glad it doesn’t bother you that I make changes.” And his eyes almost popped out of his head. I said, “You know, sometimes I separate your balloons and move a balloon from one panel to the next, or I put in an extra narrow balloon as a transition panel when I think it needs it. Sometimes I break up your captions into two different panels.” [laughs] Well, he almost had a heart attack, and before I got to the ground floor, he destroyed me! He said, “Who the hell do you think you are, you young punk? You’re changing my scripts? Where do you come off doing that?” I said, “You just told me you liked the stuff.”

I guess he didn’t read the finished stories through too carefully. He just thumbed through them. I got such a kick out of that in retrospect, but while it happened, I thought, “Oh, sh*t. There goes my career.” He could have killed me. He could have had my head if he wanted. So I give him credit that he didn’t. Maybe he looked over the stories and realized that I’d improved them, because a lot of times he left no transition time in between panels, so I would have somebody walking away, instead of, from one panel to the next, they’re just gone.

RT: Didn’t Stan call you a time or two about work during that period?

ROMITA: He called me in ’63 and ’64 and said, “We’re starting to move.”

A Pair Of Pencil Pushers Steve Ditko’s rough pencils (above) for a page from Amazing SpiderMan #38 (July 1966)—and John Romita’s far tighter pencils (right) for issue #51 (Aug. 1967). In both cases the penciler inked the stories, but John’s could more easily have been inked by another artist. JR pencils courtesy of John Romita. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

over my pencil copy inside the balloons. So I would put pointers on balloons and caption outlines in the story and then ink them, and he would letter them after I had finished the inking. I did those two series, and Kanigher wrote both of them.

I didn’t work for him; he was not my editor. Phyllis Reed was, and she shielded me. But every once in a while he and I would meet in the corridor. I didn’t want to work for him because I had seen him berate Gene Colan in the bullpen once. He just had laid him out. He said, “Your women are too fat; they don’t have long enough legs. What the hell kind of drawing is this?” And Colan was enraged. I think he wanted to kill him. Kanigher was a very hard guy to work with, so I wasn’t interested in working for him, so I was glad I never got work from him.

He was a good writer, but he used to ask for the damnedest things! I remember one episode about a romance at a ski resort. He had this scene where the two of them are standing on skis at the top of a hill and they’re kissing. I called him up and said, “Gee, I’m going to have a hard time with this, because how the hell do I have them look like they’re not going to fall over?” He had actually written in the script: “I know this is going to be hard to do but it can be done. I’ve done it.” [laughs] Like he’s trying to brag to me.

Towards the end of my stay at DC, Kanigher and I were

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 41

And I knew that they’d started to sell, because DC used to have conferences about, why is Stan Lee selling? I was at one of them—I guess because I had been there for eight years. They had Stan’s covers up, and they put some DC covers up next to them. They were trying to decide what the hell made Stan’s books sell. They said, “Stan Lee’s covers look crude. Look at those big, ugly blurbs”—with the big, jagged edges Artie Simek used to do.

RT: You remember in ’66, when they made Andru and Esposito do a sort of campy copy of H.G. Peter’s work on Wonder Woman? I asked Mike [Esposito] about it at a poker game at Phil Seuling’s, and he said it was because the DC editors were convinced that the secret of Marvel was bad drawing.

ROMITA: That’s what I remember them saying: “Maybe the stuff is like rock’n’roll, you know? It makes kids feel like they can be in that world,” that kind of stuff. It was hysterical, the way they were talking.

Most of them said, “Ahh, it’s a fad. It will pass. Hey, what are you trying to find good? It’s garbage.”

RT: But you knew that one of the secrets was Jack Kirby.

ROMITA: DC had let Kirby go because he wasn’t disciplined enough. They wanted neat, clean stuff, and Jack was a wild man.

He told me he almost killed an editor once because the guy told him he didn’t show the shoelaces on a Cavalry man’s boots! And Jack almost went ballistic. “What the hell does anybody care about shoes?” [laughs] And another editor told him he had an Indian get on a horse from the wrong side. Kirby said, “You’re out of your mind. You think the kids care about that?” You know, he would never put Cavalry buttons on the right way. He would rather invent a new uniform.

RT: So Stan would offer you work, but I guess the money was less?

ROMITA: He would say, “John, we’re really starting to roll. It would be great if you could come back.” And I’d say, “Stan, I’m making $45 a page. What are you paying?” He’d say, “Twenty-five a page.” And I’d say, “How can I take a $20 a page cut?” “Well,” he says, “maybe we can make it up to you.” I said, “Stan, I can’t give this up as long as I’ve got it, you know.” He called me three or four times, and I just

42 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

Green Grow The Goblins When John began drawing Spider-Man with issue #39 (Aug. 1966), he started right out with The Green Goblin. This 1970s convention pencil sketch is courtesy of—you guessed it—Mike Burkey.

[Green Goblin TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

kept telling him no. But I didn’t tell him to go to hell, like I’d threatened. [laughs] RT: Did you feel a secret glee that you were able to say no, after that other period?

ROMITA: Actually, I felt vindicated. It helped that DC had wanted me, too, and that I was making more money there. Besides, I didn’t

Peter Meets MJ Face It, Tiger... You’ve Seen These Panels Before!

Now here’s a girl who knew how to make an entrance! At left, the final two panels of Amazing Spider-Man #42 (Nov. 1966)—and below, John’s penciled and inked versions of 1990s “card art” showing that same scene.

Card art courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 43

The Many Faces Of MJ (Above:) One of the earliest style guides of Mary Jane from the 1960s, drawn by Marie Severin and John Romita—and (at right) 1980s penciled convention sketch of MJ as “Spider-Woman.” Art courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

trust Stan at that stage. I thought he would go up and down like a roller coaster. Frankly, I wanted to stay at DC, and I wished I could do a hero strip, even a Western like “Johnny Thunder.” I was proud to tell people I was at DC. I felt like DC was the Cadillac of the industry. I bought their line that Marvel was crude-looking. I never read any of Stan’s stories.

I just saw the covers.

I never read one Spider-Man book or even knew it existed until Stan came in with a pile of them and said, “How would you like to try Spider-Man?” The only thing I knew they were doing was Fantastic Four. When he showed me Spider-Man, I said, “You know, this looks funny. This looks like a teenaged Clark Kent.” I apologized to Ditko years later. I was surprised to hear it was a good-selling book!

RT: Why did the work run out for you and others at DC?

But Let’s Not Forget Gwen!

Collector Mike Burkey says this drawing was originally done for artist Don Simpson. [Spider-Man & the late Gwen Stacy TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

44 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

ROMITA: Some big-shot up there found a stack of inventory stories and art in the closet—stuff they had paid for, but never used—and he said, “Why the hell are we paying thousands of dollars every month for new stuff when we got a closet full of artwork here?” And they just shut down; everybody in the romance department was let go.

And it was typical. Martin Goodman used to say the same

The Amazing Andru-Man Now it can be told! John Romita didn’t really sprain his wrist and need a fill-in Spidey story penciled by Ross Andru (and inked by Bill Everett); yet somehow the finished story wound up in the oversize Marvel Super-Heroes #14 (May 1968). But Ross shone for sure on the first-ever cross-company super-hero slug-fest in 1976 (inking by Dick Giordano, from a layout by Carmine Infantino). [Spider-Man ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Superman ©2007 DC Comics.]

thing to Stan years ago: “If we’ve got inventory, then why are you buying new artwork?” So DC just closed down the romance originalart department, and I was out of work.

RT: In other words, don’t eat for six months and maybe we’ll give you work again? They did that with young mystery writers in the late ’60s, which is how we got Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, and several other guys over at Marvel.

ROMITA: DC didn’t even say that. When [editor] Jack Miller told me—and of course he was on the frying pan already—I remember asking him, “Could you introduce me to some of the other editors?”

And he said, “Nah, I don’t think so—they aren’t looking for anybody.” He never even got off his ass to introduce me to anybody.

He told me, “Listen, you’re a freelancer. You’re not on contract.

You’re free to go and get work anywhere.” I said, “Well, gee, thanks.” [laughs] “After eight years of being exclusive to DC,” I said, “that’s a pretty cold thing to say.” He said, “Listen, my hands are tied. I can’t give you any work.” And I said, “Then why don’t you get me an editor?” He never answered me. He was a real cold fish.

RT: But you still didn’t automatically think of going over to talk to Stan, did you?

ROMITA: The truth is, I had been going through a little bit of a slump, an artist’s block. I was having days when I couldn’t produce a page. It reduced me to tears a couple of times, because I wasn’t bringing any money in, and I was thinking, “What the hell’s gonna happen?” Suppose I could never do another story! Deadlines used to terrify me, and I wasn’t the kind of guy to fake it. So when this happened, I told Virginia, “I’m not going to Stan Lee. He’s not paying

enough. I’m going to get into advertising.”

I had been talking to Mort Meskin, whom I had seen a couple of times at DC. He had visited and had lunch with the guys; he was working at BBD&O [a major advertising firm], doing storyboards.

He told me, “Comic artists are in demand over there. They don’t even have to show them anything. If you tell them you’ve been making a living in comics for more than two years, they’ll hire you on the spot.”

And it just so happened that one of my neighbors and fellow volunteer firemen was one of the creative directors up there. His name was Al Nomandia. He had been a famous panel cartoonist, a very bright guy. I called him and he said, “Sure, come on in.” So I went in on a Thursday, I think, and they hired me. They were going to pay me $250 a week. It was $75-$100 more a week than I was making in comics. I took the job.

And then on Friday, like an idiot, I went over to Stan. I had already told him I would come over to Marvel. In fact, I had inked The Avengers over Don Heck, and I’d inked the Kirby cover, and I loved it.

RT: That’s the Kirby cover with that towering figure of Kang?

ROMITA: I enjoyed that job. I told Stan I would love to just ink, but when he asked me to pencil, I told him, “No, I don’t think I can.”

That’s when I got the job at BBD&O. But when I called up Stan to tell him, he said, “Come on in. I’ll take you to lunch.”

So we went to lunch and he spent three hours browbeating me.

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 45

Spidey Towers Above It All JR’s pencils for two classic Amazing Spider-Man covers—#68 (above) and #112 (right)—with the finished art for #87 at top right. The lines on #112 that look like they’re made by tape—were made by tape. Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

And he gave me everything: “Why do you want to be a little fish in a big pond when you can be a big fish in a little pond? I’ll guarantee you to match their salary.” In fact, he promised me something that I should have known he could never keep. He promised me he would give me $250 a week whether I worked or not. I swear!

RT: I’m sure he meant it, but Martin Goodman would never have gone for that.

ROMITA: No, Stan wouldn’t have been able to keep that promise. But, like an idiot, I thought, “Stan Lee told me I’m going to get the money!” Many times in the next few years, you remember how Martin Goodman used to come around and ask, “What does John Romita do here?”

RT: He wondered, because your name wasn’t on many stories.

ROMITA: He wanted to know what I did up there—and I was doing everything for Stan. I was correcting artwork, I was doing covers, I was correcting covers. I mean, it was ridiculous, but if Goodman saw me talking to somebody, he wanted to know how come I wasn’t working. [laughs] Anyway, I told Stan I’d take the job, but on one condition: I can’t work at home. I obviously cannot get my work out on my own schedule. I need a 9-to-5 situation. He said, “You come in. I’ll have a drawing table for you. I’ll have an office for you as soon as I can afford it.”

46 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

In fact, I was on a freelance basis.

If I came into the office and then did some work freelance overnight, I didn’t have to come in the next day.

So it was a pretty nice situation. I used to come in two or three days a week and do freelance whenever I could. Later I was on staff when I started doing Spider-Man. RT: When you and I were introduced in July of ’65, I’d been working at Marvel all of two weeks, but you thought I’d been there for years. I recall how surprised you were when I told you I remembered all that great work you did on Captain America and The Western Kid back in the ’50s. It had never occurred to you that anyone would remember your work a decade later. I’d have recognized your name if I’d heard it at DC during the two weeks I was there; but of course no one ever mentioned it to me.

ROMITA: No, I was a secret. A couple of years later, John Verpoorten told me that he had always admired my father’s work. [laughs] I said, “My God!” And he said, “Yeah, didn’t he do Captain

Coming Back To Cap John made a triumphant (but too-brief) return to Captain America in 1971-72, as in the Joe Sinnott-inked page at left.

The promotional figure above was both penciled and inked

by John some time later. C.A. #141 page courtesy of Al Bigley; Cap figure courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

America in the ’50s?” And I said, “No, that was me.”

He couldn’t get over that. He thought my father had done it.

RT: When you came over, Wally Wood had already told Stan he was quitting. That’s why his last Daredevil cover was actually just stats. He didn’t do a cover for it.

ROMITA: Stan showed me Dick Ayers’ splash page for a Daredevil. He asked me, “What would you do with this page?” I showed him on a tracing paper what I would do, and then he asked me to do a drawing of Daredevil the way I would do it. I did a big drawing of Daredevil. I sold it recently to Mike Burkey. It was just a big tracing paper drawing of Daredevil swinging. And Stan loved it.

RT: Like he hadn’t known you could do superheroes?

ROMITA: He thought I’d been paralyzed doing romance, because I had told him I’d rather not pencil.

Then, when I did my first Daredevil story, he threw out the first three pages I brought in because they were too dull, like a romance story. And I had to agree with him that they were quiet. He got Jack Kirby to break down the first few pages for me. As soon as I

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 47

ROMITA: Actually, I did think so, but I was hoping against it, believe it or not. People laugh when I say this, but I did not want to do Spider-Man. I wanted to stay on Daredevil. The only reason I did SpiderMan was because Stan asked me and I felt that I should help out, like a good soldier. I never really felt comfortable on Spider-Man for years. I had felt at home immediately on Daredevil. On Spider-Man I felt obliged to ghost Ditko because—this may sound naive, but I was convinced, in my own mind, that he was going to come back in two or three issues.

RT: Even though he and Stan hadn’t been speaking to each other for months if not a year before Steve left?

ROMITA: I didn’t know a lot of that.

RT: It wasn’t a secret within the company. I thought you’d have learned that from Sol [Brodsky] or somebody, even if Stan hadn’t mentioned it to you.

ROMITA: I had heard rumors that Ditko was plotting the stories because he and Stan couldn’t agree Stan and three of his trouble-shooters, 1968: [L. to r.:] Stan Lee, Marie Severin, John Romita, on plots. But he had done 38 issues and two and Roy Thomas (in a Spider-Man costume left over from a Macy’s parade). annuals—and I couldn’t believe that a guy would saw Jack’s breakdowns, I knew exactly what Stan meant by pacing. walk away from a successful book that was the second-highest seller Jack laid out two issues. I still have the original art to those two at Marvel. I said to myself, “Naw, he’s not going to stay away.” I stories. [ED. NOTE: Among other places, one of those pages from didn’t know Ditko. I assumed he’d do what I would have done—he’d DD #12 was reprinted in Alter Ego V3#1... but you’ll have to think about how he had given up a top character, and he’d be back. search for a copy, because our first issue is now out of print.]

And I was sort of counting the days until I could get back on Daredevil.

RT: How did you end up with that? They usually didn’t give back original art then.

In fact, when I did the Spider-Man/Daredevil stories [Daredevil #16-17], I really felt it was obvious that I couldn’t do Spider-Man as ROMITA: In the ’70s Irene Vartanoff was in charge of returning well as I could do Daredevil. I was amazed when Stan gave me original art. She used to tell me horror stories about stuff getting Spider-Man to do. I felt he was desperate. So I did the book to help water damage, and fire damage, and being stolen. She told Stan one him out, hoping all the while that it would be temporary. day, “There’s a bit of John Romita’s artwork at the warehouse, and I’m afraid it’s going to be stolen or damaged.” This is after art returns After six months, when I realized it wasn’t had been given to other people, but by then I wasn’t doing any new temporary, I finally stopped trying to stories. Stan signed a slip and I ended up getting probably two out of ghost Ditko. Till then, I was every five stories I ever did. I got a batch of Spider-Man stories, and I using a thin line. On #43, the got the two Daredevil stories in one big envelope. one with Jameson’s son, I outlined the whole thing And here’s the heartbreaking thing: One of the pages in the with a Rapidograph envelope was a page of layouts by Jack Kirby that I had not used! It and then used the big, was a perfect example with all of Jack’s notes and the way he used to bold brush to put ink do the layouts. But I think I loaned it to somebody, and I haven’t seen it since.

When Casual Day Goes Too Far

RT: Daredevil had picked up nicely under Wally Wood; then you did it for eight issues. I remember that, although Daredevil had a smaller print run than Spider-Man or FF, for at least a couple months while you did it, it had the highest percentage sales of any Marvel comics.

ROMITA: I know. I was beaming from that. That was one of my proudest moments.

RT: When Stan had you take home some of Ditko’s Spider-Man books to read, to gueststar Spidey in Daredevil, did you feel it might be a try-out for that book?

48 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

Romita Is Fantastic John didn’t want to draw Fantastic Four when Kirby ankled for DC—but sales still spiked! These are JR’s pencil designs for the mid-’70s FF medallion. Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

in. I thought that was Ditko’s style. Looking back on it now, I realize I wasn’t doing a very good Ditko imitation, but I was not being myself, either. In Daredevil #18, my last issue, I was doing that big, bold thing that Frank Giacoia inked; and when I inked myself, like on the covers, it was a big, bold style with a big, heavy line. But on Spider-Man I was doing these nine-panel pages and the thin line, and I was doing Peter Parker without any bone structure—just like Ditko was doing, I thought. The only reason it wasn’t better was that I couldn’t ape him any better.

RT: Do you think Stan would’ve gotten around to showing Mary Jane when he did if you hadn’t taken over the book? Because he did it only a few issues later.

ROMITA: I think he once hinted to me that he had stalled at showing her. Maybe he suspected a while in advance that he and Ditko were not going to stay together.

RT: I remember the day Ditko quit. He came into the office I shared with Sol and Flo Steinberg, dropped off some pages, and left. Sol scuttled in to see Stan right away, and then I learned about it. At the time, Sol had a memo on his desk for a $5 a page raise for Steve, which was fairly substantial for 1965. I don’t think he ever even got around to mentioning it to Steve, not that it would’ve made any difference.

The Mark On Kane From Amazing Spider-Man #123, the funeral of Gwen Stacy. (Above:) The page as penciled by Gil Kane; and (right) the inked page by John R.; both are repro'd from photocopies of the original art—and the latter reveals significant changes—most of them, certainly, at Stan's specific instructions.

In Panel 1 John removed, as extraneous, Robbie Robertson and the lady who'll join Aunt May in Panel 2; Peter has no coat draped over his arm; May's hat and gloves have been removed, and her left hand is more closed; even Mary Jane has been turned away, in order to concentrate on Peter and May. In Panel 2 several mourners have been placed in shadow, to concentrate on the two women and “Doc Ock's guard.” Peter & Flash Thompson (originally Robbie Robertson) have been considerably redrawn, even repositioned, in Panels 3-4.

In Panel 5 even shrubbery has been added, and the clouds removed in Panel 6 because Robbie's balloon covers most of them anyway.

In Panel 7 Peter and MJ have been redrawn so as to be more static and restrained, less dynamic, with MJ's clothes changed to something more appropriate to a funeral, and the few background details altered—even to the point of a sign being added to show the trio have left the cemetery, and several shadows to indicate where the other mourners are now.

Whew! And Martin Goodman wondered what John Romita did for a living!

Romita art courtesy of Mike Burkey. Kane art courtesy of Jeff Sharpe, who collects “Spider-Man” original art by various artists from Ditko on. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 49

Spider-Man Strips!

A key reason for the failure to sell a Spider-Man newspaper strip circa 1970 is revealed for the first time in this interview—but since some of those trial dailies have been reproduced numerous times, we’re presenting just one here—the only Spidey daily ever drawn featuring Gwen Stacy (because she was still alive when it was done). Good thing Stan and John got a second chance out of the gate! Repro’d from the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

So, whether Stan was stalling with regard to Mary Jane or not, he was definitely not trying to edge Steve off Spider-Man. But Steve gave them no choice. He just quit. He told Sol, “I’ll finish these jobs I’m working on now, and that’s it.”

ROMITA: I think Stan was just subconsciously holding back on revealing Mary Jane.

RT: If so, do you think it was partly because, good as Ditko was and is, he didn’t draw women as pretty as you do?

ROMITA: Stan wanted her gorgeous, while Steve’s women were a little bit stiff and conservative-looking. They didn’t move their bodies the way Stan liked. He wanted Mary Jane to be like a go-go dancer.

That’s what I did. But that first panel of Mary Jane looked so much better in the pencils. I did myself in with the inking. I lost the right expression.

RT: I know a generation of Spider-Man readers who might disagree with you.

ROMITA: Stan used to accuse me of favoring Mary Jane over Gwen.

He’d want me to make Gwen more glamorous. But Gwen was more serious, especially after her father [Captain Stacy] died. I kept telling Stan, “Gwen’s a lady—she’s not the same kind of airhead that Mary Jane is. I can’t have her smiling all the time.” When he had me start putting Gwen in mini-skirts, I didn’t feel it was right for her. Pretty soon it was hard to tell Gwen and Mary Jane apart. They were like Betty and Veronica—the same girl except for the hair color.

RT: So that’s the real reason you killed off Gwen Stacy! [laughs] ROMITA: Somebody—maybe it was Gerry Conway, who was writing the book then—suggested we should kill off Aunt May. Gil Kane was penciling Spider-Man then, but I was still supposed to keep an eye on it, and Gerry and I would talk over plots. I didn’t feel Aunt May’s death would make much of an impact. To do that, we had to kill off one of the main girls, and Gwen was the one Peter was in love with. Mary Jane wouldn’t have meant as much; she was going with somebody else.

RT: As editor-in-chief at the time, I know that Stan, at least verbally, “signed off” on the idea of Gwen’s death at some early stage. Like I once said about you, Gerry, and me: None of our mothers raised any sons stupid enough to kill off Gwen Stacy while Stan Lee was out of town and present him with a fait accompli! [laughs] It’s interesting that you felt the death of Gwen would be more symbolically important than Mary Jane’s. But some of the main problems you got into with Stan were because of your penchant for ultra-realism, wasn’t it—with the turtlenecks and all?

Smarter Than The Average Hall Of Fame Catcher “I want to thank everybody who made this night necessary!” [L. to r.] John Romita, Yogi Berra, artist Frank Giacoia, artist/production manager Sol Brodsky at a (late-’60s?) gathering. John and Frank often collaborated in Amazing Spider-Man, but what comic did this “Yogi” guy draw? Photo courtesy of John Romita.

50 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

ROMITA: Stan would ask why I always had Peter wearing a turtleneck, and why he didn’t wear his shirt open. I would say, “It’s because he’s got his costume on under his clothes!” Stan didn’t think I should worry about that, but I didn’t want readers to think I’d forgotten. That’s why we had him have to take off his shoes and socks when climbing a wall—and I made up the web sack because I figured, if he had to put on his Peter Parker clothes when he arrived

somewhere as Spider-Man, we had to show how he transported his clothes. It drove me nuts, and I drove Stan nuts with it, but sometimes it led to some interesting storylines.

guy, or that guy, and get him to do something.” I used to ask Stan, “How come I come in to you with one problem, and I walk out with two?”

RT: When you were drawing Spidey, Stan was always trying to find ways to get more out of you—like with those Tuska thumbnails. Then there was that “Spider-Man” story penciled by Ross Andru that wound up in Marvel Super-Heroes #14 [May 1968]. I don’t recall much about it, but I’ve always figured it was meant to be a fill-in issue of Spider-Man, but that Stan didn’t like it much, and that’s why it got sidetracked into another mag.

RT: That’s because Stan knew there were guys he could trust to take the burden off his shoulders—in those days, it was you, Sol Brodsky, and me... Marie Severin, too. I’ve got to ask you this: You’ve said that, when you found out Kirby had quit, you thought at first that Marvel would have to drop Fantastic Four. Did you really feel that? Carmine Infantino supposedly said the same thing to people over at DC at the time....

ROMITA: Or maybe it had to do with the fact that the story was about voodoo. It was a good story, but a little different for the way Spider-Man was being done at that time.

ROMITA: Yeah, because I didn’t think there was anybody else who could do it. I asked Stan who was going to draw it, and he said, “You are!” I thought he was out of his mind. He took me off SpiderMan—which had become our #1 book—to do Fantastic Four, which was our #2 book.

RT: Yet Stan had at least co-plotted it. I don’t think he was ever as much an admirer of Ross’ art as you were, as I was, as a lot of the other guys at the time were.

ROMITA: I think the thing that showed how good Ross was, was that Superman vs. Spider-Man book. Do you remember that twopage spread at the start of the book? That was terrific!

RT: As Gil used to say, Ross was one of the few comics artists who had a real “sense of space.” When he drew a city seen from the air, you could get vertigo staring into the pencils! But somehow some of his penciling strengths never quite translated when the work was inked. Ross clearly wasn’t the answer for what Stan wanted with Spider-Man. ROMITA: Stan was always trying to speed me up. He had Don Heck penciling over my breakdowns for a while. Stan would have me lay out the story. Then, when Don had finished the pencils, he’d call me in to fix up anything Don had done that he didn’t like. Even after it was inked, he’d have me changing what the inker had done. I told him, “This was supposed to save me time, but it isn’t!”

He tried Dick Ayers at it, too. In fact, there’s one splash page that was used, based on what Dick did—it was a splash that was mostly just webbing. But Stan didn’t like the way Dick drew Peter Parker, so we settled on John Buscema.

RT: Well, it was still Marvel’s flagship title, so to speak. It said up there at the top of every cover: “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine!”—so Stan felt an obligation to try to live up to that. Hey, John, you ought to know as well as anybody—“With great power, there must come great responsibility!” [laughs] ROMITA: But I didn’t think I was the guy to do the FF. If you look at those four issues I did, you’ll

RT: Who hated drawing Spider-Man. Yet he became the third Spidey penciler.

ROMITA: Yeah, though he mostly just did layouts. I’d call him up to give him a quick plot outline, and he’d say, “We’re not gonna do another one of those, are we? I hate Spider-Man!” But then he’d do this great job. I wish I could have inked some of his stories, but I was busy on Fantastic Four and Captain America.

RT: I was very happy when you took over Cap for a while, obviously. How did you feel about doing that book again? I think its sales had been dropping a bit.

ROMITA: That’s why I was put onto it. In some ways the book I was happiest doing was Captain America. That was a character I always felt comfortable with.

RT: You and Gary Friedrich turned out some good Cap issues.

Meanwhile, Stan saw to it that you always had a “presence” on Spider-Man. ROMITA: He kept my name on that book with all kinds of ploys.

Do you remember? I was “artist emeritus” for a while, whatever the hell that means. I was always kept busy doing other things. I would go in to see Stan with a problem, and he’d tell me, “Okay, call this

Forever Femizon!

A detailed “Femizon” drawing from the early ’70s, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [Art ©2007 John Romita.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 51

bought a few years earlier by Perfect Film [a conglomerate which soon changed its name to Cadence]. Do you remember dealing with Chip?

ROMITA: By that point, I don’t think Chip Goodman liked Stan, so there was friction. In 1972 Stan and I did two weeks of dailies and a year’s worth of plots for a Spider-Man newspaper strip. We gave it to Chip in a big envelope; he was supposed to try to sell it to a syndicate. Months later, when he was gone, we found the envelope still on his desk, still sealed. He had never even opened it.

I always thought that maybe the reason why he didn’t try to sell it was because he didn’t want Stan to have any more success. I don’t think he had the knife in for me, but maybe he had it in for Stan.

RT: Chip tried hard, but he could never live up to his father’s expectations. I believe he had a brother who was sort of a black sheep and refused to have anything to do with his father’s publishing empire.

ROMITA: After Goodman sold the company to Perfect Film in the late ’60s, he was supposed to stick around for three years, or whatever it was. Chip was supposed to take his place. But that part of it must not have been on paper, because as soon as Martin was gone, they got rid of Chip. That’s why Martin started Atlas Comics. It was pure revenge.

RT: In 1972 Stan had gained control of the company and was both publisher and president of Marvel for a while. That’s when I became editor-in-chief, and Frank Giacoia became “associate art director.” Didn’t you still do unofficial artdirecting during those several months, before you officially became art director?

The Satana Verses The first page and final panels of John and Roy’s only story collaboration— the “Satana” four-page intro in Vampire Tales #3 (Oct. 1973); it’s reprinted here from the Italian edition of The Art of John Romita. And, before anybody mentions it—yeah, Roy swiped the opening, and even some of the sound effects, from Harvey Kurtzman’s “V-V-Vampires!” in Mad #3 (Feb.-March 1953). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

see everything was taken from Jack. If there’s any Romita in there, it’s only because I couldn’t find a shot to swipe! I was glad to get off the book after a few issues. Besides, Stan still had me doing fix-up work on Spider-Man at the same time!

RT: Yet, for those few issues you did, the sales of Fantastic Four actually went up.

ROMITA: I think it’s just because everybody was watching and wondering what the hell was gonna happen!

RT: How did it work out with Gil Kane penciling Spider-Man? ROMITA: Gil was great. He thought about SpiderMan in a different way from the way I did—and from the way Stan did—but it worked out pretty well for a long time. I loved inking him, though that meant changing his work somewhat and adding lots of blacks.

RT: In the early ’70s Martin Goodman’s son Chip became publisher of Marvel, which had been

52 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

ROMITA: Stan told Frank he could lay out covers, which was what he wanted to do, and Frank started saying he was the art director. Or maybe Stan let him do that, instead of paying him more money.

RT: Frank was an excellent inker, but he was never secure in his penciling, so his job designing the covers didn’t work out for long. I think he held it against you—and probably against Stan and me, as well. Which is a shame, because we were really all in his corner.

You say in The Art of John Romita that I was editor-in-chief for “three or four years.” Actually, it was just a little over two. It probably just seemed longer, John—to you and me both! But I think we made a good team.

ROMITA: Yeah, even though we never worked together on a book.

RT: Well, we did do that four-page “Satana” story. Stan wanted to introduce her fast, before anyone else used the name. I thought, “Here’s my chance to finally do something with John Romita!” I guess she was supposed to be Marvel’s answer to Vampirella.

We won’t have room to go at length into your days as art director at Marvel, but obviously that situation worked out well for as many years as you wanted it to. What surprised me, I’ll admit, was reading recently that Stan once offered you the job of editor-in-chief!

ROMITA: Yeah. I think that was after you quit [in August 1974]. But I’d seen what the job did to you—you didn’t have any time left over to be creative—you just had to come in and put out fires every day. I didn’t want the job.

Actually, I think I turned down that job twice. The first time was when Sol Brodsky left to help start Skywald in about 1971. Stan

wanted me to take over his administration chores and offered me the job of editor-in-chief.

RT: That’s odd, since Sol was production manager, not an editor.

Stan had the editor-in-chief title at that time. In fact, he wasn’t wild about letting me call myself that in 1972; I was originally supposed to be “story editor.” Whatever he had called you, you’d probably have wound up handling administration, which you would have hated.

ROMITA: Obviously, being editor-in-chief was a killer job. You had it, then Len Wein, then Marv Wolfman, then Gerry Conway for two weeks, then Archie Goodwin for a couple of years. Archie was good, but he was maybe a little too sympathetic to every complaint the artists and writers had. He tried too hard to keep everybody happy, and an editor can’t always do that.

RT: Of all the guys you just mentioned—and those who came later—Archie was the only one who didn’t especially want the editor-in-chief job. I recall his telling me, several years earlier, that he didn’t see how I could enjoy handling a whole line of books. To him, that would just be getting “bogged down”—I remember he used that exact phrase. Actually, by mid-’74, I’d pretty much come to agree with him!

Oh, Brother!

John’s original design for Brother Voodoo, plus the cover of Strange Tales #169 (Sept. 1973), both repro’d from photocopies of the original art. ST cover courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Now let’s take a fast look at a few of the many characters you helped design. We’ve done Mary Jane, so—how about Brother Voodoo? We’ll start with one of Marvel’s real triumphs. [laughs]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 53

Heavy Metal Luke Cage, a.k.a. Hero for Hire, a.k.a. Power Man—from a “Spider-Man ‘rock comic’ back album cover,” according to Mike Burkey, who supplied the original art. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

prison. He had the yellow shirt and headband and wristbands to contrast with his black skin.

RT: This was in the aftermath of the success of Shaft—which is ironic, because Shaft was created by Ernest Tidyman, who not long before had been a writer, and maybe editor, for Goodman’s magazine division down the hall!

What about “The Femizons,” which you and Stan did for the first issue of Savage Tales?

ROMITA: That was supposed to be a 40-page epic, but we only published the first part. It was so long before Savage Tales #2 came out that the momentum was lost. We even had a movie company interested in it at one point. It broke my heart not to be able to continue it.

ROMITA: [laughs] People make fun of that character. I guess he was kind of goofy.

RT: I liked the outfit you designed, which straddled the line between voodoo and super-hero. What about Luke Cage? I remember the two of us discussing him, with me looking over your shoulder, though I think you came up with most of the actual visuals.

ROMITA: We did it together. The chains were because we wanted the slavery angle. His costume was supposed to say super-hero, yet not super-hero. It was whatever he salvaged when he escaped from

54 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

Go, Wolverine!

John’s initial character designs for the nowlegendary Wolverine, who first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #181 (Nov. 1974).

[Wolverine ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: I’d forgotten that you designed Wolverine, after I told Len Wein I wanted a character by that name. Why you, and not Herb Trimpe, who was going to draw him in that first Hulk story?

ROMITA: Len came to me and asked me to do it. My way of doing things is to look them up in an encyclopedia. So I saw that a wolverine is a mean, vicious little animal with claws, kind of catlike, and I went with that.

RT: That’s interesting, because I’d told Len—whether he passed it on to you or not—that I wanted Wolverine to be short and really fierce. If the story had come in with a sixfoot Wolverine, we’d have had a problem! And I wanted

Make The Punisher Fit The Crime John’s original 1973 design for The Punisher—and his rough for a cover for a 1974 issue of Marvel Preview. Courtesy of Mike Burkey.[©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Fury Of The Black Widow JR’s very early style guide drawing of The Black Widow (left)— a 1970s drawing used for Crackerjack stickers (above center)—and two panels from the 1942 Miss Fury comic strip (above) by Tarpé Mills which inspired John’s design. B&W pieces repro’d from the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [Black Widow art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Miss Fury ©2007 Tarpé Mills.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 55

Clothes Make The (Atlantean) Man In 1974 John was asked to give The Sub-Mariner a costume, so he did (see below)—but we also dig this promotion art from the 1980s, at left. Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: Yes, but it didn’t work out that way. [laughs] RT: What about The Hobgoblin?

ROMITA: I didn’t design Hobgoblin. That’s an error that got into print. John Jr. designed him, and I just inked it.

RT: I liked the Sub-Mariner costume you designed in the early ’70s, when we decided he needed one, to boost sales. Of course, in the end the book died anyway.

ROMITA: I’m glad you liked it, because some people gave me grief about giving Sub-Mariner a costume. But I felt it worked.

RT: You did a lot of character designs over the years! And here Martin Goodman had wondered what you were doing all the time in the office! [laughs] You and Stan finally got a Spider-Man strip off the ground in 1977. It debuted along with Conan and The Hulk—and Howard the Duck

him to be Canadian—but that’s not something that would’ve affected your drawing.

You did the initial drawing of Gerry Conway’s concept for The Punisher, too.

ROMITA: Gerry had drawn a rough sketch. He had a skull and crossbones on his chest, and looked a little like that 1940s character The Black Terror. I thought just a regular skull was too simple, so I expanded the skull and wrapped it around his body. I made the cheekbones into his pecs, and his belt buckle was the teeth, and I wrapped the top of his skull around The Punisher’s collar. That framed his head at the top of the skull, since the blank top of a skull is just wasted space.

RT: It certainly was striking. You designed the second Black Widow outfit, didn’t you?

ROMITA: Yeah. I was influenced in that by Tarpé Mills’ Miss Fury.

Her character was just someone who went to a party dressed as a black cat. She got involved with a crime, so she made that outfit her costume.

RT: The Dazzler was supposed to be a role for Bo Derek, wasn’t it?

56 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

The Rising Son (Left:) Preliminary character design sketches for John Jameson, son of J. Jonah Jameson, as an astronaut-cum-super-hero/villain for Amazing Spider-Man #42 (Nov. 1966). The atom symbol on his chest was eventually dropped—maybe because it would’ve been hard to justify such a thing on the uniform of an astronaut. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Forever Femizon!

An early costume design for “The Femizons.” That feature, co-created by Stan Lee and John Romita, appeared only in Marvel’s first black-&-white comic, Savage Tales #1 (1971); copyright on the story was kept

by Stan, on the art by John. Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 John Romita.]

Et Tu, Man-Brute?

The Man-Brute, designed by JR, made his debut in Captain America #121 (Jan. 1970). Repro’d from a photocopy of the original pin-up art, with thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 57

Spidey Strips Again!

For a second try at selling a Spider-Man comic strip, John penciled a number of dailies, including the pair above—which were later combined and used in part as the basis of the new strip’s first Sunday, for Jan. 9, 1977 (below). Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

58 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

soon followed—but only Spidey has endured for a quarter of a century. Still, you left it after a few years.

ROMITA: My deal with Stan was, I would stay with it for as long as it was growing. I was killing myself doing seven days a week of it, but I couldn’t have stood it if I’d let somebody else take it over while it was on its way up, and then it had become a big smash.

RT: Other than you and Stan, and with Ditko having taken himself out of the picture long ago, who had a better right?

ROMITA: Finally, around the beginning of its fourth year, the strip leveled off, and then it started to drop.

Soon after that, I got off, as I’d said I would. I hated leaving it, because I loved the idea of reaching such a big audience in newspapers all over the world. That’s about the time I stopped being art director of the comic books and became art director of special projects. At that point I was supervising, doing corrections, hiring artists, doing cover sketches—for pop-up books, puzzle books, everything.

RT: Virginia came in to work at the Marvel office, too, and became traffic manager.

ROMITA: Initially she just came in to help me for a

All In The Family John and Virginia Romita hard at work in the Marvel offices in 1973— and Daren Auck’s artistic representation of the pair.

[Art ©2007 Darren Auck; photo courtesy of John and Virginia.]

(L. to r.:) Artists Nick (Aqualad, Bat Lash) Cardy, John, and John, Jr.—and the Romitas’ joint cover for the 1991 hardcover called simply Romita, published by Marvel Comics Italia.

Cover courtesy of John, with special thanks to TwoMorrows.

[Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

| 59

Another Man Without Peer A John Romita, Jr., Daredevil drawing, done for a 1991 portfolio for Italy’s “la edizioni Déesse.” [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

little while—to help me get organized. Then they offered her that job.

Her assignment was to get everything on schedule. She did it by assigning fill-in books to a lot of people who weren’t always the best who could have done the books—but that was her job. She got Marvel on schedule for the first time in years. She ended all the late fees we’d been paying, which were sapping the company’s profits.

But, as soon as they were back on schedule, [editor-in-chief] Jim Shooter decided that now he could have everything rewritten or redrawn at the last minute. In a little while, they were back in the same bad shape as before, and Virginia just threw up her hands.

Shooter had been great for the first two or three years. He got the creative people treated with more respect, got us sent to conventions first-class with our ways paid, and we thought the world of him. Then his Secret Wars was a big hit, and after that he decided he knew everything and he started changing everybody’s stuff. Secret Wars II didn’t make much of an impact. And eventually, because of that and maybe the “New Universe” fiasco, things started going downhill for him, and we had some bad years.

RT: I wish we had more time and space to go into this next item— but how did it feel, seeing your son John Jr. make such a success in the comics field himself?

ROMITA: I’m very proud of him. He’d always wanted to be in comics, and I left it up to him. My worst fear was that he would try and fail. But he got a job at Marvel, and for two years he was your right hand after you moved to California. He ran the Conan

60 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

department and learned a lot working with you. Once he got his chance as an artist, especially starting with Iron Man, he really came into his own.

RT: And now, of course, he’s as big in the field as you were. That doesn’t happen often—though Joe Kubert’s sons Adam and Andy do pretty well, too.

ROMITA: Yeah. We were gonna have a “family feud” panel at MegaCon this year—a quiz thing, with John Jr. and me against Joe and his boys—but they couldn’t make it.

RT: You’d have been outnumbered. You’d have had to get Virginia up there to make it three against three! Why did you eventually quit Sol Brodsky’s special projects department around 1985?

ROMITA: The reason I finally quit that department was those damn A-Team books. We had to do three books a month, from start to finish—plot and art and script and coloring, everything. The printer and the engraver had two months, but we only had one! I felt like material would be promised to anyone on any kind of schedule, and then we’d have to break our backs to do it. I was ashamed of that ATeam series. But then, at a convention a little while back, somebody came up to me with all three issues to sign!

RT: No matter how much any of us may hate something we’ve done—to somebody, somewhere, that’s his favorite comic!

ROMITA: I had hated doing them—but this guy loved those three issues!

RT: Hard as it is to believe, every year in comics is somebody’s “Golden Age”!

ROMITA: You’re right. And that’s what it’s all about! Well, I’ll see ya, kid.

RT: ’Bye, John. These days, it’s always great to talk to somebody who still calls me “kid”! But in this case it’s been a special pleasure.

FIN

Four For The Road If you think we’re gonna end this interview with art from one of those A-Team issues John mentions, you’re crazy! Howzabout a self-portrait, and a photo of John and wife Virginia at the March 30, 1996, banquet to honor their many years of service to Marvel—sandwiched in between rare art of Spidey and Mary Jane? Thanks to John Romita and Mike Burkey for photocopies of the original art. [Spidey & MJ ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; self-portrait ©2007 John Romita.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 61

“X” Marks The Spot!

Think we’re gonna miss a chance to toss in some X-Men art? Pencil roughs for X-Men cards, 1993-94. Repro’d from photocopies of the original art—all except The Beast courtesy of Al Bigley. To contact Al re sales, trades, or his recent Image comic Geminar, phone (704) 289-2346, or e-mail him at geminar@earthlink.net.

Beast rough courtesy of Mike Burkey. See the inked, colored versions of several of these sketches in the Color Section of the hardcover edition of this book! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

62 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

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“Captain America Was A Dirty Name!”

JOHN ROMITA on the First Super-Hero Feature He Ever Drew –––“Captain America” Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash Heavy Hitters (Left:) A somewhat fuzzy photo showing (l. to r.) Jazzy Johnny Romita, Rascally Roy Thomas, and Smilin’ Stan Lee at the 2000 MegaCon in Orlando, Florida, where they competed with a trio of youngish artists on a trivia panel to raise money for charity.

Marvel’s 1960s brain trust nosed out the young punks—just barely.

Photo by Dann Thomas.

(Below:) John drew Captain America many times after 1954— including this commercial illo of the Star-Spangled Avenger hitting what just has to be a home run! [Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I

NTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Roy Thomas interviewed his longtime Bullpen colleague John Romita pretty thoroughly three years ago in A/E V3#9; so, I leaped at the opportunity to ask John a few questions about Cap’s 1950s revival. This interview is meant to complement the earlier one, but we also veered off into other areas. In addition, I wanted the chance to publicly thank John for all the help he gave me when I was trying to break into comics. He was always there when I needed advice. The time I remember most occurred when I came up to the Marvel offices from North Carolina, looking for a break. I knocked on his door, and he said he didn’t have time to talk right then, because he only had an hour to finish a cover rough. He asked if I was having any luck—I wasn’t—and he suddenly realized I didn’t live in town. “You came from North Carolina, didn’t you?” I said I did, so he pushed aside the rough and said, “Okay. I’ll give you twenty minutes.” He proceeded to go over my samples, pointing out my weaknesses, saying, “You’re ready to go pro, but here’s a few things you still need to work on.” Armed with that advice, I went home, did a brand new portfolio, and immediately broke into Marvel Comics as an inker. For that kindness when he really couldn’t spare the time—and for all the other times, too—I’ll always be grateful to John Romita. —Jim. JIM AMASH: Roy covered most of the bases in regard to your comic book career [in A/E #9], but I’d like to fill in a couple of areas. Stan didn’t use your original “Captain America” splash for Young Men #24.

JOHN ROMITA: That was an interesting thing. At the beginning of my Timely career, I used to go in and drop stuff off. I didn’t see the finished product until the book came out. I wasn’t hurt by the change, but was very disappointed and felt I was still an amateur, because Stan had replaced my splash with someone else’s. But, as I recently told Roy, when I saw my splash for that story again after all these years, I realized Stan did the right thing in not using it. It was pretty hokey, and Captain America looked liked he was 12 feet tall. Stan was right, and I should have known he was right all along. The published splash wasn’t inspiring, but it was certainly better than mine.

64 | CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS A DIRTY NAME!

Cap Makes A Big Splash (Left:) The balloon-less black-&-white copy of the full (and signed) John Romita “Captain America” splash page from Young Men #24, courtesy of Robert Wiener. The sound effects in panels 2-3 must’ve been done by John. A few of the thinner inklines, e.g., some of the scaling on Cap’s shirt in panel 3, are nearly lost on these proofs. Of this long-lost 1953 splash, John wrote in a 2003 e-mail, after seeing it for the first time in exactly fifty years: “I didn’t recall how silly looking that first splash was… Stan helped my career by not using it… and that Red Skull was pathetic… I’m not sure I should let you print it (just kidding… at my stage in life it’s historic… or hysterical).” Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself, John!

(Right:) The published version, with the Mort Lawrence splash panel, repro’d from b&w proofs from a sadly forgotten source. But, judging by Cap’s dialogue in panel 2, it seems that a Red Skull balloon (“Let ’em have it!” or some such) was dropped somewhere along the line. [©Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: Were you were supposed to be the artist of “Captain America” from the beginning?

ROMITA: No. Mort Lawrence started the story, and either he or Stan was disappointed by the results. I happened to be in the office, and Stan said, “How would you like to be the artist on ‘Captain America’?” I almost jumped out of my skin, because I was a Jack Kirby freak. Stan showed me the finished page, and I even think a cover was done.

JA: Could that have been the cover to Captain America #76, where Cap has that cartoony smile on his face?

ROMITA: It was either that or the cover to Young Men #24.

Lawrence didn’t do any covers after the Captain America title started.

JA: So Mort Lawrence had already done a splash of his own?

ROMITA: I think so. Far as I recall, Stan took the two bottom panels from my first page and put them under the Lawrence splash. But it never occurred to me to ask for my [unused] original splash back. I was too young and innocent to even think about it. I’ve made so many mistakes of omission and gave away so many wonderful things over the years that I should have kept.

Frankly, in the 1950s, I was sure comics were only going to last another year or so. I even threw out my sketches back then, so you can’t go by what I thought. I picked up a photostat of a George Tuska page, which he inked with a number five brush. I pinned it to my drawing table and used it for inspiration for about a year. I used a number 5 brush and was doing all this fine detail work with a fat brush and a sharp point, and as long as I wasn’t tired, the lines came out just fine. As soon as I got tired, the lines came out ugly and thick.

JA: What made you think that comics weren’t going to last?

ROMITA: I was under that impression when I started in 1949, ghostpenciling for Les Zakarin, who was working for Timely and other places. I figured I’d just do these stories to make a few extra bucks. I had no plans to stay in comics. Everyone I spoke to thought we were treading water. Even Stan said he was waiting for comics to get so small that he couldn’t make a living anymore, so that he could write novels and screenplays. Everybody I knew felt they were in it on a temporary basis, including Davey Berg, who was doing mystery stories and then war stories for Timely. He hadn’t started at Mad yet.

As people like Dave, Jack Abel, and myself sat in the Timely waiting room for scripts or art approval, we would talk. We all had the feeling that comics were a dying industry and wondered what

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 65

At Jim Amash’s cajoling, John R. sent us cover proofs he had of two of the covers he penciled for Trojan Comics. Here’s the one for Crime Smashers #7 (Nov. 1951). John refers to these as “cavestyle drawings.” But he could already draw pretty gals! [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

ROMITA: Probably not, because I wanted to be a painter and an illustrator. I was doing Coca-Cola illustrations for soda fountains at a lithography house. I was making a big $25 a week, but I did freelance pencils for Les and tripled my salary. That’s why I even decided to go into comics.

Besides Timely, we also worked for a company named Trojan Comics. The art director was a little guy who wore a cowboy hat. I swear, working with him was like entering the Twilight Zone. I used to bring my pencils in and Lester used to ink them. In retrospect, I realize I was doing bondage covers. I only did three or four covers for them and Les inked them all. I also worked for Sol Cohen at Avon, but I don’t think Les inked any of my stories there.

JA: Getting back to that first ”Captain America” story: I compared the line work of the Xeroxes that Roy sent me of the other pages of the story to what was published, and I noticed some differences in line weights and detail.

ROMITA: Stan must have had someone touch those pages up. He was notorious for that.

JA: The inking on this first story looks a little different than your other “Cap” inks, even though your inks still show through. It always seemed to me that maybe Joe Maneely “beefed up” your inks.

we’d do next. People forget that, at that time, there would be one or two good years and then a bad year, where everyone was struggling for work. And then there’d be another good year, and then maybe two bad years—bad enough that many of the guys left comics and went into technical art or advertising.

Gene Colan was working full-time in the Timely bullpen in 1948, and then he was laid off. He said it was the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to him. You know, when you’re 19 or 20 and making a steady buck, and then you’re told that the company’s closing down next week, you feel terrible. So Gene had the bad break then, and once again in 1957, when Timely temporarily stopped publishing.

You can imagine how those things made him feel.

Timely publisher Martin Goodman used to close shop at the drop of a hat. If expenses got too high, he’d say “the hell with it,” and close shop. Nobody had any protection because there were no pensions, no severance pay or insurance plans, or savings plans. Everyone who worked in comics were flying by the seat of their pants.

I remember the atmosphere in the late ’40s and early ’50s— especially the mid-’50s, when Congress started to come down on comics. We were all watching the hearings—they made us look like butchers. You’d think we were killing children in every panel. I used to tell my wife Virginia, “I’ll only do comics for a while, and as soon as it closes down, I’ll get a job in New York, in a studio.” Nobody I knew said, “I’m going to be in comics for the rest of my life.” We all figured we’d have to get nine-to-five jobs at some point. It was a very negative period.

JA: Well, if it hadn’t been for Les Zakarin, you wouldn’t have gotten into comics in the first place, would you?

66 | CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS A DIRTY NAME!

ROMITA: I wouldn’t be surprised, because Joe was close enough in the office to help out in emergencies. Joe was the guy in the late ’40s and through most of the ’50s who did what I did for Stan in the ’60s and ’70s, which was—whenever somebody’s artwork came in that wasn’t quite what Stan wanted, he’d bring it in to me to do touch-ups. Frankly, I didn’t want to do that stuff. I was always late on my Spider-Man deadlines, and the last thing I wanted to do was to lose time, so I wouldn’t be surprised that many guys touched up my artwork back in the 1950s.

Let me tell you something: the first time I met Jack Kirby in the Marvel offices, he was touching up a Steve Ditko cover—correcting the pencils. That was not the first time. Even in the mid-’50s, I used to correct stuff all the time. When my artwork was in there, people like Carl Burgos touched up my work mercilessly, and I corrected others’ work when Stan asked me to. It was Stan’s normal procedure.

Roy always kids me about not inking the circular stripes in Captain America’s shield. I don’t know where I got the nerve to do that, but I did draw the first circle with the star in it. I indicated in pencil where the circled lines should go, so the colorist would have a guideline. I don’t know if Stan told me to do that, or if I decided to do it on my own. The colorists used to mutilate the job, and the colors went all over the shield. It shows you how we were flying by the seat of our pants.

JA: The cover of Captain America #76, that we mentioned before, is a strange one. There seem to be two, maybe three different artists working on that cover. [See p. 29 for this cover.]

ROMITA: I didn’t work on that cover. I think Carl Burgos did most of it, or at least penciled it.

JA: I think so, too, but the Captain America figure is drawn by a totally different artist, possibly Mort Lawrence.

Selected Shorts Editor (and reputed writer) Stan Lee seems to have had John re-draw (and vertically extend) the first panel on page 3, in order to emphasize the new, bulkier Steve Rogers—and incidentally do away with those boxer shorts!—with the result that Bucky and two hoodlums were eliminated from panel 3 below it. Thanks to Robert Wiener for the previously unpublished b&w proofs. The entire set of Romita proofs was finally published in the hardcover 2007 volume Marvel Masterworks Presents Atlas Era Heroes, Vol. 1. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

he wanted me to do most of the time was to pencil two books instead of one. But no matter what else I did, I was still responsible for Spider-Man. Same thing with Captain America earlier.

JA: How much reference were you given when Stan gave you the Captain America book?

ROMITA: None. It was all up to me, and I had to scrounge around to find some of Kirby’s stuff. I was too stupid to even ask for reference. [Jim laughs] I was not what you call a real professional then. I was terrified of every job that I did.

ROMITA: Lawrence may have penciled it and Stan decided to change the details. Carl Burgos was a staffer and was very involved with the covers. He used to lay out the covers. He wasn’t exactly an editor, but he was in charge of the covers. Stan was involved, but he didn’t have enough time to do all that he wanted to do in that regard.

I’ll tell you something strange: for about ten to fifteen years, I never did a job that I felt confident about. I always asked myself if I was able to do this job. That’s a helluva way to make a living. My problems started early, when I did my first 15-page romance story. I told Virginia, “I don’t think I know how to do another story. I used up all my ideas on this one.” [laughs] I was so exhausted by that first story. I used to fall asleep at the drawing table quite often. I was never satisfied with the work I did. I kept

JA: On those black-&-white proofs of your “Cap” story in Young Men #24, there are no word balloons, though the pages are inked.

You must have handed in the stories inked, without prior approval of the penciled work.

ROMITA: Stan told me to work that way in order to save me time. I used to pencil the word balloons in and ink around them. Later on, at DC, I did the same thing on my romance stories. I’d ink up to my penciled balloons and then somebody would do a hack job filling in the areas around them. I started lettering the balloons in pencil and then inking in the balloon outlines so that wouldn’t happen anymore. Ira Schnapp, the staff letterer, used to do a magnificent job keeping the finished lettering in the inked balloons. This method saved me from making extra trips into the city and having to sit around for a job to be lettered before I could ink it.

JA: Jack Abel inked a couple of your “Cap” stories, instead of you. Why was that?

ROMITA: Stan probably divided up the job in order to have me work on something else.

Anytime I didn’t finish a job, it was because Stan had something else for me to do. That’s why, years later, he had Gil Kane or John Buscema work on the Spider-Man book. What

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 67

A Man For All Genres Other types of artwork John Romita was doing for Timely about the same time as he was drawing “Captain America” include horror, love, and Western. The splash pages from Uncanny Tales #10 (July 1953) and My Own Romance #36 (Feb. 1954) were provided by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, while the Western Kid splash was sent by Michael Baulderstone from an Australian black-&-white reprint. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

trying to work harder, and it was always self-defeating. For the first 15 years I thought that every job I did would be my last one. I was afraid someone like Stan would say, “I’m not going to give you another job until you improve.”

JA: That is a tough way to work. When you were doing “Captain America” in the ’50s, were you happier than doing mystery or romance stories?

ROMITA: Only because I remembered Kirby’s work so fondly. I wanted to do it like Jack Kirby, and frankly, the only reason it doesn’t look like Kirby’s work was because I couldn’t do it. If I had been able to draw it exactly like Kirby, I would have. When I penciled it, I thought it was exactly like what Jack would have done. And when I inked it, it ended up looking more like Milton Caniff than Jack Kirby.

To me, I was penciling like Kirby. The fact that it didn’t come out looking like Kirby was a failure to me.

JA: I still see Milton Caniff’s influence in your work today.

ROMITA: Let me tell you—Milton Caniff is still there. Everything I see, I see through Caniff’s eyes. You know, for years, I told Stan that I thought I was the reason Captain America was canceled.

JA: Did Stan write these stories?

ROMITA: Yes, Stan wrote them all. I remember seeing his name on the scripts.

68 | CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS A DIRTY NAME!

Cap Closers (Left:) “Roy always kids me about not inking the circular stripes in Captain America’s shield,” says John. Actually, RT recalls the Jazzy One telling him once that simply “holding” the stripes with color and no inklines was an idea he (John) had because it was a lot of trouble to draw all those circles and ovals, and that he felt he’d “really sold Stan a bill of goods on that one.” On all three panels on this splash page from Young Men #28 (the last issue), there’s only a single color-held red outer stripe; the rest of the area around the inner star-and-circle is white. In black-&-white repro here, the red stripe vanishes entirely.

(Right:) John mixes equal parts of Jack (Captain America) Kirby and Milt (Terry and the Pirates) Caniff in this final story-page from Men’s Adventures #28.

But John recalls Stan telling him that the US “chauvinism” of the stories caused complaints. But not from the thirteen-year-old who fifty years later is writing this art note, I assure you! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: You didn’t really have time to get to know other freelancers during your Timely days, did you?

ROMITA: No. I’d meet people while waiting for an editor, but I was never in a position to stay in town for long. Every time I went into an office, I was exhausted and sleepy, and couldn’t wait to get back home and get some rest. I also didn’t have a lot of money to spend. Some guys stayed in town and got together for coffee and a bite to eat. I always regretted that I didn’t do that, because I missed out on getting a lot of tips and good times by not being with those guys.

Frankly, I also felt inadequate because these were all seasoned pros.

Even guys who had started just a year before me, had so much more confidence than I did. I felt like a kid looking in a candy store. It was hard for me to go in and talk to them like an equal. I’d have loved to sit and listen to them and learn, but I never had the nerve to do that.

JA: When you were doing that early “Captain America,” did Stan request many changes of you?

ROMITA: He probably did. Every time I went in, Stan took the opportunity to ask me to make a change.

JA: So Stan was very detail-oriented, even then.

ROMITA: Oh, he was a fanatic. There were times when Stan would hold up the engraver—who was waiting for us—because we were

making changes at the last minute.

JA: You said you felt like the cancellation of the Captain America book in 1954 was your fault….

ROMITA: Oh yeah, I felt like a failure. I’ll tell you why. Timely was also doing the Sub-Mariner and The Human Torch. Bill Everett was doing Sub-Mariner and Dick Ayers was doing The Human Torch.

Carl Burgos probably didn’t want to do that much of a deadline.

JA: But Burgos was doing the Torch covers as well as other covers, and all five “Torch” stories in Young Men. ROMITA: Yes, but I don’t think he wanted to be responsible for the entire book. I don’t think he wanted to get into that grind again. I can understand that, because those kinds of deadlines used to torture me.

Captain America was canceled before the other hero books, and I was sure it was an indictment on my work.

JA: Maybe you were informed of its cancellation first, but actually the Captain America book must’ve been canceled about the same time as Human Torch. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Matter of fact, the third (and final) revival issue of Captain America, #78, has a “Sept.

1954” cover date, while Human Torch #38, the last of that series, has an “Aug. 1954” date—so Cap may even have slightly outlasted Torch, that time around! —Roy.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 69

ROMITA: Well, at the time, it seemed like it [the Torch book] went on for a while.

Jack came back to Cap in 1976. It was the cover of issue #193, and it looked very three-dimensional.

JA: Maybe you’re just remembering that the Sub-Mariner book lasted a year longer. Dick Ayers told me that Stan told him that the Human Torch was cancelled because of complaints from parental groups.

ROMITA: You know, there’s a story about that cover that nobody knows about. That cover was never meant to be printed as it was. That cover was drawn as an experiment in 3-D. I inked it on six layers of acetate. I did his fist on one layer, his arm on another layer, his torso on another layer, his legs on another layer, and the backgrounds on another layer. It was meant to be published in 3-D, with the illusion of his fist coming out of the panel.

When you see it without 3-D, the fist looks like a gargantuan’s oversized fist and Captain America looks like some kind of freak with tiny legs.

ROMITA: They were afraid that kids would set fire to themselves, imitating the Torch. In fact, that kept The Human Torch off the animated television show, SpiderMan and His Amazing Friends. We came up with another character in his place, Firestar. Firestar was my idea. The network would not let us use The Human Torch in that series.

Later on, Stan told me Captain America was cancelled [in 1954] because of its politics. Timely got a lot of mail complaining about chauvinism. The American flag was a dirty word in those days, because of the backlash of the Korean War. We had gone to war seemingly unnecessarily. It was a “police action” and people died. People were saying that America was putting the American flag over human safety, and that they weren’t going to buy Captain America, because it’s an excuse for people to kill other people in the world for America’s sake. You remember how they burned American flags in the 1960s? For a while, Captain America was a dirty name! That’s the reason they dropped it.

JA: Yeah, but it’s still a powerful image. So where was this drawing supposed to be published?

ROMITA: It was supposed to be a demonstration piece. What they did was to make a red-and-green Xerox of each of the parts. It was a test to see if we could do 3-D stuff, like a 3-D Captain America comic. I remember seeing the acetate version of it, and when you viewed it with 3-D glasses, the illusion worked Now It Can Be Told, Part II very well. But they abandoned the The Kirby/Romita cover for Captain America #193 (Jan. 1976)—the first idea. Lots of times, Stan would start issue in which Jack returned to write and pencil the comic he and Joe projects and Martin Goodman—or Simon had co-created in 1940—was originally intended as a someone else—would say, “The hell demonstration of a 3-D drawing. Hey, it almost makes it even without with it. It’s not worth it,” and we’d wearing red-and-green glasses! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] just drop it. We did 3-D photographic stuff where I would do backgrounds in tone, and then someone would do a laser copy to try and get a 3-D look. Do you remember those holographic covers we JA: Did you ever hear how the sales figures were on Cap? did on a few comics? Those were all demonstrating the holographic look that we were planning on doing. I did original drawings and ROMITA: Sales probably weren’t that good, but there was a flurry sometimes I inked someone else’s version on this project. of interest at first. It’s too bad it died too soon. It would have been nice to see if we could have built some momentum. Stan was doing short stories, and they weren’t like the human interest stories Marvel did later. We knocked those stories out just like we did the westerns.

JA: When you did Captain America in the 1970s, you were locked into your style and weren’t thinking about Jack Kirby by then.

ROMITA: I wasn’t. By then, I was doing it my own way and was doing it like a cross between Caniff and Kirby. One of the fun things I did in those years had to do with a new character in Captain America. Remember when we had Steve Rogers become a policeman?

Stan introduced a new character that was basically an update of Cap’s wartime sergeant, Sgt. Duffy. This sergeant was called Muldoon, for whom I used Jack Kirby as a model… though Stan had his hair colored red in order to look like an Irishman. That was a labor of love, which I did for fun. It was a cartoony version of Jack; I put a cigar in his mouth and gave him sort-of a crewcut like Jack had.

JA: You inked one of my favorite Captain America covers when

70 | CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS A DIRTY NAME!

I used to spend weeks and weeks on projects like that, which no one ever knew about. Being in the office, it’s a wonder I ever got any work done at all. I worked on a 3-D box, where I had to do cut-out figures and color them... it was like a shadowbox, where they’d light it up like a miniature stage set. I did Spider-Man dangling from a web and swinging through the shadowbox. I did a cityscape for the background. If I had saved all this stuff, I could have made a fortune on them, but it would have been a museum piece.

I also did toy designs which sometimes got made and sometimes didn’t. I spent a couple of years doing toy designs. I also designed the Spider-Man balloon in the Macy’s parade with Manny Bass, who was the engineer in charge of balloons. He was a genius! He explained the aerodynamics of balloons, so I could design it to work. Manny gave me a great compliment when he said, “It’s one of the best balloons we have.”

I spent a lot of time doing things that weren’t comics. I did

coloring books and children’s books, which is something I always forget to tell people. Sol Brodsky and I ran the special projects department, so I was out of mainstream comics for 3-4 years, starting in 1981. That’s about the time I gave up the Spider-Man newspaper strip. I worked for Marvel for 40 years, 30 of it on staff, from 1966 to 1996. And Virginia worked on staff for 21 years, from 1975 to 1996.

JA: Since we’ve strayed off the subject a bit, let me ask you about a couple of people you knew while on staff at Marvel. Like Bill Everett.

ROMITA: That’s one of my cherished periods. There was a time when I was sitting three feet away from Jerry Siegel, who was proofreading for us. Now, I was buying Sub-Mariner when I was ten years old and Bill Everett was one of the top guys in the business. And here I was, working near Bill Everett and gabbing all day long. Now I had Jerry Siegel sitting there on my left—I was like a kid in heaven. It was amazing! I had great experiences like that. Gil Kane used to come in and talk all the time and it was wonderful.

JA: Jerry Siegel was the other guy I was going to ask you about.

How long did he work there?

ROMITA: About four months, I think. He needed some money, and I think Stan was glad to have him proofread for a while. He was very

The Gloves Are Coming Off! Is the splash of this unsigned lead-off story from Captain America #77 drawn completely by Romita? It’s a beaut, either way. The remaining two panels are certainly all-Romita. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

quiet and certainly didn’t blow his own horn; he didn’t talk a lot.

He’d wear a blue shirt and a dark tie and sweater. He didn’t come in looking like one of the guys who created the industry. Maybe some other guys would have been strutting around like roosters, but he was not that kind of guy.

Besides what happened to him with Superman, Jerry also had that bad stretch at Ziff-Davis, which ended up in failure. That must have been hard on him, after being top-dog for so long and having to admit he couldn’t make a buck anymore. I’m sure he wasn’t having fun at that time and had no reason to blow his own horn. I always felt terrible for him. I wanted to go over to him and act like a fan, but I never did. I should have done that, but you know how it is. You want to be a pro and not embarrass anybody.

JA: Did anybody ever really talk to him in the office?

ROMITA: I’m sure they did; I’m sure Stan did. But I was always working with my head down. I didn’t pay a lot of attention, unfortunately. That was a bad mistake I made. I wish I had paid more attention to my surroundings.

JA: Let’s get back to Bill Everett.

Willing & Abel Jack Abel inked at least two of John’s three stories in Captain America #76, the first revival issue, such as this lead-off tale. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: Bill was a wonderful guy to work with. I can’t tell you what a joy it was to work with him, though he had health problems.

He used to tell us stories about working in the old Timely bullpen with John Severin and Joe Maneely. Can you imagine those three in

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 71

Time And Typing Wait For No Man We printed all three splashes from Captain America #78 with our big Romita interview back on p. 28; so here’s a pair of action-packed story pages from that issue. At left, Cap and Bucky battle the Commie super-villain Electro on a giant typewriter straight out of a Bill Finger Batman script—while, at right, Cap literally tries to make time stand still. Alas, that was beyond even the power of the Sentinel of Liberty, and after #78 he went back into mothballs for a decade.

But you can’t keep Captain America down—and since 1964 he’s been back for over forty years, and is still going strong! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

the same bullpen? They used to go out to lunch and sometimes came back a little bit tipsy because they’d had a couple of beers. Bill told me that they used to exchange pages. “Hey, I’ll work on your pages and you work on mine, and we’ll get them done fast.” [mutual laughter] They did all sorts of kooky things. I can only imagine how much fun they had while trying to make a living.

ROMITA: I appreciate that. It means a lot to me to hear that. It always makes me feel great when a guy tells me that I was responsible for him sticking with the business and not giving up. It makes my day, because it means that all those hours of working in the city were worth it. I helped you because you had talent and just needed some help—and you listened to advice.

I think Bill worked on staff until he died. He was there every day and inked other people’s work, like Gene Colan, Jack Kirby, and Ross Andru, in addition to coloring stories. Bill did wonderful work. It was almost a crime to ask him to work on someone else’s stuff when he was quite a genius. But he didn’t mind it. He did struggle because of his health. When he was working at home, instead of the office, he’d come up with some strange stories about why he couldn’t get a job done. But he wasn’t feeling that well. I know he had quit drinking because he was getting pretty healthy at the end there. But it all caught up to him and his body was not strong enough to fight it through when his health broke down. It was so sad, because he was such a great and very talented guy.

JA: How could I not, when it came from you? You knew how to give honest, direct criticism. You put me on the right track by telling me were I was going wrong.

JA: I know I’ve done this before, but I just can’t end this without telling you how grateful I am to you for all that you did to help me become a pro. You really went out of your way at times for me. I remember you called me up long distance once, saying you didn’t have time right then to mark up my samples, so you decided to spend a few minutes telling me what to concentrate on.

72 | CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS A DIRTY NAME!

ROMITA: That’s what I was after. Virginia used to tell me I was tough, but I said, “At least I’ll set them on the right track.” I’ll tell you the truth: if you ever heard me go over my own artwork, you’d hear me tearing it apart. Half the stuff I did was nowhere near where I wanted it to be. I was as hard on myself as I was on anybody else, and I never was cruel to anyone else.

JA: I’ll certainly vouch for that! A lot of what I do today is because of you. Not only that, you’ve done the same for a lot of other people and you deserve recognition for your good works.

ROMITA: Thank you very much. That makes a big difference to me, when I find out that what I did paid off for someone.

FIN

JOHN ROMITA – The 2006-2007 Interview One Of Comics’ Major Talents Talks About His Years At Marvel, DC, & Elsewhere Conducted by Jim Amash

T

his third and final interview took place over the course of several phone calls in late 2006 and early 2007. Because it was originally scheduled to appear in an issue of Alter Ego magazine, Jim made a conscious effort to avoid covering ground that had been walked in the two Romita interviews he and I had done earlier… and to talk with John not only about his own work, and to a certain extent about that of his wife Virginia and his son John, Jr., but also about the many artists, writers, editors, letterers, and others he has known in the course of a career which spans well over half a century. —Roy.

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris Wonderful Women John Romita by John Romita—flanked by two of his fabulous females. What? You say JR never penciled Wonder Woman? Well, maybe not for DC Comics, but he drew her for WW collector extraordinary Joel Thingvall—only giving her Mary Jane’s face and hair! Below is a drawing of earlier ladyfriend Gwen Stacy, with Spider-Man on her arm. Spidey and portrait pencils courtesy of Aaron Sultan. [Portrait ©2007 John Romita; Wonder Woman TM & ©2007 DC Comics; Gwen & Spider-Man TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“I Felt Like I Couldn’t Pencil Any More” JIM AMASH: Why did you decide to work on staff at Marvel, rather than freelance?

JOHN ROMITA: After fifteen years in the business—the last eight years between ’58 and the middle of ’65 when I worked at DC—I felt like I couldn’t pencil any more. I was burned out and figured there was no way I could make a living if I had to struggle to pull pencil work out of me every day.

So I decided that I was going to ink only. On top of that, when I talked to Stan in ’65, I told him I was getting out of comics due to burn-out. I had a terrible couple of months; I actually couldn’t produce. There were days when I produced not a single panel, and I wasn’t making any money; and I was practically in tears a couple of times, because I was figuring I couldn’t make a living any more.

So I told Stan that I was going to work in an advertising agency from 9-to5. What he did to keep me in the business was to say, “Suppose I pay you a salary and you come into the office?

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 73

ROMITA: I still had a page rate to do freelance work.

JA: But not for what you were doing in the office.

ROMITA: Right, but technically I didn’t have a quota. However, I had an obligation that, if I took on a job, I had to get it in on time.

When I was working at home, Stan gave me a guaranteed salary, but I had to get in like ten pages every five days or so. I couldn’t work with a quota, so I took the salary and a freelance rate, and whatever work I got done on my own time was gravy. Whatever sleep I missed was my problem.

JA: You were unable to draw, but once you got the staff job, you were able to draw again. How did you fight that problem?

ROMITA: Well, I inked one story and two or three covers, and I was convinced that that’s what I was going to do—just inking, from then on. My biggest fear was that I was going to be given all the garbage, because if you were an inker that could correct weak pencils—I got a reputation up at DC late in the ’50s. When I first went to DC, I was inking people who were not very good pencilers, and they were counting on me to correct and to dress up the rather dull pencils. I would pretty up the girls and jazz up their hairstyles. Arthur Peddy drew pretty girls, but he made their arms very long. I used to shorten all the arms. [mutual laughter] He was one of the DC romance artists and he did nice stuff, but it was very quiet. Everybody was sort-of half-awake in the books, so I used to jazz them up. I put bigger smiles on their faces, and gave them a little bone structure, so they didn’t look like they were all Barbie dolls. The biggest problem I had with him was to shorten their arms. I mean, I shortened every girl’s arms in every story I did for him. [mutual laughter] When they had their hand up to their face, their elbows reached below their waist.

Once An Avengers Artist…

Splash of Romita’s inking of Don Heck’s pencils on The Avengers #23 (Dec. 1965).

Repro’d from The Essential Avengers, Vol. 1. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

You don’t have to come in every day if you don’t want, but the office is here. If you want to come in every day, fine. But if you want to work at home one day and come into the office the next day, it’s okay, and I’ll guarantee you $250 a week.” At that time, that’s what I needed to make my payments on my mortgage and things. I was going to take an entry-level job at BBD&O, and I think the job was going to pay two-fifty. A neighbor of mine was an art director there; he told me to come up there and get work. And I was going to work with Mort Meskin. So I told Stan, “Okay, one of the things that I think screwed me up was the fact that I couldn’t be disciplined when I worked at home. If I take the job, I’ll come into the office as often as I can get myself out of the house, depending on if I work late at home.”

Stan gave me a desk in the production room, and he gave me supplies, and I started going in. At first, I used to leave around 4:00 in the afternoon to beat the rush, because I wasn’t on any clock.

Sometimes I worked late at night. I would get home and get rolling, and work until two or three in the morning, so I wouldn’t go to the office the next day. But I realized I was better off going into the office every day, so I did, and I got more work done. Pretty soon, I was obliged to come in and punch a clock every day, [mutual laughter] and that’s how come I was in the office from January of ’66 until March 30th of ’96. I was in the office every day!

JA: You didn’t have a page rate—you just had a salary, right?

74 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

When I told Stan that I wanted to ink, I remembered my DC days and thought to myself, “I bet I’m going to start getting all the dregs of pencils. He won’t give me Jack Kirby, and he won’t give me the top artists. He will give me all the guys who can’t draw. I could end up killing myself here. They’ll be making the money and I’ll be breaking my neck.”

JA: The first person you inked was Kirby, wasn’t it?

ROMITA: It was a Kirby Avengers #23 cover. [NOTE: See p. 39.]

Then I inked the story over Don Heck, which was a natural for me, because I had worked with Heck a couple of times in the romance department at DC. In fact, Heck, ironically enough, helped bail me out during one of those dry [DC] periods when I couldn’t pencil. I called Don Heck and begged him to help me out, and he penciled a 7pager in about two days. I told him he didn’t have to spot any blacks, just draw some outlines. He saved my life, because I wouldn’t have gotten any money for about two weeks there, and I remembered it fondly. When I went to ink his Avengers, it was like, wow, this is amazing. It’s payback time. I had such a ball inking that Avengers story.

JA: Don Heck’s pencils were normally very complete, weren’t they?

ROMITA: Yes, but very stylized. He’d have three-quarters views that had a certain similarity. Everybody had the same three-quarter view.

Everybody sort-of had a short nose. He was very stylized, to the point where he would not change features on a lot of people. But by the time he was doing The Avengers, his stuff was terrific. It was better than his romance stuff.

JA: He probably felt freer and probably was more challenged. Like you said, you get bored drawing romance stories all day long.

ROMITA: Absolutely. Don was a very good penciler and drew beautiful women. The shapes weren’t always the same as my natural

taste, but I was always able to ink him pretty well. I don’t know if he liked it, because I had a habit of changing some things like hairstyles. I would add waves to the hair if I thought it was too straight. I think a lot of pencilers didn’t like that too much.

Don was a very modest guy, but a solid pro who knew he was good. He had a wonderful style that I envied, because you could see at a glance that this was Don Heck.

Nobody’s work looked like Heck’s. The same was true with Gene Colan, and Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby. I always felt those guys were much more professional than I was, because they had a real style, and I was sort of generic.

I always felt a little inadequate compared to those guys.

When I looked at my stuff, I felt like I was doing commercial art, like I was doing—you know who Andrew Loomis was. When I was in high school, the Andrew Loomis books were like a Bible to me, and I was in the habit of drawing everybody the same way Loomis did.

When I drew a smile on a person, it looked like a toothpaste smile to me. I was making everybody look like a model in a Sunday advertising supplement.

JA: I thought your work had a lot of glamour to it.

ROMITA: Well, it did have glamour. What I think it lacked was a little bit of grit. In other words, everybody doesn’t have a straight nose or a beautiful mouth, and sometimes you need to add little personality. For instance, Don Heck did a prizefight scene in The Avengers, and he drew a guy with a cauliflower ear. When I was inking him, I was thinking, “You know, that’s something I never think of.” I might have done it if I drew a prizefight story, but I never thought of doing distinctive stuff like where the guy has a broken nose and a bad-looking ear. Everybody had perfect ears in my stuff.

Marie Severin used to point that out to me. She used to say that my buildings were too clean, and looked like they were just built and opened for business. There wasn’t a crack or a smudge or a chipped stone or a chipped brick anywhere. She said, “Everything looks too new in your stuff.” And she pointed out that, for instance, you look at Ditko’s rooftops: the water towers looked like they had been stained for 10 or 15 years, and there were splits in the Step On A Crack… wood and rusty bands around the water towers, and the Maybe Marie Severin said John Romita’s buildings looked “too clean,” without a crack rooftops were all a little weather-beaten. Marie said, when I anywhere… but he did crack a board or two on the cover of Tower of Shadows #2 (Nov. drew a rooftop, [chuckles] it looked like it was something 1969), where he worked from her basic layout. Neal Adams wrote and drew the story out of a model city: “For God’s sakes, put a crack in the inside (see p. 152). Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art; thanks to Al Bigley. sidewalk once in a while.” I used to have perfect curbstones [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] and brand new sewers, you know, and the fire hydrants all looked like they were molded out of plastic, so she was John Severin story. They were very rustic: no polish on the floors, no right. She was dead on: “You’ve got to dirty up people and wrinkle up ceiling tiles... everything was rough-hewn. Marie came from that their clothes a little.” [mutual laughter] background, and that’s what she added to my stuff. She always kept

“I Felt Like We Were Losing Something” JA: Back to Heck for a moment: you both had one of the same major influences, meaning Milton Caniff.

ROMITA: Heck was in the same line as I was, like all of the other guys behind Scorchy Smith by Noel Sickles and Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. Almost all of us sprang from that stuff. Marie didn’t come from that. She was more influenced by the EC artists because she worked with them, and she was influenced by her brother John, too. When John drew any kind of clothing, or woodwork, or something, there were chips and dents in it. Things looked worn in a

me on my toes.

JA: Let me finish up with Heck. Are there any personal anecdotes about him that you remember?

ROMITA: He was very unhappy because Stan would ask him to do stuff that was more like Kirby and Buscema and me. One time, Don got very mad and came into my office, saying, “If Stan wants Kirby and Buscema and Romita, why doesn’t he just give the work to Kirby, Buscema, and Romita?” I told him, “Don, there’s nothing wrong with your stuff. All Stan wants is for you to put a little bit of the dynamics that Kirby does, and maybe some of the drama that Buscema and I put in there.” I don’t know why, but Stan gave the impression that

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 75

roundhouse blow and have the other guy crash through a wall. What Stan wants is more excitement, more exaggeration. If a guy’s pounding on his desk, he’s shaking the desk, he’s shaking the floor, that kind of stuff. It’s not like you’re far away from what Stan wants, he just wants you to add a certain amount of little extra strength and intensity in it, a little bit of power.”

Don tried, but he never quite satisfied Stan. Don had the same problem with other Marvel editors. I constantly tried to keep him trying, and he would say, “I can’t do it. I obviously don’t please these guys.” It was very hard, because I always felt like if I could have Don in the office with me for a couple of days, maybe we could work it out, but we never had the opportunity. It broke my heart, because he was one of the first guys to draw the Marvel super-heroes, like “Iron Man.” I felt like this is crazy. If Ditko’s leaving and Don Heck can’t get along with Stan, I felt like we were losing something.

JA: But some of that life was in Don’s inks over Kirby.

ROMITA: He could do beautiful ink jobs, but I don’t think he liked inking a lot. He preferred to pencil. Actually, I think Stan thought his ink line was a little bit too delicate, too fine. He used a very fine pen line, and Stan liked a little bit more guts in his inking—like Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, and a few other guys. I don’t think Don Heck wanted to be just an inker, because he would have been doing corrections on people’s stuff, and everybody else would have been doing the storytelling. When Don left that day, I felt blue for like a week. I called him up a couple of times and said, “Don, have you thought it over? Do you want to reconsider and not—?” And he said, “Naw, I’m finished with Stan. I’m tired of taking that criticism.” It was one of the worst days I had.

Let Your Model Sheet Be Your Guide (Above:) A super-hero model sheet John prepared for artists in the late 1960s. Just add costume and stir. Roy Thomas believes it may have been over copies of this sheet that he designed the look of the original four members of the Squadron Sinister/Supreme for The Avengers, and later of Union Jack for The Invaders. With something like this to work with, anybody could be an artist!

(Right:) A 1976 “Marvel Tryout Artist Guide” sheet prepared under Romita’s supervision, featuring Captain America poses penciled by himself and others—most particularly by Jack Kirby, at right center. The inking of that Kirby figure is John’s. Thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Don’s work needed to be fixed up a little bit. He always asked me to correct certain things, and somewhere along the line he seemed to be a little critical of him, and Heck just said, “To hell with this, I’m not going to do it any more.” It bothered me very much, because I was thinking to myself, “How can I talk this guy into meeting Stan halfway?”

It happened to other artists down through the years. There were a couple of guys who got a lot of flak from Stan because there wasn’t enough excitement in their work. When their characters were shouting, their mouths were only half-open. With Kirby, when somebody shouted, his jaw got disconnected; you could see his tongue and tonsils, and all his teeth. Don was a very good artist, but Stan and he were constantly at each other because Stan would say, “Well, it’s a little too mild. You need a little bit more excitement here, a little more intensity, a little more flashing in the eyes, a little more jagged edges.” Don was doing the best he could. Once I spent two hours on the phone with him. He lived out of town, and he called me, saying, “I don’t know what to do. I can’t seem to please Stan.” I told him, “Listen, there’s nothing wrong with the work you do. If you’re going to have somebody punch somebody, have him punching with a

76 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

“If You’re Going To Pay Kirby, You Should Use Kirby The Way He Is” JA: Obviously, if Stan didn’t like his work, he wouldn’t have hired him in the first place.

ROMITA: That’s what I said, but Don was saying, “Stan gives me jobs, but he asks me to be somebody else.” And, you know, even Jack Kirby used to feel the same way.

Whenever we had to make a change, I used to explain to Jack I wasn’t changing anything because Stan didn’t like the way it looked. I changed it because Stan said, “I want a smile on this girl. I don’t want her frowning.” He would change the meaning of a story by changing the characters’ reactions. Jack would have a calm look on a girl’s face or a frown, and Stan would decide to make a joke in that panel to lighten the mood, so he would ask me to put a smile on the girl’s face, which made Jack angry.

I remember Jack saying, “If you’re going to pay Kirby, you should use Kirby the way he is.” I understood what he meant, but I told Jack the change was done because Stan was changing the thrust of a certain scene to get either humor or more emotion into it, or less emotion into it. But I couldn’t quite reach Jack, because he didn’t like the idea of anybody changing his stuff.

But when he worked with Joe Simon, I think Joe used to make him make changes, which was one of the reasons they didn’t stay together. Joe Simon used to constantly ask him to change this, change that. And when Jack worked with Stan, Stan was always making little suggestions that bothered him; then, when he went to DC, they did the same thing. They had people changing his Superman faces. I didn’t talk to Jack for about three or four years while he was at DC, except for the time he asked me to go over and draw one of his features for Surf’s Up! the Fourth World. I was really very tempted Romita’s own version of The Silver Surfer, in a layout also featuring Dr. Doom and a nameless android. Thanks to do it, but I was too chicken. Actually, if he to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] had stayed in New York, instead of moving that DC had this mindset that they were doing comics like history to California, I might have done it, because I really admired him. I books. And the editors had nothing else to do but to criticize. Almost would have loved to work with him. every DC editor I knew criticized just for the fact that they could I think I asked Stan this once. I said, “Stan, if I had gone with Jack criticize, and they felt that, this way, they were earning their money. and had helped him out doing penciling, one of those books or maybe Stan wasn’t like that: most of the time, he accepted stuff from artists two of those books, do you think it might have changed the reaction like Jack. But the same kind of editorial attitude they gave Kirby... this from DC?” And he said he didn’t know. He said he wondered, is what Don Heck was tired of hearing, because he had the same because DC was very critical of Jack. They never seemed to accept criticism at DC at times.

Jack for what he was.

Only Stan Lee would have accepted The Silver Surfer. If you took One reason he left Challengers of the Unknown [in 1959] was The Silver Surfer to a DC editor, he would have laughed at you. Who that the DC editors were brutal to him. They used to criticize little can believe that a guy could take a surfboard, and travel through space things. He did a Western for them once, and they criticized him on it? I used to tell Stan that, if I had enough imagination to come up because he had the Indian getting on the wrong side of the horse. He with that idea, I would have discounted it. I would have thought, said, “No kid cares what side an Indian gets on the horse!” I told him “Naw, that’s too silly.” I also said, “It’s not only a tribute to Jack

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 77

Stan used to tell me, when guys like me and Jack Kirby brought in something that he didn’t expect to see, it was a challenge to him, and then he wouldn’t settle for anything less. He wanted to make it even better. For instance, I’d draw a guy lighting a cigarette in the foreground, and in the background were the two heroes walking away. Stan used to say, “Damn it, John. Don’t make those people in the foreground so interesting, because I feel like I want to write the guy into the story!” [mutual laughter] What that revealed was that Stan was making use of every little thing that he could. Once he saw the drawing, other things popped into his mind. That’s why he would change expressions, come up with a little byplay between the characters, because he saw an opportunity to get cute and delicate and subtle.

I could never convince guys like Gil Kane and Jack Kirby that Stan was doing it for the good of the story. He wasn’t doing it to show off. They never bought it.

JA: Roy Thomas used to do the same thing Stan did. Of course, he was following Stan’s lead.

ROMITA: He did, because Roy understood how brilliant it was. He also recognized that one of Stan’s great traits was the fact that he could utilize a lot of input from different mentalities. Just think of the wide range of an approach between Kirby, Ditko, me, Heck, John Buscema, and Gene Colan. If you brought one thing to the table, Stan could make it work. If you brought another thing to the table, he could make that work, too. Stan used to challenge us to do a story that he couldn’t make better. He always used to tell me, “You can’t do it bad enough to ruin it.”

JA: What was it like to work for Stan on a day-to-day basis?

“People… People Who Need People…”

An example of Romita’s making “background people” so interesting that, if this were an interior page, Stan Lee would’ve wanted to put dialogue balloons over their heads!

Somehow, he resisted the temptation on the cover of Spidey Super Stories #1 (Oct. 1974), the comic book produced in conjunction with TV’s educational Electric Company.

Repro’d from a photocopy of the (autographed) original art, with thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: It was a little crazy, because I’d be fighting a Spider-Man deadline and Stan would tell me, “Okay, don’t do any cover sketches today. Just get Spider-Man done.

Close your door.” So I would close my door, and Stan put a sign on the door, saying, “Don’t disturb John Romita.” And guess who was the first guy through the door to bother me! [mutual laughter] He would come in and say, “John, I’ll only bother you for a minute. I’ve got one little thing I want you to do.” But he was so explosive, and so full of enthusiasm, that it was hard to resist him. So I was always losing time. Sometimes, he would come in and say, “Could you talk to a guy on the phone? He wants to know what I want him to do on a certain story. I’ve got the Xeroxes here—tell him what I want.” That’s because Stan was busy with something else. But I was

Kirby that he came up with that idea in the first place, but that he believed in it enough to sell it, to make it work.” The biggest difference in the world is that Stan Lee not only accepted it, he ran with the ball and made it work even better.

JA: Stan’s criticism was constructive criticism, not meant to justify his position.

ROMITA: To some, it may have looked like it was ego, but it wasn’t.

Stan was doing the best story he could come up with, and if he could refine it—in other words, when the artists were doing the “silent picture” drawings, Stan would add stuff that he wouldn’t have thought of if he were writing a full script. When Stan saw the drawings, a million new ideas popped into his head. What he saw was a chance to get a subtle twist in there, that wasn’t even imagined when we were discussing the plot.

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John Apes Jack A deliberately Kirbyesque drawing by Romita of Spider-Man. Thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

always a diplomat. Stan told me what to tell them, and I would try to sugarcoat it.

JA: It was easier for you to talk to another artist because you were an artist and Stan wasn’t.

ROMITA: Exactly. I could also taper it off and not make it as severe as Stan would. Stan would sometimes say the stuff was much too dull, it needs to be jazzed up—and I would sort-of sweeten the pot and tell them if you do this, this, and that, you’ll probably be okay. I was sort-of his hitman for a while there, and I used to give young people Stan’s indoctrination speech. It was like “How To Do It the Marvel Way.” I would tell a young guy, “What you need to do is get a little more excitement in your stuff.” I told them all the things that Stan told me for ten years.

JA: You told me once that, the first day you started there, Marie Severin was making corrections on a Jack Kirby cover.

ROMITA: I don’t remember that. But we all did some corrections on other people’s work. One of the first days I went up there, I was turning in the Avengers inks, and at that time I met Jack Kirby, who was correcting a Steve Ditko cover. Quite often, we would have to make slight changes in the Kirby covers because he would draw the costume wrong, or use the wrong villain, or Stan would decide to put another character in there, or take one out. So there were always slight changes being done in the pencils before they got inked, or after.

JA: I love your inks over Kirby. At times, where Jack would just draw slashes, you would impressionistically put the muscles in. And sometimes you would realistically put the muscles on Jack’s figures.

ROMITA: Sometimes Stan asked me to do that, and I’ll tell you who else used to do it. For a while, Stan fell in love with Vinnie Colletta’s scratchy pen technique to delineate musculature.

If you look at my first Daredevil cover, I didn’t do half of those pen lines in Ka-Zar’s arms and legs. Most of them were done by Vinnie Colletta.

Stan would notice that Kirby simplified the tendon lines and drew big slashing lines through the middle of an arm, and he would ask me to show the bicep more, or to show the muscles in the forearm more.

So I would add a few extra little lines in there to try and make it look a little bit rounder in places.

Taking Up A Collection John’s pencils for an unused Amazing Spider-Man cover that would’ve showed that acquisitive alien, The Collector, about to collect nothing less than Abraham Lincoln! Thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“I Thought The Way [Jack Kirby] Did Things Was The Way To Do Everything” JA: Of course, your line was more organic than Jack’s, too.

ROMITA: Yeah, actually, sometimes it would be good. I remember when I did that Daredevil #13 cover—you know, with the manhole, and Ka-Zar coming out? I loved that. I had so much fun doing that cover, I was like a kid at a toyshop. I would have done that for nothing. And sometimes, everything clicked. That Daredevil figure just clicked. Everything Jack penciled, I knew how to ink it and I felt like it was right. Some of the stuff with Ka-Zar, I think I got lost a

little bit because Jack’s pencils weren’t as definite, and my choices might not have been perfect. My memory of it is that I did a good Daredevil, right? [mutual laughter] You know, my personal images of what I was supposed to be doing was always much more—I had much more expectation than satisfaction. I always imagined it being like a work of art, and I would always have to settle for what I ended up with, and nobody knew what I wanted it to look like.

JA: I saw some pencil Xeroxes of a “Captain America” story Kirby had done, where you had redrawn Sharon Carter, Agent 13.

[NOTE: See next page.] Did Stan ask you to do that? Did he just not like the way Jack drew women, or did he want them prettier?

ROMITA: Stan told me to do that. I would never do that on my own.

Sometimes Jack would make them too wide-faced. Stan would ask me

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 79

inked him. Kirby’s work had changed because he and Joe Simon had a peculiar way of doing it. Simon or another inker would outline the figures, and Jack added shading and detail.

JA: Right, but later, Jack’s figures were a little heavier, a little chunkier, a little more forceful, a little bolder.

ROMITA: True. He once drew very lean figures. I think Stan and Jack must have arrived at the idea of making the characters very much larger than life. Jack believed in mythology, both Greek and Norse, and he just carried the ball.

JA: Kirby’s art was the Marvel Look by the ’60s. What about it, do you think, spoke to the readers?

ROMITA: It’s the fact that he wasn’t restricted. Stan gave him a lot more leeway than DC did. When he worked with Joe Simon, they had a formula. When Jack got a chance to knock the stuff out, and use some of his own character ideas, Stan didn’t hold him back. Jack used to surprise Stan with unexpected characters, almost every time he turned in a story. Sometimes he threw away good characters by page 5. Sometimes he came up with an unexpected character like The Silver Surfer, so Stan was shrewd enough to let him carry the ball.

JA: You were there when the Silver Surfer/Galactus storyline was going on. What did you think of that work?

ROMITA: It was a great departure, very imaginative. Take Galactus, who devours planets. I don’t think any other editor or any other artist would have even taken that direction. Instead of talking about knocking down buildings, Kirby’s talking about eating planets. Then he comes up with The Silver Surfer, who’s a herald for Galactus, riding through space on a surfboard. I guarantee you there was not another team in the world that would have said, “Let’s go with this.”

They were thinking so much outside the box that every time the readers saw something new, their eyebrows raised up. “Whoa! What’s this? This is not run-of-the-mill mild half-smiles and sleepy eyelids.”

Romita Inks Kirby Kirby penciling, Romita inking, on the cover of Daredevil #13 (Feb. 1966), as per The Essential Daredevil, Vol. 1. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

to give her a little more cheekbone, make her a little more glamorous.

I always was walking a tightrope there, because I really loved the way Jack drew women. Big Barda is one of my favorite characters of all time. When he drew those big, beautiful super-heroines, I wouldn’t have touched them for the world. But when it came to Sharon Carter, Stan wanted more delicacy and softness, which Jack didn’t put in there. I did an awful lot of Sharon Carter faces, though I felt obliged not to lose Kirby. The fact is, I failed a couple of times and people noticed, so I got a terrible rap because of it. They thought that this egomaniac was changing these on his own. I told Jack many times, “I don’t change one thing of yours unless Stan begged me to do it.” I hope he believed me, because I did not want to hurt his feelings.

Jack Kirby was one of my idols. I thought the way he did things was the best way to do everything. When I was a kid, I bought his romance books. I still have one that’s crumbling in my files, a beautiful story called “Donovan’s Woman.” And if you ever see that story, it’s like a movie on paper, and the things that he does in it... nobody could draw a romance story like Jack Kirby. He was the guy who invented romance comics.

JA: I know what you thought of Kirby’s work while you were drawing “Captain America” back in the 1950s. By the time you came to Marvel in the ’60s, Jack’s style had changed quite a bit.

ROMITA: It was polished up a bit, but it also depended on who

80 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

A Facelift In India Ink Romita penciled the “Captain America” story laid out by Kirby in Tales of Suspense #77 (May 1966)—but Sharon Carter/Agent 13, introduced in the preceding issue, looks here far more like a Romita woman than a Kirby female, as per the directive from writer/editor Stan Lee. Inks by Frank Garcia. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

There were no sleepy lids in this. Characters were wide awake and screaming at the top of their lungs.

When jaws were dropping and mouths were opening, you could see tonsils. That’s when Jack was letting himself go. The evolution that started back in the early ’50s, when he started doing Fighting American and things like that, exploded in the 1960s.

JA: Did you ever have lunch with Kirby when he came into the Bullpen?

ROMITA: We used to go out to lunch as a group.

Maybe once a month, we went to the Playboy Club. I used to laugh to myself because these Playboy bunnies would lean across the table and stick their boobs in our faces and shake their fannies at us. They were doing their job, keeping men happy. And we were talking comics!

Here was Jack and me talking about adventure stuff and George Tuska, and Jack was telling me that someday I’ll see comic book art on museum walls. I’m laughing, saying, “Aah, it’ll never happen,” while these girls are shaking their booty, and we’re not paying attention to them. It’s not that I didn’t care, but I didn’t have a lot of chances to talk to Jack. I certainly wasn’t going to waste my time looking at a girl.

I remember asking him about The Black Panther. He said that was from some storyline he’d worked on for years, that he loved the idea of a black hero like that. He loved mythology. So if there was an African mythology, then he was going to latch onto it, just like he practically lived in Norse mythology. When he did the “Thor” stuff, he was in his own backyard. He loved those characters so much. He lived and died with them. African mythology was one of his pet projects, and he told me he loved the idea of The Black Panther being a royal African with a 500-year history, and things like that. I told him once he threw away more ideas than I can think of.

His throwaway bin, probably, was worth millions. I can imagine going through all of his wastebaskets and “coming up” with all the ideas that he didn’t use.

JA: When he penciled covers, do you know if he talked to Stan first?

ROMITA: I think they talked about it on the phone. Occasionally, I was in the back seat of Stan’s Cadillac

…But There Ain’t No Tigers in Africa, Jack!

Jack Kirby’s early sketch of the “Coal Tiger” character, who eventually metamorphosed into The Black Panther. Thanks to John Morrow. [Art ©2007 Estate of Jack Kirby.]

Ghoul’s Out For Summer!

John feels Kirby’s real artistic “evolution” began when he and partner Joe Simon were doing Fighting American. Here’s a splash from FA #2 (June-July 1954), as per Marvel’s 1989 hardcover reprint. [©2007 Joe Simon & Estate of Jack Kirby.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 81

when they plotted stories. I don’t remember them ever talking about covers. They were generally talking about long-range plans, and then for the next two or three issues: “We’re going to drift in this direction, and that direction.” Generally, Stan would tell him that he would like a cover with a big figure, and then the next cover might be a battle scene, or something like that.

“[Stan] Liked My Ideas Quite A Bit” JA: As far as you know, when they were going to introduce a new character, like if Jack had an idea for a new character, how did that work? Did he come in and talk to Stan?

ROMITA: I never sat in on their meetings. When they had a plotting session, the door was closed. But when Jack would send in, say, the first ten pages of a story—and this is how I knew where things came

from—Stan would say to me, “Jack completely changed what we wanted the opening to be.” He’d introduced the character on the splash page because, probably, he felt like drawing a monster, so he just put the character on the splash page. Probably, Stan told him, “Let’s open up with an unconnected fight, just to get the book going.

And then if we have to get rid of this creature, the real story will start.” Or Jack would bring a character in because he liked drawing him, and then he would kill him by page 5. Stan would go crazy, saying, “Hey, this was a good character! Why the hell did he kill him?” [mutual laughter] They didn’t always remember what the other had said. Jack would say one thing, and Stan would say another thing. They only remembered their own suggestions, not the other guy’s suggestions. That was true when I plotted with Stan, too.

Many times, I thought I had convinced Stan that we were going to go in a certain direction in the storyline. And then when he would get

The Co-Plot Thickens Several of the villains for “Spider-Man” stories John co-plotted with Stan Lee make up the background of this commission drawing done for Aaron Sultan.

[Spider-Man & villains TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

82 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

Hangin’ Around the work, he would say, “No, that’s not what we agreed on.” And I’d say, “Yeah, don’t you remember? You said, ‘Go ahead with that.’” So everybody has his own memory. I went home and tried to remember what we talked about, but I had trouble separating what I remembered that Stan said, and what I wanted to do. I should have taken notes, but I couldn’t because I was so busy trying to juggle ideas with him.

We would always throw things up in the air and try to figure out some way around them. If I had kept notes, I’d have gone crazy, but I should have recorded our conversations. I’d have remembered what he suggested and which ones sounded more convincing to me, and which ones were more important to him than others.

If John R. sometimes found working with Stan Lee “nervewracking,” he should’ve taken his cue from Spidey.

Nothing like being able to spin your own hammock out of webbing anytime you want it! These pencils were done for a design for the Marvel Company Picnic t-shirt in 1993.

Courtesy of JR. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: So Stan was very involved, at least in a somewhat detailed plot, by the time you started to work on it.

ROMITA: It varied, depending on how much time we had.

Sometimes we would be uninterrupted for an hour and a half; sometimes we would get ten interruptions in an hour.

We should have gone to a private place. I don’t think we had conference rooms in those days, as we did later on.

Many times, we were halfway through a plot and he’d say, “Okay, John. I’ve got to talk to this guy in California.

Let’s get together in an hour and finish up the plot.” And we never got a chance to finish it. I’d have to piece it together, and then sometimes I would ask him a couple of questions, and nine times out of ten, I used to go home with a very vague idea of what Stan wanted. I had a couple of prominent things like who the villain was, the general premise of the story, and what kind of personal life to weave in; and then the rest of it was up to me. I’d come up with an opening, and a middle, and I would have a tough time bridging sequences. In other words, it would open up with a fight and then go to the private life, and then go back to another fight, and go back to the private life. And I would have all these nightmare problems with trying to how to make it work. Why did they break up the fight and how do they get together again?

It was nerve-wracking.

JA: When you introduced a new character like The Kingpin or The Shocker, did you have to submit a character design to Stan?

ROMITA: Yes. Usually, he just took whatever I gave him. He was very seldom critical of that kind of stuff.

All he used to do was leave me a note, saying, “Next month, I want a character called ‘The Kingpin of Crime.’” The first one was, I think, The Rhino. He said, “I want a character called The Rhino.” So I started doing some Rhino sketches, and I did what I felt was the most pedantic way to do it. I put the face in the rhino’s open mouth, that kind of stuff. I

Romita Fits Spidey To A “T”!

A T-shirt design by Jazzy Johnny. Thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 83

The Visionary Thing John Romita himself sent us a photocopy of his original art for the cover of Marvel’s Spider-Man Visionaries: John Romita Sr. book, which featured several villains he had designed, including The Rhino, Kingpin, and John Jameson. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

84 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

had to knock it out in the last minute, and it was the one with Peter Parker walking away, and Spider-Man looking over his shoulder. It turned out that it was voted one of the best super-hero covers of all time. And it was one of those things that was a last-minute emergency change. [NOTE: See next page.]

Romita On The Prowl

The other idea would have probably been a good cover, too, but Stan just had a change of heart. I did the new sketch in about 15 minutes, brought it into him, and he said, “That’s fine.”

When I drew it... I used to rule my lines with a brush, and tip my ruler up and rule straight lines. I was trembling like a leaf because it was late, I had to get the thing done, and I’m trying to do these radiating lines with a brush. It was like torture, but I managed to get away with it. I don’t think I could do it now. I’ve done a re-creation of it since, and it was even harder to do the re-creation than it was to do the original. It’s very hard for an old guy to try to keep your hand that still, you know.

(Above & below:) Late-1960s preliminary sketches by Romita of two more bad-guys from the artist’s early days as a Spidey artist. The Prowler, nee The Stalker, was conceived by John Romita, Jr., for which he received his first (but far from last!) credit in a Marvel comic. John says The Prowler/Stalker was originally supposed to be the mysterious “TV Terror” in the magazine-size Spectacular Spider-Man #2—but he has no idea what mag or storyline “The Activist”(the guy with the high forehead) was intended for! Thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: As great a job as Steve Ditko did on Spider-Man, I understand the sales on the book rose when you came aboard. How did you feel when you found that out?

thought, “Gee, this looks like a kid’s Halloween costume,” and I felt embarrassed by it.

JA: How did you and Stan work out the covers?

ROMITA: Sometimes we got together, other times he would just tell me to come up with a couple of sketches. I would do some rough sketches. For instance, if I did a fight scene and he wanted a scene with somebody showing some kind of personal emotion, he would tell me, “I want a personal character shot with an expression.” Most of the time Stan was happy with my ideas. He might make minor changes, ask for a bigger figure or show the front view of Spider-Man instead of the back view; that kind of stuff. But he was very, very open to my ideas, and I very seldom had trouble with him on cover sketches.

He liked my ideas quite a bit.

ROMITA: Well, I was struggling so much because I felt obliged to simulate Ditko’s style. I was very uncomfortable, because it was not my natural style. I was also secretly hoping Ditko would come back and say, “Nah, I changed my mind. I think I want to do the book again,” because it really felt uncomfortable and unnatural to do the book. And all I was hearing was we were getting a lot of mail, people asking why did Ditko leave, and when is he coming back? And whenever I met fans at a convention, they would come up to me and say, “When is Ditko coming back?,”

JA: You had a posterish quality in your work.

ROMITA: Yes. You know the story about the Spider-Man #50 cover. Stan loved the original cover sketch, the scene with the rain and the costume in the garbage can. But at the last minute, he said, “You know what? I like this and I want to use it inside the story, but I would rather have a poster cover.” I

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 85

good thing we made her good-looking, because he’d already established that she was! [mutual laughter] It’s funny. The good-looking Peter Parker was a bone of contention between me and Stan. He thought I was making him too good-looking, too well-groomed, and too assured-looking. He was maturing too fast, so Stan asked me to make him more nerdy—and I tried. I even had some Ditko expressions, and I even used some shots of Ditko’s as a guide. But I could not get him to look the way Ditko did, because he made Peter look a little bit distorted and a bit nebbish-like. I couldn’t do it!

And for weeks, and for months, Stan was saying, “You’re making him too muscular, you’re making him too broad-shouldered, and his clothes are too neat, and you’ve got to make him look a little bit more like an uncertain teenager.” I said, “Stan, I think my problem is, when I draw a hero, I always make him good-looking and rather sturdy-looking, and I can’t stop myself.” I was embarrassed by it because, as a professional, you’re supposed to be able to do it. And then Stan said, “I’m not getting any complaints, and the book is selling very well.”

I didn’t know the sales were going up. In those days, we didn’t get sales figures for months. We would get what they called “flash figures,” which were estimates. In other words, they would have some key spots, and they would say that, if the sales were good in

“Spider-Man No More!”

One landmark issue… two great “poster” drawings. John says the garbage can scene was originally going to be used for the cover, but Stan decided to try for a different approach there. Both pieces of artwork are today among the best-remembered and most-imitated scenes in the history of Marvel Comics. The latter is repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, as autographed for collector/dealer Mike “RomitaMan” Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

not knowing they were hurting my feelings. I used to say, “He can’t come back fast enough for me.” [mutual laughter] JA: But still, you made Peter Parker better-looking. I mean no disrespect to Steve Ditko when I say that his Mary Jane would not have been as glamorous as yours. I don’t think he would have based her on Ann-Margaret.

ROMITA: Whomever Steve based her on, I think Stan and Steve were having questions between them. They were probably trying to decide whether to make her good-looking, although, believe it or not, they had agreed that she was going to be good-looking. Well, you know something? I’m not sure they agreed. Remember the shot where Ditko put her behind foliage? And then Betty Brant and Liz looked at her waiting in some office and said, “Oh, she’s a knockout.” Stan forgot that. That was a few months before I took over. Then when we started talking about issue #42, Stan said, “What do you think? Should we make her good-looking?” It’s a

86 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

ROMITA: Yes, he was. He also was very adaptable.

If you really had no choice or really wanted to do something a certain way, and Stan could manage to write it, he would sort-of accept it. But he was on my case for quite a while, and the same thing is true when we had the dichotomy between Mary Jane and Gwen. After Mary Jane and Gwen were in the picture for about six months or so, Stan suddenly decided he wanted Gwen to outshine Mary Jane.

You remember when I was drawing them with mini-skirts and in tight clothes and low-cut dresses?

Well, [chuckles] I tried like crazy to please Stan. He said he wanted to make Gwen just as much a party girl as Mary Jane. I drew about three or four issues, and it just didn’t work, because it looked so false to me.

First of all, Stan made them have the similar hairstyles. Then he made me give Mary Jane a perm, which only lasted a short while.

Fortunately, she was out of the story for a while, and by the time she came back, she had her old hair and nobody noticed.

“Spider-Man’s Girlfriends, Gwen And Mary Jane” When John was interviewed for The Comics Journal #252 (May 2003), the cover was a Romita pencil illo showing him being made over by both Gwen and MJ. You think maybe Spidey’s sporting a disapproving frown beneath his mask in the Romita promotional drawing at right?

The latter was used in ads (and as a poster) for the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip, as corner “box art” on the comic books, and elsewhere. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Jeff Sharpe. Thanks to Gary Groth of Fantagraphics for his blessings on showing the Comics Journal cover. [Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

these spots, chances are they’re going to be good everywhere. We would get flashes, and they would say things like, “We’re not losing any sales. It sounds like we’re even picking up some sales,” but it was nothing that you could really pin your hopes on, because it was rather a question mark. Believe it or not, I think we waited like three or four months before we got final figures. Then we would know. Well, then I heard that—“Yeah, they’re selling pretty well, we’re not losing any sales”— And I was so busy, I wasn’t even paying attention.

JA: I think your approach had a greater commercial appeal than Ditko’s.

ROMITA: Maybe so, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. It’s impossible to know what would have happened had Ditko stayed on the book. But, over time, the look I gave Spider-Man became the look, and I’m very proud of that.

JA: When Stan became aware that sales were improving, was he a little less critical in regard to your Spider-Man work?

JA: My friend Don Mangus said that he thought the triangle between Peter Parker, Mary Jane, and Gwen was a lot like Archie, Betty, and Veronica.

Do you agree with that?

ROMITA: You want to know how funny that is? It’s true. I just did a pin-up for Dynamic Forces of Betty, Veronica, and Archie.

When I first did the drawing, I was going to suggest to them that I draw a similar scene with Mary Jane and Gwen and Peter Parker sipping a soda, based on the Archie cover with the three of them sitting cheek-to-cheek, drinking out of one soda glass.

JA: How aware were you at the time that the triangle was similar to Archie and Betty and Veronica?

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 87

secondary characters and Peter Parker’s personal life that sometimes could take over an entire book. It was a hell of a departure. For instance, I don’t know how many stories were just Clark Kent and Lois Lane.

“What If Gwen Stacy Had Lived?”

JA: Not many. [mutual laughter] I liked the way your characters interacted with each other. I always had the feeling that you liked drawing Captain Stacy, Gwen’s father.

ROMITA: I loved him because he was my character. I based him on one of my favorite actors of all time, Charles Bickford. Did you ever see Little Miss Marker? You remember the villain in that? Big Steve?

That was Charles Bickford. He had a very gruff voice.

As he got older, he got very bright white hair, and he was in great movies like The Farmer’s Daughter. The best movie he ever made was The Big Country.

Charles Bickford was one of the most powerful characters in that movie.

JA: Was it Stan’s idea to kill that character, or yours?

ROMITA: I believe it was Stan’s idea. I had a lot of story input. Gil Kane penciled and I inked. I felt that was a good idea, because his death was a real shock. We had built the character up, and I think Stan was going to have Captain Stacy be a confidant of Spider-Man, and maybe he was afraid of that. It would have been similar to the relationship between Police Commissioner Dolan and The Spirit.

JA: Do you think Stan was afraid to go that far?

Two Icons—And An Eyeful Well, at least John R. got to draw Archie Andrews with Mary Jane and Spidey, if not with MJ and Gwen! This celebration of Archie’s 50th “birthday” (in 1992) also appeared in the John Romita Sketch Book from Vanguard Press. [Spidey & MJ TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Archie TM & ©2007 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

ROMITA: I assumed everybody was aware of it, and that it was like a standard feature in comics to have the competition. I never really put the two of them together permanently. I just sort-of had it pass through my mind, and years later I did a shot of Mary Jane and Archie with Spider-Man hanging above them, but it never was printed because they never did that 50th Anniversary book of Archie.

JA: What do you think was, then and now, Spider-Man’s greatest appeal for fans?

ROMITA: For years, we all said we don’t know why the hell SpiderMan is a success. Martin Goodman was right: spiders are not people’s favorite creatures. I think it was the cast of his personal-life characters.

If you take them away, Spider-Man would have been boring. I think he would have immediately played himself out of the front line, because how many different ways can you do it?

If he didn’t have all of the angst and personal problems, and the aunt, and the girlfriends, and the college chums and college problems... I don’t think Spider-Man would have lasted. It was these

Problems, Problems John feels Spider-Man needs the “angst and personal problems” to sell comic books. If it was personal problems Jazzy Johnny wanted, he could always go back to drawing romance comics, like the one for which he did this pencil sketch in the early 1970s. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Separated At Birth?

Romita based Gwen Stacy’s father on actor Charles Bickford, who reached his peak in such films as The Big Country, where he played Charlton Heston’s craggyfaced, stubborn father. At left is John’s 1967 design sheet for Police Captain George Stacy; Bickford’s the one in the photo above (thanks to Nick Caputo for sending it). And at right is a good Bickford-like panel of Stacy from The Amazing Spider-Man #56 (Jan. 1968). [Spider-Man art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: I don’t know if he was afraid, or if he decided he’d rather not do that. There were hints that Captain Stacy knew Spider-Man’s identity a couple of times, and he revealed while dying that he knew all along. So it was a very, very good move, I think. I loved the character, but I felt everything’s fair in comics. You want to get any kind of impact, then anybody’s fair game to die.

JA: Of course, you’ve been over the “death of Gwen Stacy” thing a hundred times, so I wasn’t really going to ask you about that.

But what could they have done with Gwen if she had lived? That relationship was at the point where Peter Parker would just about have had to marry her.

ROMITA: True. You know the old story in television and movie serials. You get a hero who’s a private detective, who falls in love with the girl. I used to tell Virginia, “Well, she’s got about two weeks to live.” [Jim laughs] I was serious, because that’s a dead end. If a girl becomes a confidant, you can’t have her washing the dishes and him drying the dishes, and then have him go out and solve a crime. We used to always joke that, as soon as you became the sweetheart of a hero in television, you were dead meat, or you were going to have a nervous breakdown and end up in an asylum.

JA: Who was your favorite character in Spider-Man to draw?

ROMITA: I liked drawing The Kingpin the most; I even loved drawing his wife. The Kingpin’s wife was my Dragon Lady, like an older woman that I would love. I wanted The Kingpin’s wife to be like that, and to be the sensitive part of this crazy old overweight creep who was willing to kill everybody. She could have an effect on him. That always appealed to me.

JA: I always loved the way you drew J. Jonah Jameson.

ROMITA: You know, I did a funny thing. I don’t know why the hell I gave him a thicker kind of a mustache. I must have seen one issue where Ditko did a shorter mustache than usual and it stayed in my mind, because I looked back, and saw Ditko gave him almost a full

Mr. And Mrs. Kingpin A panel from ASM #84 (May 1970). Pencils by John Romita, inks by Jim Mooney, script by Stan Lee. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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that otherwise might be just ordinary. If you have two people talking and nobody’s yelling, it’s dull. Jameson was a yeller, and he was a great character.

JA: By the way, were you getting one of the top salaries?

ROMITA: You know what was interesting: I was getting the top rate until John Buscema got popular. What happened was that John would get the top rate, and as soon as he did, I would get the top rate. In other words, whenever he got a raise, I profited.

JA: Before that, Kirby had the top rate, right?

ROMITA: Well, Kirby’s rate was astronomical.

JA: John Buscema said in an interview that he had heard that, towards the end of Jack’s ’60s run, they cut his page rate.

Did you ever hear that?

Heil JJJ! J. Jonah Jameson with his “Hitlerian” mustache: above, in a character study John did in 1966, when he first took over The Amazing Spider-Man, and below in a panel from ASM #87 (Aug. 1970), repro’d from a photocopy of the original (autographed) art. Thanks to John for the former, and to Aaron Sultan for the latter. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

upper lip. I don’t know why the hell I didn’t give him a full upper mustache, because I ended up doing it almost like Hitler’s. I don’t know if that was subconscious or not, but nobody ever noticed it.

Stan never told me, “You’re doing the mustache wrong.” Stan was always very, very good. If I left a pattern out on somebody’s suit, he would notice, but he was not a browbeater.

JA: From the way you animated Jameson when you drew him, I got the feeling that you liked that character.

ROMITA: I did. Anybody who is cantankerous and explosive is good to have. You can do great things with them, because they’re almost like vaudeville characters. They’re always out there, jazzing up a scene

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ROMITA: No. I will tell you that Martin Goodman was always liable to go in to Stan and say, “I don’t think we can pay these guys this much money any more, because we’re having a bad year.” He used to do that all the time, and Stan would always be caught in the middle, saying, “I can’t risk losing this guy, Martin. I’m not going to take a chance.” And sometimes Martin Goodman would win, sometimes Stan would win. I never heard that Jack had his page rate cut. I know that I got cut in the 1950s. Every time I went in, I got a $2 cut on my rates. I went from $44 a page to $24 a page in about a year, and I was afraid to go into the office. [Jim laughs] Jack was so fast that I don’t think he got big rates during the late ’50s and the early ’60s, because nobody was getting big rates.

Marvel was practically going under. When Marvel’s books started to sell big, I think Stan made up for it by giving Kirby decent rates.

Spidey’s Bedside Manner Romita’s unused layouts for a page from The Amazing Spider-Man #70 (March 1969), courtesy of Mike Burkey. That’s Gwen and Captain Stacy the ol’ WallCrawler’s talking to. You can write your own deathless dialogue for this one! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Kirby was doing more than artwork; he was bringing all sorts of things to the table. He was bringing characters, plots, and inspiration to Stan. He was making Stan ten times a better writer, and there’s no way to limit what you could give a guy like Jack. I would have given him whatever he wanted. But businessmen don’t see that. For a couple of years, after I’d been doing Spider-Man, I was in the office, and I wasn’t doing Spider-Man any more. Believe it or not, there were times when Martin Goodman would come in when I was doing other things like covers and sketches, and ask Stan and Sol, “What does John Romita do around here?” [Jim chuckles] And when I asked for a raise one time, he didn’t want to give it to me, so I told Stan, “I’m going to have to walk.” I had gone a couple years with no raise, and I just thought I had to stand up and get it.

“Martin Goodman Was Absolutely Without Any Kind Of Compass” JA: Whom did you talk to about the raise?

ROMITA: I asked Sol, I think, because I probably asked Stan and he told me to ask Sol. Sol would tell Martin Goodman, and Martin Goodman would say, “Well, what does he do around here?” He had a terrible habit. If Stan wanted a raise, Stan would have to justify it. In other words, “What are you bringing in that’s special? Are you doing anything different than what you’ve already brought to the table?”

One of the reasons that Stan took back the title “Art Director” for a while was just to justify a raise.

Martin Goodman was absolutely without any kind of compass. He had no Like Father… direction in his Martin Goodman (on right) and son Charles “Chip” thinking. He was Goodman enjoy their cigars at a 1966 dinner party thinking small all the given for editor Bruce Jay Friedman when he left time. He was always Goodman’s company Magazine Management to pursue thinking, “Preserve a (successful) career as a freelance writer, playwright, my small profits and and novelist. Chip served as publisher of Marvel for a year or so circa 1971. Photo courtesy of margins, don’t try to Bruce Jay Friedman. get too big, don’t get bigger than my britches. We’re making good money, let’s not make any waves.”

He didn’t want to do the Spectacular Spider-Man magazine; he didn’t want to do any expensive comics, he didn’t want to do adult comics, he didn’t want to do anything that was going to make waves.

He canceled Spectacular before it got off the ground because it was oversized and because his friends told him, “Martin, what are you doing? Where are we going to fit this in? The comics racks don’t hold those magazines.”

JA: Do you think Martin Goodman didn’t fully understand what he had?

ROMITA: I don’t think he realized it. I think he was one of those guys who thought, “If I make too much money, the government’s going to come and check my books.” He was that way. He used to say to Stan, “I don’t want to make waves. Let’s not do this, let’s not do that.” But as soon as there was a slump, he would come in and say, “Stan, do something!” [mutual laughter] JA: Stan made some waves in those SpiderMan drug stories, when he went against the Comics Code Authority, and printed them anyway.

A Drug On The Market What a difference a few months had wrought! Gil Kane’s cover for The Amazing Spider-Man #96 (May 1971) gave no hint that the story inside dealt with drugs—while, only three months (and some fateful Comics Code changing in wording!) later, Green Lantern #85 (Aug.-Sept. 1971) could reveal up front that Green Arrow’s partner Speedy was a junkie. Without the Marvel tale, the DC tale might never have happened. Romita inked Kane’s pencils in the former story. GL cover by Neal Adams. [Spider-Man cover ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; GL cover ©2007 DC Comics.]

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ROMITA: We were not taking on the world.

We responded to a request from a government agency. Stan had gotten a letter, saying they think it might be good for Stan to do something that would be anti-drug, that the comic readers would be able to identify with.

He took the bull by the horns and did this whole three-part story, and we got criticized.

We were stymied by the Code Authority, and Stan said, “What, are you crazy? I’ll show you the letter from the government agency, asking us to do it.” They were so scared and they had their tail between their legs before we even started. Stan conned Martin Goodman into saying, “All right, we’re going to do this, and we’ll do it without the Code Authority.” It was the gutsiest move Stan ever made, and I think it’s probably the only good thing that Martin Goodman ever did.

We did get some fallout, and Stan had a wonderful comeback for it.

Some people accused him of glamorizing drugs by putting drugs in an entertainment package, where kids who shouldn’t even be thinking of drugs were now thinking of drugs. Stan told them, “We’ll point out one thing. This is not an advertisement for drugs. We’re not promoting its usage. We did these stories that were entertaining and fit within the Spider-Man storyline, just showing that some of the characters that we’ve been used to can suddenly succumb to drugs.

Here’s Harry Osborne, who’s a rich man’s son, and suddenly finds himself on the verge of suicide from drugs.”

DC did a drug series in Green Lantern/Green Arrow, after us.

They tried to capture some of the waves. They did it more clinically; they didn’t do it as entertainingly as we did. Stan would point out with pride, “You look at our story and there isn’t any place where the drugs take precedence over the characters.” And people still criticized, but he had a lot of support, and as you can see, it did not hurt us. It gave us a lot of outside publicity.

JA: To get off Spider-Man for a minute, for about a year or so, you went back and did Captain America in the 1970s.

ROMITA: Stan used to do that to me all the time. He was always trying to find a way for me to do more stuff. He’d say, “Could you add Captain America to your schedule?” I told him I was barely getting Spider-Man in on time. And so he started to scheme up ways: “Suppose we plot the story and somebody else pencils it.”

JA: Did he put you on Captain America, thinking you would help the sales?

ROMITA: Yes. Whenever a book was having troubles. Stan would try to use me on it. If I could have drawn faster, I would have done two books a month. I could have been doing Daredevil, I could have been doing Avengers, anything that Stan could have gotten me time to do.

The same thing when I did the Spider-Man newspaper strip. When I gave up the regular comics and was doing the newspaper strip, Stan said, “We should do another strip, nothing to do with Spider-Man.” I looked at him like he was crazy. “I can’t get any sleep now. How am I going to do another strip?” He always said he used to forget how long it took me to draw a week’s worth of strips, because he could write it in a day. He never let it sink in that I couldn’t do my part in a day. [laughs] JA: Maybe Kirby spoiled Stan because he was so fast.

ROMITA: Kirby and John Buscema both spoiled him. He used to call them up and ask, “Can you just throw in another book this month?”

And they’d say, “Sure, send it over.” I couldn’t do that. I’d say, “Listen, Stan, when I break down a story, I put so much thought into

What A “Marooned”!

Stu Schwartzberg (seen at top center in a photo from the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual) had the respect of his Marvel peers for the humor work he did on such comics as Spoof #1 (Oct. 1970). Even with his offbeat style, the caricatures of Gregory Peck and David Jansen from the film Marooned were right on target—and so was his script. When he wrote and did story breakdowns for a parody of the Ray Millard horror movie Frogs for Spoof #2 (with finished art by Marie Severin & Herb Trimpe), he had Bullpenners rolling on the floor laughing. Stu also did fine work for Crazy magazine. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

it, it takes me just as long as penciling it. I spend most of the time breaking down the story, then I finish it up quickly. But if I break it down, it doesn’t save me much time.

“When I Got There…” [Marvel 1965] JA: When you started working on staff, how many people were working in the office and who were they?

ROMITA: When I got there, Marie Severin had just been hired to do production work. Sol Brodsky was sort of an office manager and had been doing production work before Marie came in. It was only Stan, Sol Brodsky, and Stan’s secretary Flo Steinberg. In fact, Flo acted as a secretary for both Stan and Sol. Roy Thomas started almost exactly the same time as I; he came over from DC about two weeks before I did. A short while after I went on staff in January, John Verpoorten came in to do production work. Marie was also doing a lot of coloring, especially cover coloring.

That was it for a while, and then we got a stat [= Photostat] man. I think it was Herb Trimpe, believe it or not. The first job Herb Trimpe did in the Bullpen was stat work, which he did for about six months,

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 93

Cap’ll Always Have Paris A dramatic Kirby/Romita/Giacoia splash page for Tales of Suspense #77 (May 1966), complete with Jack’s art notes to Stan at top. We’re not 100% sure who sent us this photocopy of the original art—but it had the price tag of $4500 scrawled on the back. You should’ve hung on to this one, John! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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or maybe less, and then Stu Schwartzberg came in. Herb Trimpe then became a staff artist, along with Marie and I. Soon after that, Larry Lieber started coming in because we had Bullpen space and he wanted to work in the office.

JA: What do you remember about Stu Schwartzberg?

ROMITA: He was a brilliant writer and more security-minded than ambitious. When we were doing Arrgh! and other satirical books, Stu wrote some brilliant stuff, but he insisted on keeping his Photostat job. When I left Marvel, I believe he was still doing Photostat work.

You have no idea what an inventive, clever writer he was. I don’t know why he never pursued a full-time writing career. We used to beg him, “Why don’t you do this?” He didn’t want to give up his salary.

It was a big loss to comics. We used to tease that he’s still got the first dollar he ever made. [mutual laughter] They used to say that Stu wouldn’t open his pocket if he could avoid it. We used to joke with him all the time.

“[Marie Severin] Was An Amazing Artist” JA: Let’s talk about Marie Severin.

wow, Frank Frazetta as a silly kid! [Jim laughs] Marie Severin used to kid about how he was as a young teenager, showing off his muscles and dazzling all the girls, that kind of thing.

I met Frank Frazetta years later at the MegaCon, on a bus trip.

When Mark Alessi opened up Crossgen, he invited us to his new office building. We took a two-hour bus trip from Orlando to Tampa to see Crossgen. There were two young artists sitting behind me and I heard them say, “Wow, I can’t believe we’re on a bus with John Romita.” And I turned around and said, “You want to hear something funny? I can’t believe I’m on a bus with Frank Frazetta.” [mutual laughter] I had a wonderful conversation with him. It was like one of the highlights of my life.

JA: There’s a point where Marie starts drawing stories, not just in Not Brand Echh, but she takes over “The Hulk.”

ROMITA: She was an amazing artist. She was coloring almost all of our major covers at Marvel, and some of the major stories, and she was doing an occasional pencil cover, and certainly a lot of British stuff, too. She trained people like my son John when he was like 18 and 19. He was coming in summers between semesters, and doing a $5 sketch every chance he could get away to make some money. Marie

ROMITA: She came from EC and knew half the people that I idolized, guys who were like legends: Al Williamson, Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Jack Davis, and all those other great artists. Every time she told me a story about them, it was like my jaw dropped. She used to color their stories. She remembered Frank Frazetta when he was just a kid at EC, saying, “Oh, he was just a young, silly kid when he started working over there.” And I’m thinking,

Let There Be… Marie Severin!

Marie, seen here from the same 1969 FF Annual—flanked by samples of her serious and humorous art styles, in this case on the same story! In Tales to Astonish #100 (Feb. 1968) she penciled a classic Hulk/Namor slugfest. Only a few months later, in Not Brand Echh #9 (Aug. 1968), she drew a parody of that selfsame tale—and both versions were superb! The earlier splash is repro’d from The Essential Hulk, Vol. 2. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 95

on those things, because she always made fun of the fact that I used to save everything in boxes and label them. There were little boxes, with used pen points, and unused pen points, and pencil stubs 3" deep.

Every foible I ever had, she revealed to everybody.

JA: Why were you saving pencil stubs?

ROMITA: When you’re a freelancer for 15 years, and you have to buy your own materials, you don’t waste anything. I’ve still got some brushes from like 40 years ago. And she would always reveal that kind of stuff.

She’d say, “This guy is crazy.”

I used to make my own furniture, believe it or not, out of cardboard boxes. And because Marvel was too cheap to get me a tabaret, I took an old tabaret that was thrown away out in the corridors, in the back by the elevators. It was in terrible shape, but I covered it up with corrugated cardboard and made it look neat and clean. She made fun of it for years: “This crazy man that goes and picks up junk, and turns it into furniture.” If you had a foible, she could put a floodlight on it and reveal it to the world.

Oh, and what she did to Larry Lieber—I’m telling you—only a mother could forgive. [laughs] He was out sick one time with a bad back. And when he came back, she covered the area around his drawing table with a dozen drawings of Larry Lieber in back pain.

When Things Go From Bad To Hulk There was one drawing where he’s on a skateboard, Actually, John drew a pretty mean Hulk himself. Here’s the original art for the cover lying on his back, and he’s rolling to work on a skateof Marvel Feature #11 (Nov. 1983), on which he drew Ol’ Greenskin duking it out with none board. In another one... she was brutal on herself, by other than bashful Benjamin J. Grimm. Repro’d from a photocopy sent by Yoram Matzkin. the way. In it, Larry’s coming in the door, and Marie’s [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] walking by him, and she does a caricature of herself like she’s a longshoreman with a skirt on. She comes was the one giving him pointers and work. I didn’t give him work— down the hall, and she slaps him on the back, and says, “Glad to see she did. Marie Severin’s the one that got John, Jr. started at Marvel, ya back, Larry!” and Larry’s in terrible pain, falling on the floor. [Jim not me. laughs] I was afraid to put him in a spot where he would be accused of So she was just as brutal with herself as she was with anybody else. getting there through nepotism. I was terrified of that, and I was And then there were so many cards where she was just right on, her saying, “I don’t want you to have to fight that.” And he still fought it. targets were deadly, and she could destroy anybody with a pen. She There were years where people used to make fun of him and say, was great!

“You know, if your name wasn’t Romita, you wouldn’t even be here.”

Of course those guys are all gone and he’s still there. Marie’s the one that really encouraged and brought him along. “[Herb] Trimpe Had Some Radical Ideas JA: I find her amazing because she was such a great humorist, and then she could turn around and draw “The Hulk.”

ROMITA: She was a damn good storyteller and a good caricaturist.

You know John Buscema’s line, “It was all comics, it was all crap.”

She was somewhat like that. She sort-of looked down her nose at comics, too. But she did good stuff despite that, just like John Buscema did. And no matter how much he said it was crap, he still turned out wonderful stuff; same with Marie. She used to say we took it too seriously, and that it’s just comic books. You know, you make it entertaining and you knock it out. But she was doing art that was above and beyond that stuff. And she always did powerful work.

As for her sense of humor: she destroyed us on a daily basis. We were her voodoo dolls. She would stick pins in us all the time. When she did birthday cards, some of them were good-natured and some of them were exposés. She would always make fun of me, exaggerating my big brown eyes. She was merciless. [Jim laughs] Did you ever see any of the reprints of her birthday cards? There’s one where I’m sitting at a desk with a million little boxes and things on bookshelves all around me. Well, you should have seen all the little notes she had

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As A Young Kid”

JA: What was Herb Trimpe like to work with?

ROMITA: Trimpe was great, and—oh, by the way, one of the best things that Marie ever did—Trimpe and I used to have political and social discussions, and we used to get pretty heated, you know.

Trimpe had some radical ideas as a young kid. We’re ten years apart in ages, but as far as attitudes, we’re like 25 years apart. So he had some radical ideas, and I had the old-fashioned, old-fogey ideas. She did a drawing once where my drawing table and his drawing table were next to each other. My drawing table had missiles impaled on it, launched by Herb from his drawing table. My table was smoking from bombings and machine-gun fire, and his drawing table had meatballs and spaghetti thrown at it. [mutual laughter] It was the scene of a battle that had taken place, and I was throwing food at Trimpe, and Trimpe was throwing hardware at me. It was one of the funniest drawings I ever saw in my life.

Anyway, Herb was a bright guy, and right from the beginning he was doing some wonderful stuff. When he first started, he could do

Here are a few of Mirthful Marie's legendary office cartoons which were kept (and graciously shared with us)

by Jazzy Johnny—whose comments about them are recorded below.

[Art ©2007 Marie Severin.]

(Above:) "Early '70s. (Marie was as cruel to herself as to anyone else.) Here's her welcoming Larry Lieber back to the office after [he’d been] convalescing from a bad back condition."

(Above and right:) "A pair of birthday cards. Note Bill Everett’s trademark signature, and Morrie Kuramoto signed in Japanese."

"Marie's image of me & Larry Lieber in a heated political discussion—[with] Carl Wershba (regular visitor) & Tony Mortellaro, production man & background artist. Mid-’70s."

Wershba was a non-comics friend of Sol Brodsky’s and one of the Marvel poker crowd.

“Early ’70s - Bullpen Memories. Herb Trimpe and I discussed politics and current events as we turned out pages. Marie’s take on Herb as a ‘hawk’ and myself as a ‘dove’ (?). Note a younger Herb used high-tech weapons, while she had ‘old’ John R. slinging food and hot water bottles, etc.”

[Art ©2007 Marie Severin.]

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it’s very hard to keep up. I recently penciled a cover for Marvel that Milgrom inked. Everything I do over there, I tell them I want Milgrom to ink it. I feel bad when good people don’t get steady work.

JA: Before we leave Trimpe: any Trimpe anecdotes that come to mind?

The Incredible Herb Herb Trimpe, from that same 1969 FF Annual, and his dynamic cover for The Incredible Hulk #116 (June ’69)—repro’d from a photocopy of the original art. Thanks to Anthony Snyder. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: No, we just used to have those wonderful discussions. We were talking philosophy, and history, and politics all the time. And you know, of course, we also played ball together. I used to go up and play hardball with Herb and his brother up in the Yorktown area, and he used to play softball with us down in the park. You know, with John, Jr., and Jim Shooter and Jim Novak; all these young punks were hitting balls 500 feet away. [mutual laughter] There were times when Trimpe and Schwartzberg and I and Frank Giacoia and a couple other guys would go to the park and throw a football around. This is when we were up on 57th Street at Madison Avenue. Those were nice days before we moved downtown when we couldn’t get to the park.

“Sol Brodsky And I Worked Very Closely Together” JA: Tell me about Sol Brodsky. What was he like to work with? some great Kirby-type drawings, and he was a good inker right from the chute. He and Stu Schwartzberg had worked for Tom Gill, as did John Verpoorten, before they came to Marvel. Trimpe was a terrific storyteller and had a lot of personality in his stuff; very distinctive work. He could do a beautiful inking job on Kirby’s stuff, and could have made a living on Kirby stuff alone if he’d wanted to, but he was too good a storyteller.

ROMITA: Well, I worked with Sol for five years outside of comics, too. We were doing the Marvel books for a while, and I was doing all sorts of children’s books, like a series of books on The A-Team. I ended up doing some coloring books, some children’s books, and pop-up books. I worked on pop-up books until I almost got a nervous breakdown. Pop-up books were hard, because they would do the pop-ups first and then we would have to try to design some pages around them. Ask me how the hell that worked! [Jim laughs]

And it’s a shame that—what happened was, he did a lot of advertising in the late ’70s, while working for Marvel, so he wasn’t coming in that often. And then, slowly but surely, new editors came in, and they didn’t know who Trimpe was, and he stopped getting work. It was a little bit heartbreaking to hear that he wasn’t getting any work, and he was a little bit bitter, but the truth of the matter is the only guys that kept getting work were those who kept coming up to the office, and getting involved in the Marvel stuff. If you lived in upstate New York and you were not coming in for a couple of years, they’d forget you.

It’s like trickle-down economics to me. I almost went nuts working in that department for five years, until Jim Shooter finally talked me into coming back to comics. I lost five years in comics. Sol Brodsky and I worked very closely together, and Marie Severin was in that department with us, too. And Paty, who was Dave Cockrum’s wife. We did some

But you know, if I had gone freelance back in the mid-’90s, I wouldn’t have gotten any work from them, either. Look at Al Milgrom. He was an editor and creative penciler, and one of the best inkers in the business, and he’s not getting any steady work from Marvel. You remember we talked about this “old-fashioned” business and whether you’re with today’s style or not? Guys like Herb and me—and Don Heck, if he had lived—would probably not get any work today.

I mean, I could get work if they want to do nostalgia stuff. But none of the new writers and editors would get me on any book, because my stuff looks too much like the ’60s and ’70s. I think Herb Trimpe fell into that category. A lot of new editors want to bring their own talent along, and it’s a sad case—but you know, the truth of the matter is it’s very hard to stay current. My natural way is to keep it simple, and these guys want more and more elaboration and gingerbread and all that crap, and

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Sol Right!

“Jolly Solly” Brodsky in 1969, and the cover of one of the two most important comic book issues in which his art ever appeared— that of Fantastic Four #4 (May 1962), whereon he inked Jack Kirby’s pencils for the return of The Sub-Mariner. The other most important issue? Sol also inked FF #3!

Repro’d from The Essential Fantastic Four, Vol. 1. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I Have Seen The Future… And It Shoots Webs Maybe if this lovely lady mentioned below had looked into her crystal ball, she’d have seen that the bomb scare was a hoax. A John Romita pencil sketch for a possible cover for a story labeled “Spider-Man vs. the Mexican Princess.” Thanks to Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

interesting stuff in that department. Some of it made me proud, and some of it was a little crazy, because we were always on a low budget, and I had dreams of doing a lot of young people’s art. I was hoping we could revive the Spidey Super Stories in that department, but we never did. So it was sort of a strange time. I was welcoming the change of pace because I got tired of doing comics, but I was still doing some freelance at the time.

JA: Tell me about Sol personally.

ROMITA: We used to play poker: Sol, Al Milgrom, Roy Thomas, Stan Goldberg, Mike Esposito, Carl Wershba, and me. And Al Sulman, who used to be a Marvelite from before Marvel Time, when the company was known as Timely. They all almost killed me with cigar smoke, I’ll tell you that. [Jim laughs] I used to come home, looking like I had been in a fight. My wife Virginia used to say, “My God, your eyes are swollen.” With my throat raw and my nose plugged, I’d say, “These guys were smoking cigars all night,” and I don’t smoke at all. So the solution was that we ended up having the card game at my house, and Virginia had the whole card room surrounded with candles. She would light the candles up, [chuckles] and believe it or not, the cigar smoke would get eaten up by the candles.

Sol and I go back to when I started at Marvel in ’65. And I still, to this day, regret missing those years before then, when the Fantastic Four started, and the beginning of “The Hulk,” and the beginning of “Spider-Man,” and the beginning of The X-Men. It kills me that I missed those years. But I was at DC, not even knowing what they were doing at Marvel. It’s the only thing I would have changed in my life, except I couldn’t have afforded it because I was making more money at DC then.

Sol was a hell of a guy. We often had lunch together, even when we weren’t going to the Playboy Club. Sol was with us at the Playboy Club with Stan and Jack and whoever else was there. Sol was always one of the boys. When he became vice-president, we were very proud of him. It was a strange time when he left to start his own publishing venture at Skywald, but he came back again. And Stan wanted him to be editor-in-chief. Believe it or not, some of the people in the Bullpen were opposed to it. They were opposed to it because he had left us, and been in competition with us. They felt like, why reward a guy who, for about two years, was trying to compete with us? He had promised that he wasn’t going to compete, that he was only going to do reprints—no new material. When Skywald started doing original stuff, he turned off some of the people that he had known at Marvel.

But Stan was willing to forgive and forget. Believe it or not, everybody went in and told Stan in no uncertain terms, “No, no, we don’t want Sol Brodsky as editor-in-chief.”

We had a lot of laughs. The only thing was, they would give him budgets to run projects. For instance, when we were together in Marvel Books and they gave him a budget, his first philosophy was to save the company money. And no matter how much I wanted to do the quality stuff, he was always lowballing the budget, so we always had disagreements. He wanted to bring projects in at such a low price that they would always make money, because that would be a feather in his cap, you know? Meanwhile, I was trying to do the best stuff we could, but we couldn’t afford any good artists. Suddenly, because of our budget, we would end up with the guy who didn’t have any work from anybody else, the second-line artists. So I used to have disagreements with him. And then he got cancer, and for the last year it was terrible. I felt so guilty that I was always disagreeing with him. It was

hard, and when we lost him, it was terrible. One of those sad moments.

“National Lampoon Got A Package And They Suspected It Was Dangerous” JA: Tell me about the time there was a bomb threat at Marvel.

ROMITA: We had a couple of evacuations, I remember. We had one scare—our offices happened to be under National Lampoon, I think.

National Lampoon got a package and they suspected it was dangerous, so we had to empty out the building. They were one floor above us, and sure enough, there was, I think, a package with six sticks of dynamite in it. I remember having to get Tony Mortellaro out of the building. He was an assistant production man and the guy who did my backgrounds at times. He wouldn’t leave. He said, “Aah, it’s probably a false alarm.” I had to go in and pull him out. I said, “You can’t take a chance. Suppose there’s something wrong.” He says, “There’s never anything wrong.” I said, “Listen, you gotta get out of here. Otherwise, the firemen are going to come and drag you out.” So I finally got him down on the street. Thank God it was a warm day. It was a nice spring day, and when we got down on the street... First of all, we took our pages with us. I don’t know if Mike Esposito was there or not, but Frank Giacoia and I were inking on some pages that we had to finish up that day. We grabbed the pages, mostly because we figured if there’s a fire or something, or if there’s any damage from the firemen, they’re going to mess up the pages, so we took them with us. Frank said, “I’m bringing along some ink and some pens and some

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 99

One other time, I think some kind of a UN mission was in the building and we had a bomb scare, and had to evacuate that building. But we didn’t do any artwork that day. [mutual laughter] But Frank and I, generally what we would do is we would switch pages. If I was doing the outlines and Frank was doing the blacks, I would do all the outlines and then give him the page. Then I would take the other page and start doing outlines and he’d do the blacks on one, but we didn’t often work on the same page because the drawing tables were usually tilted.

When we had a flat table, that was different.

JA: Were you doing any detail work or was Frank inking the shrubbery, or the cracks in bricks, or whatever?

ROMITA: Well, sometimes I would do an outline with a pen or a fine brush, Kirby-style, and then when I got to it, I would do the blacks.

Or if I didn’t have time, somebody like Frank or Mike put the blacks in. I would ink the faces and the outline of things, then they would take a big, bold brush and put some big folds in the coats, and put in solid blacks and feathering.

It was interchangeable. I did the same thing with John Verpoorten on my daily Spider-Man strips. I would ink the faces and the outlines of a lot of things, and he would finish them up. This was a common thing we used to do. Whenever you were very late, anything went. You know, all the rules were shot to hell then.

JA: Wasn’t there an inker there called “Many Hands”? [mutual laughter] ROMITA: That’s right. And they used to have other names for mass-suicide stuff over the years—you know, “inked by The Lemmings.” [mutual laughter]

Spidey Drops By Maybe to warn the Daily Bugle crew about a bomb scare? Funny, Roy T.’s always thought it was colorist/production man George Roussos (another reclusive type) rather than Tony Mortellaro who refused to leave the Marvel offices after the warning, but John’s probably right. How would Roy know? When that event occurred (in the early 1970s, he recalls), he decided it was time to enjoy a long, leisurely haircut, a block or two away from any potential falling debris! This promotional poster by JR is repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

brushes.” Thank God he did, because we didn’t know how long it was going to take to get back there. We walked down to Third Avenue, which was a street and a half away, to a place that Frank liked. We sat down at one of the tables, and ordered food and drink.

We’re looking at the pages, and Frank said, “You know, why don’t we fill in some blacks?” So we put the page between us on one of those dark mahogany tables. I’m on one side of the table, Frank’s on the other, and I think Frank was doing the blacks in an upside down panel, and I’m doing some finishing touches with technique, maybe shrubbery or something on the other end of the page. We worked for about an hour and a half, and we’re trying to eat without messing up the pages, [mutual laughter] and finally, somebody came over and told us that the building was cleared and we went back up there. But it was one of those days that was really a riot. We were laughing our heads off the whole time.

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JA: I remember “Many Hands” had a brother: “Diverse Hands.” [mutual laughter] Any other kind of crazy Bullpen stories like that that come to mind?

ROMITA: John Buscema did a couple of “Warriors of the Shadow Realm” magazines. It was a beautiful, very exotic thing, with all these wonderful characters. Peter Ledger painted the covers. He was a very strange duck from Australia. A lot of times, he walked around the office barefoot. I mean, he was a guy right out of Crocodile Dundee. He was either crashing at a friend’s apartment, or going to the “Y,” or sleeping on the floor in the office. The only problem was, he didn’t always bathe. And people were starting to get very nervous. They would come into the office and they would say, “I think he’s still here,” because they could tell by the fumes coming out from under the doors. [mutual laughter]

He was a very talented guy, but a real loose cannon. But we’ve had a few episodes like that, where guys came up and slept in the office. If you’re working through the night, I guess it’s one thing. But if you’re sleeping there because you don’t have a place to sleep, that’s something else.

Unfortunately, whenever we had guys with body odor in the

office, I was the best guy to be with because I have no sense of smell.

Virginia used to come into my office and say, “Oh, So-and-so’s been here, hasn’t he?” I’d say, “How do you know?” She said, “I can smell him.” [mutual laughter] And I would say, “Well, you know, my eyes didn’t even tear.” I never was able to smell anything, but my eyes usually get very sensitive. If there’s something toxic in the air, say if there’s smoke, but you can’t see it, it’s just one of these very fine smokes. My eyes would feel it.

“The Game [Poker] Threw Me” JA: Well, that’s why you were able to survive those card games.

ROMITA: Well, in fact, that’s why my eyes used to swell up. I think they swelled up to tell me, “Hey, stupid. You can’t smell them, but something’s bad over here.” [mutual laughter] And if it didn’t get me in the eyes, it would get me in the throat. But for some reason, body odors never affected my eyes or my throat. Virginia used to come in sometimes, and if it was a warm weather day, she’d open up the windows and say, “Well, you can’t smell it, but I’m not going to sit in it.” [mutual laughter] Virginia also did a couple of things that were hysterical. We had one guy who was a writer and, obviously, he was the kind of guy, even if he bathed every day, he must have just exuded foul body odor.

Sometimes people eat the wrong thing, and not only just garlic, but there are other things that will make your body just ooze some kind of terrible smell. Well, this guy used to come in, and everybody couldn’t wait until he left. Those story conferences were hell.

Everybody used to make fun of him, but nobody would tell him.

But one day, Virginia wrote a note: “I don’t mean to offend you, but when you come into the office, it would do you well to make sure that you deodorized really well, and make sure your clothing is not sour.” There was another guy who had a terrible body odor, and one day Virginia just lost it. She comes into the Bullpen, she lifts up his sweater and sprays him with a deodorizer. [Jim laughs] So help me, I’m telling you, she said, “I can’t take it any more! This is it!” And she just sprayed. [laughter] JA: Mike Esposito told me you were a nervous card player.

ROMITA: Oh, yes. The trouble is I love to play poker, but I’m really not a good poker player. It’s like the guys who like to play golf, but they don’t know how to play it too well. I always overestimated what the other guy had, and I always underestimated what I had. I don’t know how to bet properly to get the best result.

JA: Mike [Esposito] said sometimes that would drive him crazy and he’d say, [excitedly] “John, would you do something?” [laughter]

The Outcasts Of Poker Flat (Flat Broke, That Is!) While the cast of players changed slightly from time to time, here’s the basic 1970s poker crew John alludes to, clockwise from the photo directly above (with photos mostly from 1964 & 1969 Marvel annuals): Mike Esposito, a.k.a. “Mickey Demeo”/”Joe Gaudioso,” ace inker, as seen in the Mighty Marvel Comic Convention book of the mid-’70s…

Al Sulman, as caricatured by future Mad writer/artist Dave Berg in Stan Lee’s 1947 book Secrets behind the Comics (Al wrote comics in the early 1940s)…

Sol Brodsky, artist, production manager, later co-publisher of Skywald comics, and still later Marvel VP… Roy Thomas, writer and editor, who was the youngest of the group till Al Milgrom wandered in…

John Romita, ’nuff said…

Stan Goldberg, a.k.a. “Stan G.,” longtime Millie the Model (and later Archie) artist, and colorist of many of Marvel’s 1960s comics…

Al Milgrom, who joined the group in the mid-’70s (photo courtesy of Al & wife Judy).

And see p.97 for a caricature of Carl Wershba.

[All photos but Al Milgrom’s ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 101

ROMITA: Oh, I’m telling you. We were playing Texas Hold ’Em 30 years ago, only we weren’t playing big stakes. The game threw me, because I could never quite grasp how dangerous it was when there was a pair on deck, that somebody could have three of a kind. I mean, a lot of times, I saw a pair on deck, and I’d have a pair, and I’d think, “Wow, I’m home free.” And somebody’s got three of a kind and breaks my back. So I was always a little timid. The truth of the matter is, I wasn’t lucky enough to get the cards, and when I did get good cards, I didn’t know how to play them, so they used to make fun of me. Al Milgrom would say, “You know, John, you always think everybody else has a full house.” [mutual laughter]

“Roy [Thomas] Was An Entertainment In Himself” JA: Any other inner-office stories come to mind?

ROMITA: No, just that we used to have the company softball games.

I had stopped playing by then. We had some very interesting field trips where we would play softball up in the mountains somewhere.

Marvel would take us there. You know, just for a picnic, and those were nice days. And generally, somebody twisted an ankle or hurt their back or got sunburned. [mutual laughter] Did Roy have a few reminiscences? For about a year or two, we would go up to his apartment on E. 86th Street. And Roy was an entertainment in himself, because he used to try all sorts of stuff. You know, out-of-towners come to New York and they want to try all the stuff that they can. They want to live life to the fullest, and I know he had a round bed, and he showed it to us before we played poker. [Jim laughs] And we’re hysterical. We’re saying, “How the hell do you know where to put your head?” [mutual laughter] There was no headboard, there was just a round bed, and the whole thing threw us, so we would get a laugh out of that for a couple of weeks.

Roy once owned an ocelot [when he lived in Brooklyn]. Once, the ocelot jumped up on his kitchen table and took a roasted KFC chicken and dragged it under a couch and was eating the chicken and glaring, making sure nobody was coming to get it away from him.

Roy said that sometimes in the night the ocelot would be prowling and he’d wake up and see those yellow eyes somewhere, lurking in the corner. [mutual laughter] Did he tell you about how he finally sold it when he wanted to get rid of it? He advertised “ocelot for sale.” I think it was damaging too much furniture, and it was probably too scary to have around the place.

JA: One time, it took a leak on some Tuska Avengers artwork.

When Roy told Archie Goodwin about that, Archie said, “Everybody’s an art critic!” [mutual laughter] So what happened when Roy tried to sell the ocelot?

ROMITA: From what I remember, he told us he was desperate because he was afraid nobody would take it. He didn’t want to just have it taken away to be destroyed. So he put an ad in the paper and a guy comes up to see the cat. And Roy puts on a pair of one of those elbow-length leather gloves to protect your arm when you’re dealing with a cat with sharp claws like that. And he’s trying to be brave, to show the guy how you can handle the cat with no danger at all. He goes to grab the cat off the furniture to show him how docile it is and the cat has these claws and they went right through the leather glove, into his forearm. And he’s trying not to grit his teeth and show that he’s in pain. He’s sort-of smiling at the guy and telling him, “See? Look how much fun he is.” [mutual laughter] Well, the guy finally bought it, and Roy was saying it was worth it. I think he showed us a couple of scratches on his arm as proof of it. [mutual laughter] Ask Roy if that’s true, or if my imagination has gone away with me.

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This Was A Real Splash Page This is the finished version of the George Tuska penciled page on which Roy T.’s “pet” ocelot urinated one night in 1967. Hey, Gollum—it was a nice splash—for The Avengers #48 (Jan. 1968), the issue that introduced the modern-day Black Knight! Funny the things you remember after more than four decades in the crazy comic book field…! From The Essential Avengers, Vol. 3. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[NOTE FROM ROY: Well, since John asked: he’s got it pretty close, though he inadvertently combined a couple of different events from the late 1960s. The guy who tried to pet the ocelot (with gloves on, at my insistence) and wound up with an angry ocelot hanging by its fangs from leather and flesh was my old friend and fellow writer Gary Friedrich. Gary had climbed onto a chair to try to pet it while it sat on a top shelf in my closet—where it often climbed by hooking its claws into my clothes and scaling them like a tree. The ocelot—whom I named Gollum, and which may have actually been a margay, a slightly smaller relative of the ocelot, that the dealer palmed off on me—was purchased, for the same $300 I’d paid for it a month or so earlier, by a nice hippielooking couple from Westchester County who dropped by the Brooklyn apartment I shared with my friend Len Brown of Topps.

I had to be out that night, so I called home to check with Len how things were going. Amazingly, Gollum just loved that couple from the get-go—maybe it was the guy’s beard—but Len told me they wanted to pay by check. I thought about all the trouble I’d had with that damn cat, and I said, “Take the check.” And it didn’t bounce. As for the scratches—well, I got them another time. Or two. Wish I could find the photo I took one day of Gollum sleeping on my desk with his head against my phone. Whenever it rang, he would snarl in a low voice, and I was scared to touch the phone.

But we worked on cover sketches many times, and we worked on a whole slew of cover ideas together. For many, many months, Roy and Gil and I would get together once a week and work out rough sketches for maybe a dozen covers. We worked together quite a bit.

We always got along, we always understood each other. One of the fun things about working with Roy was that he loved to do flashback stories—you know, back to the ’40s, because he loved the comic stories during the war—The Young Allies and stuff like that. One time, I did a cover for one of his “Sub-Mariner and Captain America” stories [The Invaders]. I think Frank Robbins might have been penciling the stories. It was supposed to be an absolute rip-off of an old Alex Schomburg cover, meaning I had to have a million airplanes in the air and all sorts of gunfire crisscrossing across the cover, and super-heroes on the wings of planes, and things like that. I had the sketch to it for a long time and I can’t find it now. But it was a lot of fun, because I loved Schomburg’s covers when I was a kid. He wasn’t one of my favorite artists, but I remember those covers fondly because they were so exciting, with so much going on at one time. It was a feast for a young artist’s eyes.

JA: What was the difference, if any, between Stan, when he was in charge, and when Roy was editor-in-chief?

ROMITA: The truth is, you were right when you said that Roy took Stan’s lead. He, I think, properly figured that Stan had a great success and thought, “That must be the way to do it and I’m going to do it that way.” Of course, his own personal tastes came in, which is perfectly good, because that’s fresh blood. The only problem Roy had was with the front office, and, of course, you know the conglomerates changed a couple of times, too. Stan was working with Martin Goodman for most of the time, and by the time Perfect Film, a conglomerate, came in, Stan was already established, so they sort-of gave him the gentle treatment. They didn’t really give him a lot of flak.

Two For The Show Both these pieces of original Romita art were reproduced in the same Heritage Comics catalog in 2005, so we figured we’d juxtapose them here.

(Above:) The Jazzy One’s cover for The Invaders #1 (Aug. 1975), intended by himself and Roy Thomas as an homage to the wartime Timely covers by Alex Schomburg. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of the Heritage Comics Archives. But we sure wish John hadn’t lost his sketch of it!

But when Roy took over, whatever conglomerate was in charge didn’t feel the same restraint against Roy that they would have felt against Stan, and they gave him a lot of flak. In fact, if it weren’t for the conglomerates being so cantankerous and so treacherous, I think Roy would have been an editor-in-chief for a long time. But they were constantly throwing roadblocks in his way. Almost all of his energies, for a couple of years, involved butting heads with the frontoffice idiots because they didn’t know what they were talking about,

(Right:) An undated Fantastic Four drawing by JR. Anybody know where (or if) this piece was ever printed anywhere except in the art catalog? [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I’d ease the receiver off the hook by pulling the cord from the other side!]

JA: What was Roy like to work with in the offices?

ROMITA: Roy was a good, efficient guy, and perfectly easy to work with. I did work under him, but only when he was editor-inchief. I don’t think I ever dealt with him except when he took over Spider-Man. But I will tell you that, when Stan went away on his first vacation, Roy took over editing and writing Spider-Man. And it happened to be issues #101 to 104... something like that.

And so I got the message: he used Gil Kane in those issues. [laughs] I think I was doing something else, but it worked out.

Roy worked with Gil, and I didn’t have to do any plotting of any stories with him.

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Good Night, Nurse!

John Romita drew this exciting cover for the final issue of Night Nurse (#4, May 1973). Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: No, that’s the point, and they took all the fun from it for him. It couldn’t have been fun, because here he wanted to do a million things, and they were keeping him from his job.

JA: Did that happen to you very often?

ROMITA: [sighs] You know, I was always a little bit lucky. I was always insulated, because they did give me a little bit of leeway because of the length of time I was there and had been on staff. It wasn’t like I was a newcomer or an outsider. And I think Stan always protected me. Even when he was out of town, I think he sort-of protected me.

There was a time when Stan asked me if I wanted to be editor-in-chief, and I said, “After seeing what Roy went through, no, thank you. I wouldn’t want that job for all the tea in China.” It meant that I would be so frustrated, not being able to affect the look and the content of the books, and I’d have to butt heads with the executives every day. It would drive me nuts. I told Stan, “As much as I would like to try it, I don’t feel qualified,” because I was not a writer. I felt like the editor-in-chief should be a guy who could go face-to-face with all the writers and tell them when they’re wrong. And as an artist, I don’t think I was qualified for that. But I could have gotten away with it, I think, because I think I would have gotten respect from a lot of the people. But I’d just rather not have to go through that hell. I saw what Roy went through.

JA: Roy wasn’t an artist, but he sure did understand what made a good cover and what made good storytelling.

and Roy knew the business much better than they did. They gave him a lot of problems, and I think he just threw his hands up. I think, a couple of times, he just told them to go to hell and he probably told them to go to hell one time too many, and that was that. He quit.

It was unfortunate, because if Roy had at least been given the respect that they gave to Stan—they treated him like a young guy who had no track record, and it was terrible because he knew exactly what he was doing and he came up with some great new ideas. I mean “Conan” and all the other stuff that he came up with—they were great ideas. He had a great storytelling sense and a good editorial style. Roy got along with the artists very well. He respected artists, he respected writers; he was a great writer himself. And because these conglomerate shirts didn’t know what the hell they were doing, they gave him him more trouble than he deserved. That was unfortunate.

Roy should have had a long run as an editor-in-chief, because he thrived on it. He’s full of energy, he had a million ideas, and he was going to keep things fresh. I know he was going to keep it fresh, because his whole approach was not to do anything old. Do something new all the time. I enjoyed working with him, and I was sorry to see him go, but I saw how much trouble he had. He was having trouble every day. All the conferences and storytelling and brainstorming he wanted to do, he couldn’t do because he was always upstairs battling somebody.

JA: That’s no fun. That’s not why he wanted to be editor-in-chief.

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ROMITA: He was a comic book man right down to his boots. He knew good comics, and that’s why he made a perfect editor-in-chief. That’s why he was a good writer. He worked with artists and was very much aware of the value of the visual, as opposed to a lot of writers who are strictly wordoriented and the visuals didn’t even matter. In other words, they say artwork is artwork. I remember a lot of DC editors had that attitude: artwork is artwork. If you show the horses coming down the trail, and the guy jumps off, and there’s a mountain in the background, they don’t care what it looks like, as long as you show it. But then they say the writing is what counts. And the truth of the matter is that it’s a visual medium and writing is very important, but the visual is a lot more important than some editors give it credit for.

JA: And Stan was the opposite: he was more art-driven at times than story-driven.

ROMITA: That’s what I’m saying. Roy was aware of the value of artists, because he was doing the fanzines before and knew when you put a fanzine together, if you don’t have good visuals, you’ve got nothing. And so when he came to Marvel after a week or so at DC, I think he instinctively saw the difference between Stan’s style and the DC style.

“I Never Had A Chance To Really Get Into The Adventure Department At DC” JA: Do you think the difference in editorial philosophy between DC and Marvel is what really got you back on track as a penciler?

ROMITA: It could be, because I never had a chance to really get into the adventure department at DC. I only worked with the romance department, and I had a wonderful run when I was a sympathetic

page plot synopsis and gave it to the writers.

I can’t tell you how long we worked together, but I know it was the best part of the eight years that I worked at DC. JA: Do you happen to remember if she had an assistant?

Love That Job!

ROMITA: If she did, I don’t remember. I dealt directly with her, and when she left—I think she was pregnant—she said she was going to put my name up as the editor for the romance department. She said, “Think about it. I don’t want to pressure you. You can take your time.” The only thing is, what occurred to her was, “If you take the job on, you’d be losing your best artist.” [mutual laughter]

DC romance editors Phyllis Reed (left) and Zena Brody (right); photos courtesy of longtime DC production chief Jack Adler.

I said, “You know, I think I’m really not qualified.

The writers would be pushing me Pictured below are two covers penciled by John R. for the company’s title Heart Throbs during that era— around because I wouldn’t have a leg to those of #55 (Aug.-Sept. 1958) and #86 (Oct.-Nov. 1963). The former was reportedly inked by Bernard stand on against them, because I certainly Sachs. With thanks to Bob Bailey. [©2007 DC Comics.] was not an English major.” So I had to pass member of the team with Phyllis Reed. She was an editor I enjoyed it up, even though it struck me as a nice opportunity. But then I working for. I worked with two or three other editors, and none of thought, “Oh, God! Office politics!” And I remember they used to them—none of them—gave me as much job satisfaction as she did. give her a lot of flak up there. The male editors used to come in and give her a lot of trouble. And she was very patient, and a very sweet She was a very open-minded person, and after a few months lady. I don’t care what reputations people have tried to attribute to working with her, she started asking me what I thought of things. her. I only saw her as a classy lady who did her job and did it very When she would give me an idea for a cover, she would ask me what I well. She did it with patience and she knew what she was doing. To thought, and I would give her my opinion. She trusted my opinion so me, she was a lady and I always respected her, and I always thought much that she left the cover ideas to me much of the time. In about a she was a great person to work with. year, we were working out the covers on maybe three or four major books, devising the covers over the phone. I don’t remember us The thing was that guys used to come in and take advantage of her. having much time to do it at the office, because I was usually in a One time, I was sitting in there and we were having a conference hurry to get home, and she was usually having a million interruptions. about a couple of covers, and some wise guy, one of those arrogant Sometimes we would be on the phone for an hour.

After we worked out cover ideas, she plotted stories from them. So we were really coming up with general plots from our cover thoughts. She would say, “I want a cover that has to do with the beach,” so I’d draw a beach scene. “And I want a blonde and a tall football player kind of a guy with a broken nose. You know, good-looking, rugged.” And maybe the next cover setting would be in the mountains with pine trees and a cabin.

We would pick as many different settings as possible for each of the books that month, and then we would try to devise some kind of a clash or a simpatico between players, if there were two or three characters. We would set up an emotional triangle in a certain setting. She took those ideas and wrote a one-

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check over to him for that amount, and then you owed the company a story. And when he died, I owed them one story, 360 bucks worth. I did the story and I was okay, but there other guys who were like five and six stories in the hole to him—to the company. Not Larry—he spent the money.

He was not only a gambler, he was a liar because what he told us was—what he told me, anyway—that he was going to do a magazine.

He said he had a contract to do a magazine, which was going to be stories for teenagers and young kids, and one of the stories he was working on was an Indian story, so he had me do an Indian illustration on spec. I just did a quick pencil on it. I did a toned pencil drawing of an Indian on a cliff. He said he needed this money to finance the venture, and once he got it, he was going to have a lot of work for us doing illustrations in this magazine. A lot of us who were interested in becoming illustrators were easy prey, because he knew that’s what we were dreaming of. Some of us wanted to get out of comics and he knew it.

Nadle preyed on that desire. I was saying, “Wow, this is great. I’d love to be doing war stories and Westerns and Indian stories for a kids’ magazine.” And so he took me for the 360 bucks, but I know Mike Peppe and Frank Giacoia got stung for much more, which was terrible. I remember that DC was threatening legal action against us.

That’s why I say I appreciated Phyllis Reed, just because most of the other guys were creeps and thieves.

JA: DC was going to take legal action against you?

Peppy Inking By Peppe An Alex Toth page, inked by Mike Peppe, from Standard/Nedor’s New Romance #18 (Oct. 1953), as reprinted by Greg Theakston in his volume Standard Comics. [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

handsome creeps, goes behind her desk and kisses her on the neck.

And I got so annoyed. I wanted to belt the guy, but as far as I knew, he was her boyfriend. I didn’t know. But I thought it was a very disrespectful thing to do. Here she’s trying to show some kind of authority to me, and this jerk comes in and kisses her on the neck. I really was mad, and I always figure whatever I’ve heard about her—you know, guys love to gossip and tell stories out of school; guys that wish they could make out, sometimes say they made out. And so I used to discount all that stuff, because if you speak to somebody for years and years, and you talk about storylines and all sorts—you would get a feel if she was a tramp. But if she was a lady, she was a lady. To me, she was a lady and I always respected her, and I always thought she was a great person to work with.

Jack Miller took over from her. He was not the easiest guy to work for, and sooner or later he got himself in trouble over there. I think he tried to steal stuff from them.

JA: Reportedly he stole artwork and comics from the DC library, and he was also doing some double-dipping.

ROMITA: You know what he used to do to me? Well, he did it to all of us. There were other editors that expected kickbacks. I never gave an editor a kickback. I did get caught by Larry Nadle, but only for one story, and I like to think he liked me a little bit better than the other guys. Otherwise, he would have taken me for more than one story. You know, you’d get a check and then you’d sign a personal

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ROMITA: Well, not me, because they knew I was only one story behind, and I did the one story in a matter of a week, and we were fine. They realized that I had no larceny in me, but they weren’t so sure about other guys who were deeper in debt. I was there when Mike Peppe and Frank were talking to the executives, and boy, they had bright red faces. They were very upset, and I think they finally got out from under, but I don’t think they got any more work from DC. I kept getting work from them after that.

JA: Mike Peppe did a couple of stories later, but you’re right. Pretty much, they were out.

ROMITA: I think they didn’t trust them any more, or they figured that’s their punishment, I don’t know.

JA: I know this is still off the subject, but I have to ask about Mike Peppe, because I have so little information on him.

ROMITA: I don’t know much about him, either. I just used to meet him in the waiting room at DC. The only other thing I know about Mike Peppe, when I was saving all of Alex Toth’s romance stories from Standard, is that Mike Peppe was doing most of the inking, and he was the perfect guy to ink Alex Toth. He was a good inker.

JA: Were you collecting these books for reference?

ROMITA: Yes. I was working in a litho house when I got those books, and in fact I was on the ninth or tenth floor in that building, 10 East 40th, and Standard was on the fifth floor, I think. I never had the nerve to stop by. Here I was making $26 a week and you’d think I would have the sense to go down there and say, “Hey, I can do comics. If you need any fillers, let me know.” I never had the brains to do that. I was so timid and so unsure of myself, and I would have killed to meet Alex Toth. I admired that stuff, and let me tell you—all the years I did romance, I always had Alex Toth’s romance books around me. I noticed Alex Toth’s trick of using vertical caption boxes, and putting hearts and things in the caption boxes there. I used to do the same thing, just because I wanted to emulate him. It killed me when he left DC in the early ’50s, because I was devouring all that great work he was doing.

“The Production Manager Handed Out The Work” JA: Let me ask you about John Verpoorten. He was working under Sol Brodsky before Sol went to Skywald, and then John took over, right?

ROMITA: He was production manager. Brodsky wasn’t the production manager then. He was already like an administrator. He was like Stan’s assistant editor-in-chief. I think John was already sortof autonomous in the production department, and I don’t know if Sol was considered just a production manager before that.

[NOTE FROM ROY: I must admit that I myself never thought of Sol as anything other than production manager—but in the late 1960s that was plenty! He certainly did have administrative duties.

I was officially associate editor at that stage, and not exactly under Sol—but I sure knew I wasn’t over him! The schedule ruled—and Sol ruled the schedule—and that was that! John Verpoorten picked up where Sol left off.]

JA: What was John Verpoorten like in the offices? You’ve got to be tough on your creative people because some people don’t make deadlines.

ROMITA: Oh, yeah, let me tell you. At the time, the production manager handed out the work. Not the editors and not the writers; the production manager assigned the work. Editors would come in and say, “I want John Romita to do a book,” and he’d say, “No, I can’t give you John Romita. I’ll give you somebody else.” It was a very strange time, because there was no real official procedure in those days. People just sort-of established their own tricks and methods, and if you got away with them, fine. If you didn’t get away with them, then there would be a change. For a while there, John Verpoorten was like a dictator in the production department. He thought he was a benevolent dictator, but once you get that kind of power, then you start to wield it and you start peddling your influence.

There was nothing ever wrong about John except that he used to bully some of the poor editors. He used to tell them, “Get out of my office.” In those days, the editors were like just another part of the chain, and the production manager called the shots because Sol Brodsky used to assign the work when he was in charge. And so,

Forbush And Friends (Left:) “Jumbo John” Verpoorten circa the mid-1970s, and (above) his splash page for Not Brand Echh #8 (June 1968). Photo by Alan Kupperberg. [Page ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

when John Verpoorten took over, he just took over the same function and assigned the work, probably conferring with Stan and Sol Brodsky. But then, after a while, when they were busy, he would just assign the work, especially on the second- and third-line books. What I think is, he started to be a little bit tough on some editors. If he didn’t like the editor, that guy was in trouble. And then, who was going to do the lettering and who was going to do the coloring? Thus, you wield a lot of power if you’re the one making those decisions.

And the guys who were friends of his probably got away with stuff, and the guys that he didn’t get along with probably didn’t get away with stuff, you know? It was an unfortunate situation that always bothered me. I did not like tension or any kind of bullying in the office. To me, if you didn’t get along with people, I thought it was a terrible distraction and screwed up things.

JA: Verpoorten died at the end of 1977. Did he work that way up until his passing, or did things change?

ROMITA: I don’t know. I got along with him very well, and I didn’t know a lot of what he was doing. I was away from the production department. I was on the other side of the Bullpen and was so busy with my corrections, and my instruction of artists, and plotting with Stan. I was always very busy. I got along with him on a personal basis,

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way he spoke. You want to talk about funny stuff? There were a couple of summers where I was wearing really goofy clothes. I would wear very lightweight summer clothing. In New York, it gets very hot and I would get these crazy plaid pants and crazy patterned pants, and I was wearing a lot of Hawaiian shirts. John made fun of me every time I came into the office. One day, when I wore a particularly ugly set of pants, really crazy colors and everything, he came to the door—and I think somebody was in there, talking to me—John looked at me because he sees my pants—I’ve got my legs sticking out—and he starts to imitate a calliope. You know the calliope from a circus? You know, [sings a brief passage of high-wire music]? Only he does it like a calliope. [imitates calliope music ] After he does the song, he says, “Somewhere, there’s a hole in a circus tent.” [mutual laughter] John Verpoorten was a Beatles fanatic, and because I was a square and a dummy, I used to say to him that the Beatles were phonies. I should have known better, because my favorite composer was Irving Berlin, and people used to say Irving Berlin didn’t write all those songs because of the wide variety My Love Does It Good of styles. They were lighthearted, John Romita’s drawings of Paul McCartney as Titanium Man—and of Linda McCartney as one of the singing group they were heavy, they were strong, called The Stripes. [©2007 John Romita.] they were tender... he wrote every and he used to ink a lot of my stuff. There were a lot of times I would kind of song conceivable. So I told John that if Irving Berlin keeps do a cover in a very rough style or in blue pencil, and John would ink getting criticized because other people wrote his music, I’d guarantee it. When I did the Spider-Man newspaper strip in ’77, he was my aceyou that those stupid four Limeys didn’t write all this music. [Jim in-the-hole. If I couldn’t get it inked, he would help me out. For laughs] We used to this big running argument between us. I told him weeks on end, he would ink the whole thing. The only thing I would that The Beatles were phonies, I can’t stand their music, although I’ve do was the faces. John had a style very similar to mine and Frank come to love some of their stuff. But he was always on my case, Giacoia’s, so we were very compatible. He was a good inker. He inked saying, “What does an old Italian know? [laughter] What do you some of my FFs, too. know?”

JA: He also inked several issues of The Eternals when Kirby came back in the ’70s. I thought that was some of the best inking Jack got at the time.

ROMITA: John was a very good inker, and I often wondered... I even asked him, “Why don’t you just stay home and ink full-time?” He said he preferred to be in the office. He didn’t have a subway trip or a car trip. He just walked home.

He probably loved inking at home at night and weekends, and he was still getting his salary, so it was good for him, I guess.

Did you know that John had a great voice? If he were alive today, he could make a fortune doing cartoon voices because his voice was like basso profundo. He had a deep, wonderful voice, and a great laugh, and was very theatrical in the

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“The Band You’ve Known For All These Years” John V. got a chance to draw his beloved Beatles in the final panel of Not Brand Echh #8.

Script by Roy Thomas. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

One day, Stan Lee wanted me to do a drawing of Paul McCartney in the Titanium Man suit. I did it, and we had it colored and everything, and Stan told me that Paul McCartney would love to have it.

“He’s at his father-in-law’s law firm on the East Side, so take the drawing over to him.” So here’s John Verpoorten seeing me go out the door. I stop and I tell him, “I’m going up to see Paul McCartney. I’ll say hello for you.” [Jim laughs] He wanted to kill me. He said, “You son of a bitch. You’re going to see Paul McCartney. Not me? You’re going to go see him?” [mutual laughter] I went up there and met Linda McCartney, Paul McCartney, and his father-in-law. I spent a couple of hours up there. They loved the drawing. Linda McCartney took me aside and asked, “Would you do a comic book for me? I’m forming a female singing group.” They were going to be called ‘The Stripes.’ I said, “Sure, I’d love to do it.”

She was going to be the lead singer, or at least in charge of the band. I went right back to the office and did the drawing. I did a drawing of her that I happen to still have—of Linda McCartney in an outfit I designed with red and white stripes. I sent it to them and she loved it. And I was going to do a comic book with Linda McCartney as the star, except that they changed their mind and didn’t form the group, and so I never had the chance to do it.

The culmination of this story is that, the next Christmas, she sent me their personal Christmas gift that they sent to all of their friends: you know those little photo albums with the white cushioned covers?

Full of personal photographs of her and her family. I brought it in to John Verpoorten and he wanted to kill me. He said, “You—you heathen, you! You unbeliever! You get this as a gift and I don’t get—” He wanted it from me and I stupidly—I should have said, “You know what, John? As soon as I enjoy it for a while, I’ll give it to you,” although he passed away a couple of years later. But you want to hear the terrible end to this story? I don’t know where that thing is. I have no idea whatever happened to it. I hope John Verpoorten stole it from me. [chuckles] At least then somebody would have enjoyed it. Can you imagine having a gift like that? What a great souvenir that is! A personal thing from the McCartneys, and I don’t have it. So if you want to know who hates himself, just ask me.

“Gene [Colan] Used To Work Until Three In the Morning, Every Morning” JA: It hurts to hear that, [mutual laughter] it really does. You’ve mentioned Gene Colan, but we haven’t talked about him, really.

ROMITA: Every time he came in, we always got on the subject of speed and lack of speed, because Gene used to work until three in the morning, every morning. He used to say he couldn’t go to sleep unless he did two pages. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to pay his bills because he was supporting two families at the time. He was divorced and it cost him a fortune. So every time he used to ask, “John, is there something you’ve learned? Has anybody got any ideas on how to pick up speed?” I used to tell him, “Gene, if you were a guy like Gil Kane and could work in lines without all that shadow, you could save half the time. But I don’t think it’s in you to draw that way.” I don’t think he ever tried in his life to work in line. Maybe his first two comics, I’m not sure.

I said, “You know what? You’re asking the wrong guy because I have trouble, too. The reason I’m working 9-to-5 is because I can’t turn out enough pages in five days to pay my bills.” I could not deliver work on time. I could do five pages in one day, and then it would take me the next five days to do the next page. I could never tell. In fact, if an editor said, “Can you get this 10-page story done by next Wednesday?,” I couldn’t guarantee it to him. I used to say, “The

The Merry Widow Gene Colan (seen in his pic from that fabled 1969 FF Annual) penciled and inked this sketch of The Black Widow for the 1974 Academy of Comic Book Arts Portfolio. He also drew the lovely Russian in 1970s issues of Amazing Adventures. Thanks to Jerry K. Boyd. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

truth of the matter is, I don’t know. I could get it done in two days or it could take me three weeks. I have no idea how long this is going to take me, because I have no regular flow that I can count on.”

So Gene and I used to commiserate. Every time he came in, we would talk for an hour and a half about how to speed up. I would tell him thumbnail and lightbox, and he said, “That takes too much time.”

I found that my problem is, when I do a drawing on the sheet, on the full-size sheet, I can get the perfect drawing, but it’s in the wrong place in the panel. Perfect figure, but it’s too close to one side, it’s too small, it’s too big. So I started thumbnailing, and using tracing paper and Xeroxes. I would do the drawings on the thumbnail, then I would trace it and blow it up, and then put it on a lightbox and put it in the page where exactly where I wanted it. And he used to say, “Doesn’t it take a long time?” I used to say, “I would have to throw pages away because I would have the perfect drawing, but I didn’t like where it was or how big it was, and I would have to redraw it from scratch, and it would never be as good as the first one. It used to drive me crazy. So I used to lose more time. I’d find that doodling with a thumbnail and blowing them up, I’d find that I get better proportions and if I got a perfect figure and I want to tilt it, I could even tilt it. I could even reverse it—that’s the other thing I found, that I used to sometimes have a perfect figure, but then I would realize that, the next panel, I had to do a figure going in that same direction again, and it would drive me nuts.”

I told him that I was not the guy to help him get faster. It was an ongoing problem for both of us, and I said, “If I ever find a way to solve it”—like John Buscema telling me to throw away my eraser.

That didn’t help me, and it certainly wouldn’t have helped Colan,

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reaching the outside world,” because we were getting letters from colleges and from professors, from doctors and lawyers and movie people. You know the stories about all the movie people coming up to Stan. “I think we’ve broken through the barriers and I think maybe we’re going to be more sustained this time. But I can’t guarantee it to you. All I can tell you is that it looks different to me, and listen, I’m putting all my eggs in this basket. I’m giving up everything else. I passed up a lot of commercial ventures to stay in comics. Chances are, this time, it’s going to be different.” So for years after that, we used to joke about it every time we met and say, “You think we’re going to go belly-up in a couple of years?” [mutual laughter] “I don’t think we’re going to go belly-up any more.” [more laughter] But now, of course, Gene hasn’t been working full time during these slumps. So it’s like we got away with it, because if I had to make a living, if I had to work five days a week, or seven days a week, I don’t think I could make a living any more.

JA: You did ink Gene, didn’t you?

ROMITA: I inked him on a couple of romance jobs and a few covers.

I didn’t ink him a lot. I wish I had done more, but I will tell you he’s very hard to ink. You’re an inker. You’ve seen his pencils. You think you could have an easy job on it?

JA: I’m not sure I could do him justice, but I’d like to try.

ROMITA: I told Gene that when you get a guy like Jack Abel who knows how to ink you, you’ve got to cherish him, because Gene works in grays. Now it looks like he’s doing blacks, but they’re grays and they’re subtle. And there’s a lot of soft lines and a lot of soft edges. How the hell do you ink those? Where do you soften it up and how do you soften up? You can’t use drybrush because you’re not doing a pulp drawing. The truth of the matter is that when you ink Gene, you’re interpreting his stuff to the best of your ability. Either you get heavy-handed like I sometimes did—I got too heavy-handed a couple of times in his love stories, because, I mean, here was all this gray and I thought it was black. What you need to do is find a way to soften that, or break it up somehow with a line technique.

Made In The (Pencil) Shade Even more breathtaking than Gene Colan’s finished art are his pulsating pencils—like this page from Captain America #256 (April 1981)! Thanks to Bill Leach. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

because I don’t think he erased. I think he just did everything the hard way, everything in full shadow.

The biggest memory I have of Gene is that, after ’49, Timely shut down the Bullpen and he was out of work. And then in ’57, he was working for Stan, doing Westerns and war stories, and in ’58 they shut down again. So he got stung twice, and both times his wife told him, “Don’t you ever go back into comics!” But he always gravitated back to comics, because he really loved to tell stories. And so comes the ’60s: here it is 1966, 1967, he starts working for us again and he’s just scared stiff to commit. And he comes to me in the office there and I’m sweating over Spider-Man, and he’s saying, “John, I’m afraid that next year or the year after, Marvel’s going to go belly-up again.” And I told him, “Gene, I can’t guarantee you it’s not going to happen,” because frankly, my philosophy was, I always told young people, “If you’re going to get into this business, you’ve got to remember one thing. You’re going to have one or two good years, then you’re going to have a couple of bad years, then you’re going to have a couple of good years.” It was terribly cyclical in the ’50s and in the ’60s.

Terribly cyclical.

A lot of young artists don’t understand it, because they never lived through it. So I told him, “The only thing I can tell you is that it feels different because, this time, it looks like the company is getting over the hump from catering only to comic book readers. I think we’re

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I thought the answer to his whole situation was to just reproduce from his pencils, but the technology wasn’t good enough for those days. Nice litho offset would have been nice, and they could have done his stuff. When he did get stuff done in pencil, sometimes it worked and sometimes, it didn’t. But the truth of the matter is he was very hard to ink, but a few guys like Tom Palmer make Colan look like Colan. Jack Abel had a knack with his work that was very good on “Iron Man.” But outside of that, very few guys could ink him. I know Giacoia did and he did a passable job, but it was a little hard, and all of the softness from Colan is gone when you do it with a hard line. I think Gene was lucky to get some of the good inking he did get.

JA: I thought Abel’s inks on “Iron Man” over Colan was some of the best inking Colan got.

ROMITA: Absolutely, it was great stuff. When Jack worked with me on Captain America in one book in the ’50s, he did a lot of line technique. A little bit too much line technique, but I was just feeling my way so anybody who did a professional job on my work made me happy at the time.

Jack was an amazing guy. He was a card player, too, but I never had the chance to play cards with him. He had played cards with the Wally Wood generation. He was a hell of a guy and a great talker. We could talk forever. He ended up being a proofreader up at Marvel, and an excellent one at that. He was one of the best guys at catching mistakes and correcting stuff gracefully. And he was as capable an inker.

handwriting was on the wall. I bought a paper route for $4,000, which took a lot of my cash, and it really scared me, but I needed that kind of support there. I needed a cushion to land on. I was getting up at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning and delivering papers, and then trying to do comics all day. I did that for three years. It was terrible, but I did it because I really didn’t know where my next comic story was coming from. Those were bad times.

“Everybody And His Brother Worked on Spider-Man” JA: Well, we’ll move on to better times. You didn’t have any interaction with Ditko when he left Spider-Man, did you?

ROMITA: I only met him a couple of times. He only came in like once every three or four months. I barely shook his hand; I was introduced to him once. No, I didn’t have any interaction with him at all.

Sol Brodsky dealt with him.

JA: Later, when Ditko returned to Marvel, you never really had any interaction with him then, either?

ROMITA: No, I never did. I never dealt with him. He would work with an individual editor, and I never had anything to do with it. I regret not having a chance to get to know him better.

JA: Let me ask you about Dick Ayers. I don’t remember that you inked Ayers. Am I wrong?

We used to run into each other in the waiting rooms of DC, Marvel, and Avon Comics. We were all just guys, lining up like longshoremen do, hoping to catch, say, three pages that nobody else could do. And so I knew him for years, but only on those occasions.

Once a week, we’d see each other somewhere, waiting on Stan Lee or somebody. When I was working at Stan’s in the ’50s, he said, “You ought to go to DC. DC would love to have you.” I went up there and I did some romance stuff, but Stan asked me to stop because he didn’t want me working for two companies. So I gave up DC in the ’50s, and then later on, in the late ’50s, I ended up working full-time at DC. And one day, I saw Jack at DC and he tells me, “You ought to go back to Stan.” [mutual laughter] I said, “Yeah, I would, except that Stan wasn’t paying enough.” But Jack Abel was always there. We were crisscrossing each other. He’d go to DC, I’d go to Marvel, and vice versa. And then we worked a long time together at Marvel.

JA: Stan didn’t want you to work for two companies back then. In the ’60s, when that started happening, Stan had people using pseudonyms. Do you think that any of the guys who used pseudonyms resented that?

ROMITA: That they had to do it? I don’t know, I think maybe it was fun for them. The thing that bothered me with Stan was that I wasn’t making a lot of money at DC. All I was doing was making sure that if something happened with Stan, and things were slowing with Stan— you know, every time I went in there, I was getting my rate cut.

JA: You’re talking the 1950s now. Didn’t you even take a paper route once?

ROMITA: I took a paper route out in ’56 before, because I knew the

ROMITA: No, I don’t think I did. I might have inked maybe one cover. I’m not sure. I didn’t deal with him much. Once he was going to do a Spider-Man fill-in, and drew a splash page, and I think Stan told him no, forget about it, but we used the splash page. I think I just touched it up a little bit. I forget what issue it was, but it was a splash page, where there was a spider webbing, and Peter Parker was walking in the middle of the webbing... I’m not sure what, in fact, it was. Stan was always looking for somebody who might be able to fill in for me

A Romance Artist By Any Other Name John advised Gene Colan to hang onto Jack Abel as an inker—even if Jack was hiding behind the name “Gary Michaels” at the time! But then, Gene was playing at being “Adam Austin,” which evened things out. In the mid1960s, it was Roy Thomas’ understanding that several Marvel artists feared retribution from DC romance editors if it were known they were moonlighting for Martin Goodman’s lower-paying outfit—and, since the guys weren’t allowed to sign their DC work back then, pseudonyms were all they had! Art at top left from Tales of Suspense #76 (April 1966). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above is a 1991 photo of John Romita with three truly fine inkers (as well as pencilers in their own right). Left to right: George Roussos, John, Joe Sinnott, Jack Abel, & Betty (Mrs. Joe) Sinnott. Pic courtesy of Joe S.

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Ditko The Definitive on Spider-Man, so he tried everybody, you know? He tried Jim Starlin, he tried Dick Ayers, he tried George Tuska, and then he used Jim Mooney on me a lot. He even let Mooney pencil some things, I think, and of course, John Buscema and Gil Kane. So everybody and his brother [mutual chuckling] worked on Spider-Man while I was there.

Steve Ditko, the first definitive artist on the Spider-Man character, as seen by this page of original art from The Amazing Spider-Man #34 (March 1966), one of his last issues. Thanks to Anthony Snyder. Photo courtesy of Britt Santon. [Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

One of my memories of Dick Ayers was when I first started to work in the Bullpen in ’66; that’s when Larry Lieber started coming in. Larry Lieber was writing Two-Gun Kid. He was drawing Rawhide Kid later on, but he was writing Two-Gun Kid and Dick Ayers was penciling it. Every time Larry would come in, he’d say, “Look at this.” Dick Ayers had this habit, instead of drawing a whole head in a panel, he would cut the guy off, say, below the nose or just above the tip of the nose. You’d see his eyes and his cowboy hat above, and then he’d leave like maybe two inches of white space above, ostensibly to put copy in. Larry used to constantly curse, saying, “What the hell am I going to have him do here, recite the Declaration of Independence?” [mutual laughter] because Dick Ayers had been taught to leave plenty of room for copy above because they were doing drawings first, the Marvel Way, and add the copy later. So Larry felt obliged to fill in all the space. And so half the time, what Larry had to do—and this may be one of the reasons he started doing

more penciling—is to fill in some stuff, and maybe rearrange some of Dick Ayers’ stuff, just so he wouldn’t have to write so much.

But Dick was very sincere. He wasn’t trying to save any work. He was fast, fast and furious, and he thought he was doing the right thing. But meanwhile, he was drawing half-heads and half-figures and Larry was trying to fill in all the space.

I worked with Larry quite a bit. We worked on a Spider-Man Annual together, the one with Peter Parker’s parents. I was doing full-page scribbly layouts. Then I would take a tracing pad and lay it out like 5 or 6 panels, very quickly and very roughly, and I would draw a Spider-Man figure very roughly in the corner, and then I would do a big city scene, a silhouette of the buildings in a narrow panel, and then I would draw a close-up of Spider-Man.

Baby, It’s Colt Outside “Darling Dick” Ayers (as seen in Marvel Tales Annual #1, 1964) and a splash page from Kid Colt Outlaw #136 (Sept. 1967). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Larry would rule up the panels and use the general themes of what I did in the rough layouts. Then we would work it out if he made a figure too rigid or something. I would bend him over a little bit and tell him how to do this. So we worked together on the entire story and the cover sketch. He drew the cover and he did the splash page by himself, I think. And the rest of it, we did together. I created the look of Peter Parker’s parents and all of that stuff. Larry, Stan, and I plotted the story together. And so Larry and I worked together for maybe a year on a couple of projects. It was really wild.

Larry was a Kirby buff, and every time Kirby’s work came in, we would go over every page and marvel at everything that Jack did; all the creation stuff he did, which was wonderful. Larry was a very good writer, but he preferred to draw, and between you and me, as you probably well know, writers drive Cadillacs and artists are lucky to get the subway.

And I told him that. I said, “If I could write the way you could write, I would stop drawing in a second.” He used to say, “No, it’s more fun to draw.” I’d say, “You call this fun?

[Jim chuckles] This is hard work! A writer can do a 20-page story in one afternoon if you’re fast like Stan. You’re not as fast as Stan, so maybe it takes you three days. You could write a 20-page story and start on the next plot while I’m still working on page three. If I could make a living as a writer, I would never work as an artist.” This is while I was doing the strip and Larry was drawing the Hulk strip and Stan was writing both strips. I told Larry, “When Stan gets tired of writing Spider-Man, I want you to write it, and then I will be able to plot the whole thing by myself, and you just do the dialogue. I’ll have an easier time of it because Stan won’t be driving me nuts with corrections.” [Jim chuckles] I had it all planned out that we were going to do the Spider-Man strip for ten years together. Larry never wanted to write! It’s crazy! And to this day, he said he loves improving his drawing, and every time he does another strip, he feels like he’s improving. And he certainly has made himself a solid penciler, but it was never easy for him, and yet he plugged away at it. But the guy was a very creative writer. Why the hell would he do that to himself?

He drove me nuts. [mutual laughter] I know he’s not making nearly as much money as he could have as a writer.

JA: Of course, as you know, he co-wrote the first “Thor” story.

ROMITA: Oh, he did a lot of writing back in the early ’60s. He created a lot of important concepts for Marvel. That’s what I’m telling you. All that writing experience, down the tubes.

JA: What can you do if somebody wants to do something else? [mutual chuckling] Before we leave the subject of Larry, are there any other personal stories about him that you recall?

ROMITA: Well, no, just the stuff that he took on the chin from Marie’s cartoons. We always kidded him a lot. Before Larry ruled out pages, he used to take a blank piece of Bristol board and write the word “Top” on the top of the page, and we kidded him all the time about it. One day, when he went out to lunch, Marie had written “Left” and “Right” and “Bottom” on the other ends. [mutual laughter] He got a good laugh out of that. The next day, the drawing

When Kids Collide Larry Lieber (seen above as per the 1964 Marvel Tales Annual) penciled and, according to some records, inked this page of Rawhide Kid #50 (Feb. 1966), in which Rawhide met—and of course immediately had a fight with—another Marvel maverick, Kid Colt. Carl Hubbell is listed as scripting this story… but if Larry inked it instead of Carl, his embellishment sure resembles Hubbell’s own! Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, thanks to Michael Dunne. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

table that he was working on had a “Top,” and a “Left,” a “Right,” and a “Bottom” on the drawing table, and on his chair. [more laughter] He was the butt of a lot of jokes, but was a good sport about it.

Friends For the past couple of decades, Larry Lieber has penciled the daily Spider-Man newspaper strip. This daily for April 17, 2007, was inked by Alex Saviuk.

Script by Stan Lee. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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JA: Do you think he ever felt any pressure because he’s Stan’s younger brother?

ROMITA: I don’t know if he felt pressure, but I’ll tell you something: he never got a break because of it. He never got any kind of special treatment. He worked harder than anybody I’ve ever known, and I don’t think he ever got any benefit from being Stan’s brother. You’d think Stan would have thrown him some cushy projects sometimes and maybe even doubled his rate or something. But Stan never treated him any differently from anybody else.

JA: Stan may have felt like he couldn’t give him a break because of how others might react.

ROMITA: Yeah, maybe it would have been hard, because he didn’t want anybody claiming nepotism. Larry was the opposite personality of Stan. Larry’s very quiet and soft-spoken and very reserved, and Stan is a showman. He’s a P.T. Barnum. [mutual chuckling] JA: Earlier, you’ve mentioned Al Sulman. What do you remember about him?

ROMITA: I knew Al way back when I worked for Stan in the early ’50s. He was like a production manager or something, or he was an assistant editor.

JA: He was in editorial both in the comics and the magazine department.

ROMITA: I knew him then, and I submitted a story to him. It was a “Shangri-La” kind of thing in a town where everybody is young and handsome, and as soon as they leave town, they become old. It wasn’t much, a 5-page mystery story. I submitted it to him as a plot, to see if he wanted me to script it, because people at the time had asked me if I wanted to write. I thought, “Well, maybe I should try,” because I wasn’t getting enough penciling work. Al just sort-of sloughed it off and said, “No, it’s been done before.” The thing I wanted to tell him was, “For God’s sakes, is there anything we do that hasn’t been done before in this company?” At that time—Joe Sinnott and I were joking about it the other day—we used to do Westerns and war stories.

Every three years, we would get the same Western plot with different names. It was always “Panhandle Pete” or something was coming into town, and one plot was a bully, another plot was a woman who was running a ranch and she was tough as men, but she cried at night, and

The All-Star Sulmans You saw a caricature of Al Sulman on p. 101. Here are panels from a story he apparently wrote, and his brother Joseph drew, of the “Biff Bronson” feature that ran in early DC mags, including All-Star Comics #1 (Summer 1940). And here Roy, who owned that issue of his favorite comic at that time and played poker with Al for years, never thought to ask him any questions about the Golden Age. What was he thinking? [©2007 DC Comics.]

all of that. The same plots over and over again! I think I did one Western story three or four times that Stan wrote. I used to joke with Stan, “You know, it was good the first two times I did it. Why are we doing it again?” [mutual chuckling] JA: The third time’s the charm, John.

ROMITA: It was like that with Sulman. When he told me it had been done before, I turned around and said to him, “What, am I hearing things? What do you mean it’s been done before? Of course it’s been done before, but I’m going to write different kinds of characters in it and try and make it a little different. Everything’s been done before.”

Later on, we played cards together for years. We used to go to his place on the Upper West Side. The first place we started playing our monthly game was at Al’s place, but it was such a long trip to go home from there that we started going to Roy’s, and then we went to my house.

JA: When you were playing cards with Sulman, that was in the ’60s and ’70s, right?

ROMITA: It must have been the late ’60s, early ’70s. I believe he was working for some other company by then. We weren’t with Magazine Management by then. I think Perfect Film had taken over, and there was no Magazine Management to speak of.

JA: Stan Goldberg told me Al Sulman was a very meticulous neat-freak. Do you remember that?

ROMITA: Yes, he was. And very prim and proper, and very soft-spoken. I don’t think I ever heard him raise his voice. He might have been one of the cigarsmokers, but I doubt it. I got a feeling he would probably prefer not to fume up his house. [mutual chuckling]

Li’l Spidey?

Here’s something that Al Sulman couldn’t have told John R. had been “done before”: Johnny’s proposed juvenile version of Spidey aimed as really young readers in the late 1960s. Hey, maybe they could’ve ganged up on Little Archie and his buddies! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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I don’t know what he did between the Timely period in the early ’50s and the ’70s.

I gathered he was working for some other magazine company, or some other publisher in some other capacity. But isn’t it funny?

We would play cards and we didn’t know if he was working for Marvel or not. I never did dwell on it.

JA: For a little while, Wally Wood worked there. Did you have much contact with him?

ROMITA: I never had a chance to even talk to him. He and Marie Severin were close because they’d worked together at EC. JA: Tell me about Tony Mortellaro.

ROMITA: Tony Mortellaro was a comic artist who was in and out of the business for a while. When the boom started in the ’60s, he came back into the business. He had done some comics for Stan in the ’50s, and then sort-of drifted away when things got cold.

Indeed!

And then he came back as Mike Esposito’s background guy. Then he started doing some of my backgrounds, because Mike and I were working together a lot. He did my backgrounds for about a couple of years, but I found it a little hard to work with people. I’m not one of those guys that can work with other people, and I’m not satisfied with what they do, you know?

JA: You weren’t even satisfied with your own work.

ROMITA: That’s what I’m saying. Because of that, it was almost a losing situation, but psychologically, it was good to know that I had somebody there to back me up. When I was really late and nervous about things, it was good to have somebody who was working on it with me. I also figured if I was ever sick, Tony could carry it alone.

But most of the time, what ended up happening is, I used to go over all his stuff, clean it up, and add blacks and take away heavy stuff.

And I used to pay him a nice bit of change, because a lot of times, what I did was draw the backgrounds in blue pencil and then he would take them to the finish. Of course, that made it worse, because it didn’t come out nearly as subtle as I wanted. He got a little heavyhanded. But I got by with it. People didn’t complain, and the interesting thing about him was all the signs that he used to slip into the backgrounds. He never just came out and wrote his full name. He used to write “Mort” on one sign, and then the rest of his name on other signs in other places, which got people’s attention. He always got people’s curiosity going.

Tony was a character. He was very strong-willed and a little bit loud. He was a nice guy except when he had a few drinks in him, and then you didn’t want him around. He was garrulous and he was certainly not a guy to drive in a car with. We used to socialize a little bit, and he even moved into a house about less than a block away from where I lived.

When he stopped getting work from Marvel, he got a job at the Post Office, and he died a few years after that. He had made a lot of money freelancing for Marvel, and when they cut down on the freelancing, he was very unhappy. He wasn’t getting any more background work. He was trying to force getting freelancing, which sort-of caused him trouble up there, and he had to leave.

When he was fired, John Buscema called me up and said that “You ought to back him up.” And this is John Buscema, who’s making like three times as much as anybody else in the business, and he’s saying, “Hey, John, why should we let this guy get fired? Why don’t we get behind him?” I said, “John, you’re willing to lose that income of

Mortellaro, Indeed!

Tony Mortellaro (from the 1969 FF Annual) assisted Romita in the inking of numerous Spider-Man issues, but had been a solo artist earlier in his career. He had the distinction of having the panel at left center, from a story he drew in the 1950s, included in Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1954 tome Seduction of the Innocent as an example of prurience in comic books, with the psychiatrist’s own caustic comment typeset below it. Well, maybe Doc wasn’t entirely wrong about this one…! [Photo ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; art ©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

And what about the page printed above? It comes from a pre-Code Timely horror title (most likely Marvel Tales, from the blurb), and shows that Tony Mortellaro might well have made it as a Marvel artist if he’d given it his best shot. From the English/Alan Class black-&-white reprint title Secrets of the Unknown. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

yours to help a fellow guy like that?” And he said, “Yeah!” Well, he was ready to go on strike. I couldn’t believe John was that way, you know. And I had to explain to him that, really, the reason he was let go was something he had brought on himself, and that I didn’t feel like it was wise for somebody like John to risk his whole economic situation just to be good to a friend. And he didn’t even know Tony that well.

It’s just amazing that John was ready to go on strike, by the way, at the drop of a hat. John must have been a frustrated Union guy. [mutual chuckling] Whenever we used to have trouble getting rates or getting our artwork back, he used to say, “Why don’t we walk out?

Why don’t we let them see what they can do without us?” I said, “John, they’ll have four hacks in here for you to take your place in two days.” [mutual chuckling] You have to watch that kind of stuff.

JA: When Tony’s backgrounds weren’t working out, you had to fix them.

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background man. How can you split up that money between me and him, because he didn’t do a large share of it? He did a small amount of backgrounds.” I think they finally caught on, but I don’t know if they ever sent him any money. I never pursued it, because I didn’t want to be a character.

JA: But if it’s your money, you should have it.

ROMITA: Well, the point was that I didn’t want them to give me 20% less because they were sending money to him.

JA: Do you think that happened?

ROMITA: I don’t think so. I’m not sure. I tried to get money for Frank Giacoia’s widow, because Frank and I worked together, but a lot of the reprint money that Frank was supposed to get, they changed the policy and they didn’t send it to the widows anymore. You know, it’s a lot of bookkeeping and problematic, because they tried to track down Syd Shores, and they tried to track down a lot of guys, and they couldn’t reach the people and the money would just be lying there. I was aware of that and it bothered me, but I don’t think I’ve ever been short-changed. I hope not, anyway.

“[Romita & Buscema Becoming The Marvel Look] Was Not An Accident” JA: Let’s talk about John Buscema. You didn’t meet him until the 1960s, right?

When One Titan Draws Another

ROMITA: Right. He was in advertising by the mid- to late 1950s. He was doing paperback covers, and a lot of advertising art. I didn’t even know about him. The first I heard of him was about ’66, when Stan told me, “I got John Buscema to give up some of his advertising time to do some work for us.”

John Buscema—pictured from guess which 1969 Marvel annual—flanked by his cover for the 1994 Avengers Annual, which reunited him and scripter Roy Thomas in a sequel of sorts to The Avengers #49-50 back in 1968, and a page of rough pencils from the 1994 comic. Although the latter were counted as “layouts” and he was paid a lesser rate for them than for a finished page of pencils, virtually everything was there that an inker would need in order to embellish the page. Thanks to David G. Hamilton. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: That was me, because they were never good enough for me.

JA: Did you try to work with him so that he’d get closer to what you wanted?

ROMITA: No, he was very abrupt about it and very stubborn. Mike Esposito used to give him complaints all the time, too. Mike was always aware that, if you don’t keep the quality up, you’re not going to keep getting work. And so he would tell him, “Tony, I don’t want you to rush this stuff. I want it done with a little bit of care.” And Tony would say, “Aah, I got no time here. I’m not going to make enough money on it.” He disregarded people’s feelings about stuff like that, and you’ve got to make a living, you know. To hell with it if they don’t like it. But the point was that it was our names on it. It wasn’t his name on it, but they tossed it in. [laughs] One more thing about Tony. Marvel was doing the vouchers for reprint money. They called me up once and asked, “Is Tony Mortellaro alive?” When I told them he’s not, they don’t know where his family was, and I asked them why, and they said, “Well, he helped you ink some stories.” I told them, “Wait a second, he doesn’t deserve it. If he was alive, I’d tell him the same thing. He worked for me, he didn’t work for Marvel. I paid him off the books. I paid him cash, and he had nothing to do with the stuff. It was my responsibility and he was wellpaid for that, and I didn’t get reimbursed for having him as a

116 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

John Makes A Bullseye One of John’s many character designs: the Daredevil villain Bullseye. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: What did you think of his work when you first saw it?

ROMITA: Actually, the first story he did was an “Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” story, if I’m not mistaken. He was like anybody who had been doing non-comic book illustrations in that his work was a little mild, not very explosive. Stan asked me to talk to him, and I immediately realized that I didn’t have much to teach him. I told him what Stan used to always tell me: never to do it the mild way, do it as excitingly as possible. And so once he got that indoctrination, he immediately started rolling. When he learned to take some of Kirby’s tricks and turn them into the beautiful finishes that he did, then of course he was unmatched.

JA: Right. His pencils in those days were pretty complete, weren’t they?

ROMITA: Oh, yes. When he started rolling and he was doing those Avengers, the whole office used to come and look at his artwork every time it came in. And as soon as Xerox copies were available, people were making copies of his artwork. All the wannabe artists, and all the guys like Larry Lieber and me, were all wanting to get copies of them. One of my painful annoyances is that I’ve never kept any of those. I had a box with about a hundred sheets of Xeroxes of some of the best stuff he did. And let me tell you, it was out of this world. It was unbelievable. The stuff was full of life and beauty.

JA: After Kirby, you and John Buscema became, more or less, the Marvel Look.

ROMITA: Well, we tried, because that was not an accident. We did that on purpose and, yeah, I guess we carried through. I mean, the only time it got interrupted was when Neal Adams came and brought a different style to Marvel.

JA: Yes, but his influence on the company wasn’t as great as yours or John’s.

ROMITA: He did bring a bunch of wannabe Neal Adamses with him.

All the guys that worked with him at Continuity, plus guys like Bill Sienkiewicz, were striving to be another Neal Adams.

JA: Jack leaves Marvel in 1970. The house style is still Kirby, but it’s also becoming John Buscema and John Romita.

ROMITA: There’s another thing that was very shrewd of Stan: He didn’t tell us to draw like Kirby. All he asked of us was to approach a story with the same reckless abandon and wild parameters. In other words, don’t be limited by normal limits. Think big, think oversized, think overact. In the early ’50s, before Stan worked with Jack, he already was preaching the silent film acting technique. The silent film actors had to overact. Their expressions and body motions were over the top. They were acting with their bodies.

Axe Me No Questions…

John Buscema’s favorite drawing subject—aside from beautiful women—was barbarians, as a few of you may have guessed already. When he wasn’t drawing “Conan” stories in Marvel’s three mags about the swashbuckling Cimmerian, he was penciling (and often inking!) related sketches on the backs of pages of original art. That’s probably the source of this drawing, supplied by David G. Hamilton. [©2007 Estate of John Buscema.]

When I first started at Timely in the 1950s, Stan told me that you can’t just do mild stuff. You’ve got to bend the characters’ backs, you’ve got to extend their arms, you’ve got to pound their fists— don’t do anything mild. Stan didn’t have to tell Jack that. All he had to do was let Jack go. When John Buscema, Gene Colan, and I went to Marvel, every one of us had a different style. John was an illustrator, I was a romance artist, and Colan was a war expert and a romance artist. When John Buscema started, his work was very mild, very illustrative and realistic. Stan steered him in the direction of using Kirby’s extreme action and over-the-top characterization.

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 117

The Clone Ranger?

Romita swears he tried never to be a “Kirby clone”—except to some extent when he was briefly drafted by Stan Lee to pencil Fantastic Four, after the King split for DC. Above left is a Romita/Verpoorten page from FF #103 (Oct. 1970)—next to the Romita/Mooney splash for Amazing Spider-Man #88 (Sept. 1970), done at almost the same time. On the back of the latter page are the pencil sketches displayed at right. Repro’d from photocopies of the original art, with thanks to Anthony Snyder.

The character studies below of three of the Fantastic Four were done in 1970, as a warm-up for assuming the art chores on Marvel’s flagship title. [Comics pages ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; non-Marvel sketches ©2007 John Romita.]

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John once told me, “Once I understood what Stan wanted...” it didn’t matter how you drew the characters because John, Gene Colan and I certainly didn’t draw like Jack Kirby. As you know, I tried to draw like Jack Kirby more than once, but I couldn’t do it.

It wasn’t natural for me.

JA: So you think the evolution of the house style was a natural thing?

ROMITA: Yes. We were telling stories like Jack, but with our own interpretation and our own shapes. The storytelling style was Jack Kirby’s and Stan Lee’s, and all of us incorporated that style, which made every one of us a better artist. Think about guys like Barry Smith with all his imitations, and how little background he had, and suddenly Barry Smith becomes a storyteller. Bill Sienkiewicz and John Byrne and everybody else came in with their own approach—even Neal Adams. When Neal Adams worked for Stan, it was different work than he did for DC. The reason was that the storytelling that Stan espoused triggered something in all of us that was different than we might have done.

If I’d stayed in DC, I would have been a Carmine Infantino clone. I didn’t become a Kirby clone—I became a Marvel Clone and a Marvel Storyteller—but it was always me, and even though I thought I was lost in the shuffle as a generic artist, everybody recognized my stuff. Which surprised me.

JA: You absorbed the “Marvel Way” of doing it, and you filtered it through your own sensibility.

ROMITA: Absolutely. That’s the only reason we were able to survive, because you can only try to be somebody else for a short time. I tried to be Ditko for about a year and a half, and it was terrible for me because it was unnatural for me.

JA: You were also trying to be Kirby a little bit when you took over Fantastic Four.

ROMITA: I did it unabashedly, because I was really raised in the syndicated artists ghost period. In other words, if you drew The Phantom, you drew like Sy Barry. When Sy Barry took over The Phantom, he started drawing like Wilson McCoy, but he changed it to his own style. During my young years, everybody who took over a strip did that.

“I Believed In Drawing Attractive, Glamorous People” JA: Because you had this glamorous style that was, in a sense, formed from your romance comics at DC, I feel you brought some humanity to the Marvel look that hadn’t been there before.

I’ve Got You Covered!

As a custodian and major proponent of the Marvel style, it was John Romita that Stan Lee (and Simon & Schuster Books) turned to in 1977 to design and paint the cover of the trade paperback collection Bring On the Bad Guys. Above is an unused version of the sketch; at top right, the finished cover. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: I take credit for that a little bit, but the reason for that is that I believed in drawing attractive, glamorous people. You can make Dr. Doom grotesque in his iron mask, but you also have to add a certain amount of glamour, because a villain needs to have two appeals. He’s got to terrify the reader, but he’s got to be attractive enough not to be distasteful. I used tell artists, “There’s a way to do Dr. Doom that’s glamorous.” You do it with a slick style, and you do techniques. Some of the techniques that Jack used made Dr. Doom look very ugly. I tried to make Dr. Doom a little more glamorous, even though he was still doing ferocious things. I tried to glamorize him a little bit to make him

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Stalk, Prowl—What’s The Difference?

(Left:) John’s character design sheet for The Stalker—who became The Prowler. The villain was the idea of John’s son, John, Jr., in 1969. Wonder if that kid’s making a living nowadays?

(Below:) The Prowler turned up in the early Amazing SpiderMan newspaper comic strip, as per this Lee/Romita daily for Nov. 17, 1979. With thanks to JR. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

acceptable to the reader on a certain level. It was mostly this innate sense of mine, to glamorize characters to the point where they became memorable and pleasing.

be so that if he’s raised his arms above his head, he doesn’t impale himself on his own spikes. So I was always thinking functional and glamorous.

For instance, here’s Robin Hood stealing and killing people, but there was a certain glamour to him, and of course he was giving to the poor. I always felt that every thief should be a Robin Hood, and every villain should have a human side to him. Stan started to write villains that had a human side to them, and I followed his lead. These characters have to have an appeal, even if it’s not pleasant. There’s a devil side and a human side to every character.

JA: Another example is the Shocker character, because he had knit padding on his arms and legs.

JA: You did the Prowler character in Spider-Man, and he looked like a villain, but he had glamour to him, too.

ROMITA: I think most of the costumes I designed were designed to be glamorous. I was thinking almost like a toy designer. A toy designer had to make the toy appealing and usable, and I also thought of it in a functional way. When I designed a costume, I didn’t want to make it just shocking. I wanted to make it functional. I wanted it to

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ROMITA: I used a lot of very subliminal feeling. While designing the Shocker costume, for some reason, I thought “cushion” and “quilt.”

I’m thinking, if the guy has a shocking power and vibrates buildings so they fell apart by shaking them, then there’s got to be some kind of cushion effect, and so, subliminally, I did it. The same with The Kingpin. For some reason, I put a stickpin in his cravat, but not because the word “Kingpin” suggested it. I thought of him as an old Wall Street mogul with a stickpin in his cravat. It seemed to make some kind of sense to me on a subliminal level. I tried to put stuff in to make the reader remember and understand them. In other words, The Kingpin cared about how he looked. He dressed up like every morning was Sunday.

And when I did The Punisher, I made him as neat as possible. I did not want to make him look like a ragamuffin street assassin. I wanted him to look scary, but slick.

JA: Whose idea was it to redesign Doctor Octopus?

ROMITA: I don’t remember. They did that after me.

JA: No, you did it. You gave him a different kind of glasses and — ROMITA: Oh, yeah. He just had regular dark glasses before.

JA: You changed the glasses to goggles, and dressed him better.

ROMITA: I don’t know if I even was conscious of it. I think I tried to make him look more like a costumed super-hero than just an old man. I wanted him to be a little bit more buff, a little bit less flabby-looking, because he was an old scientist. I figured he’d look a little bit more like a match for Spider-Man if he had a little bit of muscle, and even though I made him wide at the waist, I still gave him a waistline instead of just a fat old guy. I didn’t even realize I was doing a lot of it.

It’s like when I made Peter Parker too glamorous for Stan’s tastes. I couldn’t help myself, sometimes.

We also felt like we needed to make The Vulture a younger character. It seemed more realistic to have a younger man be that kind of villain, rather than have him be as old as Steve Ditko had envisioned. Ditko’s version was very striking, though.

JA: Even though you made things cleaner, prettier, and more glamorous, you also had a very active ink line. When somebody broke a wooden two-by-four over somebody’s head, you saw splinters. And when you drew The Gibbon’s costume, the way you inked the brush lines to delineate the texture of the costume was active and passionate.

I Blast, Therefore I Am A pencil drawing of Spidey vs. Dr. Doom. Nobody seems to know what this illo was done for— but hey, it exists, so here it is! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Why, Octavius, You Look Beautiful In Your New Glasses!

A Real Shocker!

The Shocker makes his debut in Amazing Spider-Man #46 (March 1967)…and in black-&-white, years later, in The Essential Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 3. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

John slightly redesigned Dr. Octopus’ glasses—giving them more of a “goggles” look—when he reintroduced the villain in ASM #53 (Oct. 1967). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Johns’ Other Life Though John Romita, Jr., conceived The Prowler and John Romita [Sr.] did the basic design, it was John Buscema who rough-penciled the baddie’s bodacious debut in ASM #78 (Nov. 1969). Splash repro’d from The Essential Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 4. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Seen above are Buscema (on the left) and Romita on a Marvel Reunion panel at the 2001 San Diego Comic-Con. It was very soon after this event that John B. discovered his cancer had returned; he passed away a few months later.

[Photo ©2007 Marc Svensson.]

ROMITA: When you’ve got nothing going on in a panel, you can get some activity just by adding hair or a scarf blowing in the wind... that kind of stuff. And if I could make the costumes have some kind of movement on them, even when he’s standing still—if you’re not using a cloak, maybe you’ve got a belt or a sash around his waist, and it’s moving. So I used to use whatever weapon was at hand.

JA: By the ’70s, your ink line is more passionate than before.

ROMITA: I was starting to relax and use a bigger brush. When I started imitating Ditko, I was using a thin pen line, and it killed me. If you see the Daredevils I was doing just before that, I used big, heavy brush lines, even more than Frank Giacoia’s.

“Those Were Great Times” JA: We talked about Kirby, and the fact that he didn’t like it when his work was changed. What was your relationship with Jack like?

ROMITA: He never took it out on me that I had to change some of his stuff.

Jack did not like to argue with people outwardly. I know he grumbled about it, and I don’t blame him; frankly, I would have grumbled, too. The truth of the matter is, I’m really sorry that I didn’t use more overlays. The first few times I changed stuff, I would erase or white out what was to be changed, and I hated that. Later, I started using overlays and Photostats that could be peeled off so people could see the original stuff. When people had their artwork returned, and were selling it, I was very conscious of the fact that I didn’t want to change anybody’s stuff. I never told Stan, but I should have said, “No, Stan, I don’t want to change it.” Because I was getting paid to work for Stan, I figured I’d do what I was told.

Auntie, May I? In 1966 John Romita had taken the time to do a character study of Peter Parker’s Aunt May, when he began drawing The Amazing Spider-Man. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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JA: Did you have much one-on-one with Kirby?

ROMITA: Not much. We used to have nice moments when we’d go to lunch. Stan would take Stan Goldberg, Jack Kirby, Sol Brodsky, and me. We had great two-hour lunches with great conversations. Jack would talk theory, and he would talk about war, and he would talk about people killing each other, and he would say he could kill somebody. He was able to get into a discussion where it would be philosophy against philosophy. Those were great times.

Three To Get Ready As John says, after Jack Kirby’s 1970 departure, his own art and John Buscema’s became “the look” for Marvel’s comics.

John R. drew three of its prime icons for a promotional comic for Paragon Software, as per this pencil layout. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: Let’s get back to art corrections for a moment.

You hardly ever corrected John Buscema’s work.

ROMITA: That’s true. The only time was when we were working together on Spider-Man. Stan and I would plot the stories and I would give them to John over the phone. And of course, you know about those stories. He would complain, “I hate these characters. Do we have to have all these characters?” [Jim laughs] He used to say he hated Spider-Man. He really did.

JA: And he used to say, “Why can’t we get rid of Aunt May?” ROMITA: Oh, God, yes. He really did. He was doing the rough pencils on Spider-Man. I never did them for him. I did do layouts for Don Heck. But Stan wanted John to take the time to do the story because that saved me a lot of time. When Don Heck worked with me, it didn’t save me a lot of time because I would do the basic storytelling in blue pencil, before I did the finished pencils. Basic storytelling took all my time, but finishing up from the blue pencils was quick. Stan figured that, “Okay, if he saves you half a day, it’s still something.”

So I would do the blue pencils with Don, but I really didn’t save that much time. And there were a lot of times I would have to make changes when Heck’s stuff came in, because Stan would say that Heck didn’t do exactly what we asked him to in the plot.

I would make minor changes in Don Heck’s stuff, but when John Buscema took the plots from me, a lot of times, he would cut corners in storytelling. He’d do some great battle scenes and then slough off on some of the personal life stuff. He drew beautiful women. He made Gwen and Mary Jane sensational-looking.

JA: How complete or loose were his layouts?

ROMITA: They were just light pencils, no blacks—very, very light and very sketchy, but everything was there. I mean, you didn’t have all the fingernails on the hand, but when there was a hand, you saw five fingers. And he didn’t do circles with dots for eyes like Gil Kane did. [mutual laughter] No, John did a very expressive kind of breakdown—it wasn’t layouts. Layouts were very rough. Layouts were like Jack Kirby gave me, which was just silhouettes and initials for who the characters were. And if a character was smiling, he’d smile it and if it was a frown, it’d be a frown, but that’s about all.

They were just layouts, but John’s breakdowns were a real storytelling job; all that was missing was tightening up the lines and putting blacks in.

JA: Did John really hate it, or was he just saying that?

ROMITA: Well, my theory was that he really didn’t want to do it. So what he was saying is he hated the characters; he didn’t like doing any modern stories. I think he got tired of The Avengers, too, and I don’t blame him for that because I wouldn’t have done The Avengers. You had to draw a thousand characters coming and going.

JA: And you get no extra rate for that work.

ROMITA: Oh, no, no. John never worried about anything. He could

just handle anything, but the thing is that he wanted more fun and the only fun he ever had was on Conan and Tarzan. When he was doing buildings and a lot of side characters and a lot of personal life stuff, he was always a little squirmy and a little bit uncomfortable. He used to say, “I can’t stand Spider-Man.” What he meant was he couldn’t stand the super-hero in New York, which involved too much detail work and not enough room in the panel, because the Spider-Man story technique was to use a lot of panels and have a lot of dialogue between the personal life characters. Steve Ditko used to do 9 and 10 panels on a page. John was like me: he liked to do 4 or 5 panels on a page, and you can get some real movement and have people zooming through space then. It’s very hard to even get any action at all in a 12panel page. And it’s a sacrifice, but the reason I sacrificed was I knew that that was what had been established as Spider-Man storytelling, and I wasn’t going to change it. Let me tell you, I suffered with it, too. It’s not easy and I’d have preferred not to do that. When I was doing Daredevil, I had plenty of room for what I wanted to do. I could do 4 or 5 panels when I needed it, and then get a little bit more busy when there was personal life. It wasn’t as restrictive as SpiderMan. Spider-Man was always extra work for me, and I think if I had worked on X-Men or something like that, I would have had a nervous breakdown. I don’t know how my son ever did it.

JA: Did you spend any time with John outside of a professional relationship?

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ROMITA: One of my many regrets is that I never had a chance to.

When John was in town, it was always a whirlwind thing. He had a million things to talk about to people, and then sometimes he would do a talk for the Bullpen. We went out to lunch a couple of times, but not nearly as many times as I wanted to. I never socialized with him at home. We got a little bit closer in his last couple of years, and we were planning a trip to Italy when he died. It would have been nice if we could have spent some more time together, but he was always at the drawing board and I was always at the drawing board. We didn’t have time to socialize. When we had time, we were both in semiretirement, but his health went and that was the end of that.

ROMITA: I thought he was the best inker on his own brother’s pencils. I thought that he would stay an inker. Even though he could pencil, his pencils were a little tame at first, like John’s were at first.

But then we worked on a couple of Spider-Man stories together. I inked him, and he inked me on two subsequent stories. And we also did a Captain America together, and he said that he found out what Stan wanted by working with me, which was the biggest compliment I ever got. He said, “I understand. After working with you on three stories, I understand exactly what they want from a penciler.” From that time on, he was doing some damn good stuff. He was never quite as flashy as John, but he was a good, solid penciler.

JA: Can you pinpoint a time when you felt like you and John were becoming the house look more than Kirby was?

ROMITA: I never consciously felt that. I think we just drifted into that. The house look was really Stan Lee, and when he left, that changed the house look, too. Then people like Roy had their own ideas of how things should be done, and Archie Goodwin had another angle, and then Jim Shooter came on. When Stan left, there was a tangible difference in the way books were done.

JA: When you say “left”, you mean as editorin-chief, not publisher, right?

ROMITA: When he went to California and he was not being editor-in-chief any more, right.

JA: All right, then let me move on to John’s brother Sal.

By I Time I Get To Phoenix Sal Buscema, as per a certain 1969 Annual—and examples of his “double life” at Marvel: (Left:) Sal was his brother John’s favorite inker (besides himself), beginning with The Silver Surfer #4 (Feb. 1968).

(Above:) He also quickly developed into a crackerjack penciler. Seen here is the introduction of Phoenix, Baron Zemo’s long-lost son, in Captain America #168 (Dec. 1973 ); repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Al Bigley. The beginning of the story was plotted by Roy Thomas over the phone to Sal one weekend night when another writer failed to send the artist a plot on time, and was mostly scripted by Tony Isabella, with both John Tartaglione and George Roussos inking—but the yarn turned out to have legs, and has been reprinted a time or three since. Of course, Marvel would eventually come up with a slightly better-known character called Phoenix. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Sal lived in Virginia and very seldom got to New York. We never had a chance to have much time together, either. I used to consider that John was in another state, because he lived so far out on Long Island.

Now it seems like not so far, but during those years when I was in town, I used to pass up the Berndt Toast [National Cartoonists Society] lunches, even though people were begging me to go. I passed them up because I didn’t want to leave the city half a day, once a month, and I passed a lot of good times up. I still am kicking myself for not going to all those lunches.

I was always late on deadlines. If I was the kind of guy that had the luxury of being able to pick up speed any time I wanted and finish up something, I would have done it. But I was always so late that I didn’t have the luxury of taking time off. I was afraid to. Even if I was on time, I was afraid to. To me, it’s a sad thing, because that’s not a way to have fun. But some people enjoy every minute they’re doing comics, and I’ve got to admit, I didn’t enjoy every minute. It was a lot of work.

JA: When was it the most fun for you?

ROMITA: When I started a story, and Stan would give me a plot. I had grave misgivings whether I could do it. I would take jobs home and I would have this creepy feeling inside my guts saying, “I don’t know if I can do this,” and that’s stupid. After 15 years in the business, I started doing super-heroes, and you would figure if you make a living for 15 years, then you’ve got the business beat. I never did felt that way. I never had the feeling that I could do the next job. Every job, to me, was: “Is this the job I’m not going to be able to do?” And that’s a lousy way to live.

So I can’t say I enjoyed a lot of times. When I did a job that I struggled over, or even one I didn’t struggle over, but I had to put in time and think about it a lot—when I got it solved, it was the greatest high I ever had. That’s the reason I spent 30 years in the office, too, because when I solved problems in storyline, as a freelancer, that was one thing. But every day, I solved problems in the office. If they had a problem, like with a toy design, I would solve the problem. When we had to design a balloon for the Macy’s Parade, I would solve the problem. And every time I solved a problem was a great, great high for me. I can’t tell you how much fun it was and how much satisfaction I got from that.

JA: When you were at the point where Stan is the publisher, but not editor-in-chief, he still had input into covers and stuff, didn’t he?

ROMITA: Maybe for a short while. I’m not even sure then. Once he went to California, he left it all to others. Roy was editor-in-chief while Stan was still in New York. Roy still used to run things by him, and Stan sometimes threw a monkey wrench into our routine. We used to say, “I hope Stan doesn’t go crazy on this one. We need to get it out.” It was occasionally a little bit of a problem. But Stan always had the company’s best interests at heart.

Hell Hound Hath No Fury…

Even Jim Steranko posed for a picture in the 1969 FF Annual. His two-page splash for Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #3 (Aug. 1968) became a classic the instant anybody looked at it. Inks by Dan Adkins. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“[Steranko] Brought A Whole Different Dimension To What He Was Doing” JA: Of course. Let’s talk about Jim Steranko now.

ROMITA: When Steranko came into the business, I was a little bit doubtful about what he was doing, but I could immediately see he had started getting a beautiful punch to his drawing and designing. It was a different approach. It wasn’t the human interest approach, it was a design like an advertising design for a magazine. He brought a whole different dimension to what he was doing, and there’s no doubt that people had a response to it.

Stan took a little bit of time and patience with him. Stan used to ask him to do things, and Jim didn’t quite know how to do them. Stan wanted to add a little more human interest in to slow down the storytelling, so he could write some dialogue that jerked some tears out of the reader. Steranko was more interested in dazzling people with his flashy designs and spectacular shots. Then, of course, he started coloring and he started doing exotic covers. But he brought a whole new approach in that impressed Stan very much. It wasn’t exactly Marvel, but it became Marvel. We became “The House of Ideas” because we had such a wide variety of styles between Kirby, Buscema, me, and Colan and Ditko. Steranko brought a new fresh one in, just like Neal Adams brought in a fresh one.

JA: Did you have much personal contact with Jim? ROMITA: Jim used to come into the office and talk to me while he was waiting for Stan. Jim said, “Stan wants me to get more human interest in the stories,” and he didn’t know exactly what Stan meant. I told him, “Don’t have your characters look like they’re photographs of models. Have them really reacting with each other or have them touch each other. And don’t do so many individual shots.” What he was doing was what Image started doing 20 some years later. What Image was doing was filling the pages up with impressive shots of people, but they all looked like posed models without any human

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interaction. The characters were not looking at each other. It was so strange, but Steranko had that problem early.

a while. I think it was because his mind was so full of fiction ideas, that it must have been tedious for him after a while.

And then Jim started to get a little more of interaction with the females to the males... stuff like that. By the time he left, he was doing quite good stuff. I was very upset when he left, because I told him that, if you bring fresh blood into an industry, it has a nice longlasting effect, and if he was going to go out so soon, that it was going to leave a hole in the business. And sure enough, just about that time, guys like he and Barry Smith and, later on, Bill Sienkiewicz—all the guys from the ’70s that we were counting on to carry the load, all seemed to want to go into advertising or self-publishing or doing posters. And it left a hole in the industry. We suffered for about 5 or 10 years from a lack of depth because we counted on those guys. Even Jim Starlin didn’t stay for a long time in his original run.

JA: Maybe he saw, on a commercial business basis, that it would be more lucrative for him to do something else. I certainly don’t have to tell you how backbreaking doing comic books can be.

Steranko was one of the first of the guys to come in, show a lot of promise, and then leave us high and dry. And I begged him, “Jim, if you want to do other things, okay. But try to do one book every couple of months or something. Do a quarterly, do an annual, just keep your hand into the business.” He was a guy with so many talents; he was so busy that he just never had time to do monthly comics. It probably got boring to him after

ROMITA: Oh, I know. It’s not an easy way to make a living, and I understood what he did, but I don’t think he did it with an eye toward making more money. I think he did it because he just wanted a change, and what happened is he made more money in the long run.

He became an entrepreneur, and you can’t argue with that kind of success.

JA: No, you can’t. And he was late on his stuff at times, so that must have caused some havoc for you guys, too.

ROMITA: You know, I think he was always doing some other project at the same time. I don’t remember lateness so much as probably that Stan asked him for certain things, and Jim would sort-of go off on his own angle at times. But it wasn’t a drastic problem. It’s just that Stan always used to have problems with any strong personality, like Ditko and Kirby. Stan always wanted a guy who tried to follow the plots that he imagined, while guys like [Ditko and Kirby and Steranko] always wanted to do their own plots. The reason Stan and I got along so well was that whatever plot Stan wanted was okay with me. The only thing was, I tried to make it airtight and perfect, and took my own time too much of the time.

JA: Jim was inked by different people: Joe Sinnott, Bill Everett, Tom Palmer, and a couple of others. What were Steranko’s pencils like?

ROMITA: They were pretty tight, but he used to love to do those graphics tricks—Zip-A-Tone and all sorts of textures— and he couldn’t tolerate guys who couldn’t do that. I think it bothered him, and that may be one of the reasons he left, because he couldn’t get people to do it the way he wanted it, and then he stopped doing it altogether. But that’s just speculation on my part.

“Wow, It’s Like Abraham Lincoln Was There!”

The First And Seventh Seas?

Bill Everett (from the same 1969 source) flanked by the first and last splash pages he drew for his greatest creation, “The Sub-Mariner.”

(Above:) The former, of course, appeared in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct.-Nov. 1939), and probably a bit earlier in the giveaway comic Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1, from whose pristine black-&-white pages we were sent this art by benefactor Robert Wiener.

(Right:) Bill’s last new art of any kind appeared in SubMariner #61 (May 1973), on sale circa February—the very month in which he passed away, only in his early fifties.

Amazingly, he was able to draw (and even ink) much of the art for pp. 1-3 of that issue before he went into the hospital for the final time. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

126 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

JA: When Bill Everett came back, he was inking Kirby on “The Hulk” in Tales to Astonish, and then on Thor. He penciled some “SubMariner” stories, but Stan wasn’t really happy with Bill’s penciling at that point.

ROMITA: I think Bill was probably still a little bit set in the earlier style. The thing was, he wasn’t 100% physically healthy, and coming into the office and trying to work at

night and weekends was rough on him. But he was such a good inker, and could take somebody who was doing weak pencil jobs, and turn it into something very strong. Once you’ve proved that to Stan, then you’re hopelessly locked into doing that kind of inking. That was one of my worst fears. I almost walked into that with my eyes wide open when I begged him to let me just ink, and I turned out to be a penciler. If that hadn’t happened, I would have been hopelessly locked in as an inker, correcting everybody’s bad pencils. It was great that I didn’t get stuck in that trap.

JA: Everett also did a lot of coloring because, apparently, he had trouble meeting his deadlines on the art.

ROMITA: Oh, yeah, he had deadline problems, and it was hard for him to discipline himself. If you can’t get yourself to work on a schedule, then you’re in the wrong business. We used to kid him a lot. There was a story going around that, one time, he was drastically late, and he came up with “the dog ate the pages” story. We used to kid him about that. Roy knows more about Bill Everett, because they roomed together. I only saw him in the office there for those two or three years, and he was a great guy to work with. To me, it was like talking to George Washington. I was ten years old when he did “SubMariner.” And when Jerry Siegel and Bill Everett were in the office, I felt like, “Wow, it’s like Abraham Lincoln was there!” [chuckles] I never got over that feeling. It was an amazing sensation to be working with these guys that I had idolized when I was a kid. But unfortunately, I was always so busy that I never took the time to really talk to Jerry Siegel, which I also regret.

Full Of Sound And Fury

JA: Roy told me that he [Roy] started at Marvel about two weeks before you did, and that you were very surprised when he said, “You’re the guy who used to do the ‘Captain America’ stories that I loved so much.” He said you couldn’t believe that he was a fan of yours.

Marvel’s two fabled Silver Age letterers—Artie Simek (top) and Sam Rosen—flank the cover of Arlington House’s 1970 hardcover All in Color for a Dime, one of the very first (if selective) histories of comic books. The “KRASKK!” “SHOOOSH!” “SKRRAKK!” and (maybe) “BTAM!” are Artie’s, lifted from Marvel mags—but he and Sam closely followed versions Stan Lee had penciled on the original art. Stan knew just how he wanted sound effects to look. The photos of Artie and Sam are from the 1969—oh, you guessed that already, huh? [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

ROMITA: I was amazed that anybody even remembered it. I considered it such a failure that I couldn’t believe that anybody would not only not know about it, but even think that it was good. That was a pleasant, very pleasant, surprise to me. I’ve told how John Verpoorten later thought it was my father who had done that “Captain America” work in the 1950s.

John, Jr.’s, pencils when he did Daredevil, and Al Williamson inked a couple of my drawings. It was a great joy to have him work on my stuff. He also grew up with one of my neighbors, Dick Van Patten’s wife. I think they went to school together in the Performing Arts or something. And so I’ve got a connection with him, even though I never got to know him.

It was the same thing with me and Al Williamson. Al Williamson, for a while, had a very illustrative drawing style. You remember those stories at EC when he did those historical things? He did them in a very old-fashioned style. This is before he was doing his Alex Raymond stuff. I thought he was an old guy. When I met him and found out he was practically my age, I was amazed. That meant that when I was in high school, he was turning out work already. I felt like I had missed the boat already. [Jim laughs] And Joe Kubert was working when he was 13.

JA: Alex Toth was working at 15.

ROMITA: And so was Frank Giacoia. Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane were all working by their early teens. And me, I was in high school. I thought they were all old men.

JA: Since you mentioned Al Williamson, is there anything about him that you remember?

ROMITA: I remember the Flash Gordon stuff, and I remembered his work on Secret Agent X-9, which I always admired. He worked on

“Doing The Lettering And Having Nobody Mention It” JA: Let me ask you about Artie Simek.

ROMITA: [laughs] Artie Simek was a character. What a character! He was a staff letterer in the late ’40s, early 1950s. I went up there in ’49, and he was up there, but I didn’t go into the Bullpen much. I waved to him, I knew him enough for that. Artie, Danny Crespi, and Stan Starkman, guys like that; I knew a lot of letterers. I also knew the guys from DC because I used to go up to their Bullpen.

The reason I knew Artie Simek was that he used to letter SpiderMan, and whatever covers or pencils I would finish during the day, I drove home afterward, and his place in Queens was right off the expressway. I used to go off the Grand Central Parkway, and drop pages off at his house. He had the damnedest situation to work in, you know. He was working in his bedroom. He had a small apartment, and he used to work right there. His wife was trying to sleep, and he’d be lettering through the night, rattling pages and all

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 127

that. I don’t know how she got any sleep. And they were a couple!

She was a ball of fire, too, and they used to get a lot of laughs.

I’d be giving him stuff and explaining it to him, and he’d start talking to me, and then he’d keep talking and I’d be walking towards the door, he’d keep talking; go down his front steps, he’d keep talking; [Jim laughs] out to the car, he’d keep talking. Virginia would be waiting there in the car sometimes, and he’s talking through my window as I’m turning on the engine, ready to drive away, and he’s still talking. [mutual laughter] He was a great guy and you know, with his theories... somebody should write a book about his theories about life. When the Apollo astronauts reached the moon, Artie was convinced that it was all tabletop photography.

Whenever he said, “You can’t fool me. Don’t you see how jerky the actions are? It’s animation!” I’d say, “Artie, the picture is coming from a quarter of a million miles away.” [mutual laughter] He said, “That’s just an excuse. Can’t you see it’s tabletop photography?” And then, years later, they made a movie with that premise. And it was made the exactly way Artie Simek tried to describe it. [laughs] He had a very dry sense of humor. He wasn’t funny and he didn’t talk fast. He was a slow talker. When comics work was slow, and before he even did comics, he used to do sports cartoons. You know, newspaper sports drawings and the like? He was pretty good at it, and if he’d had had his way, he would have done sports stuff all the time, but I guess there wasn’t enough work around for him then.

JA: As far as lettering, it seemed like he was the #1 guy in the 1960s and into the ’70s.

ROMITA: He was pretty good. I used to be a little bit critical of his logos—like the X-Men logo with that jagged edge he used to put on

things. But, in retrospect, he was a giant in the industry, because doing the lettering and having nobody mention it—in other words, it’s like an umpire. When an umpire’s good, you never notice that he’s in the game. But when he’s a bad umpire, you constantly see him popping up. And the thing is that Artie must have been good because nobody ever complained about his work, since his stuff was always accepted, most of it very legible and very, very efficient. I have to admit he was good, but I don’t like those kinds of logos.

I liked a little more stylish logo. In all the years I was at Marvel, they would design logos with the Marvel “look.” I was always butting heads with those guys, because I never quite liked the way they did some of those things. A lot of times, I would redesign it, and sometimes they would use it and sometimes they wouldn’t. It was very frustrating.

JA: Since we’re on the subject of letterers, let me ask you about a few others—like Ray Holloway, who worked for Marvel in the ’50s and ’60s….

ROMITA: I remember him from the Bullpen, and he was still working at Marvel, I think in the magazine section, when I started on staff. He used to visit and talk to Stan and Danny Crespi, and people like that. I gathered that everybody loved working with him. He was a great guy and in a class by himself. People used to just say he was just one of those guys. And we had a lot of good people working on the fringes of comics, I’ll tell you that. I didn’t know much about him, though. There were a lot of guys that were on their way out of comics when I got in it, and I didn’t have a chance to talk to them.

JA: How about the Rosen brothers, Sam and Joe? ROMITA: I knew Sam Rosen; I used to deliver work to him in Brooklyn. I think he was about five-footfive or something, and he was a master. He was in a class by himself; he really was a polished letterer. His stuff was very classic.

I don’t think I ever met his brother Joe. Sam was very reliable and so good. It was a pleasure to have your stuff done by a guy like that.

JA: Morrie Kuramoto.

Bullpen Daze Stan Goldberg sent us this much-appreciated photo (shadowed though it be) of the 1950s Timely bullpen at 59th & Madison Avenue, Manhattan, which included numerous letterers and production people.

(Bottom row, l. to r.:) Sol Brodsky, Ray Holloway (major Golden Age Timely letterer), Stan Goldberg.

(Second row up, l. to r.:) Joe Letterese, Morrie Kuramoto, Herbie Cooper, Vinnie Mataferi, Carl Burgos (creator of The Human Torch), Stan Starkman, Neva Patterson, Chris Rule.

(Third row up, l. to r.:) Danny Crespi, Artie Simek.

(Top:) Sal Contrara.

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ROMITA: Kuramoto I know a lot about.

Kuramoto was a hero. He fought in Europe and he took a lot of guff up at Marvel.

Some guys like to think they’re being funny. They used to drive him crazy. They used to call him “the Jap,” and joke about the fact that he was Japanese. He used to retaliate at all of us Italians by calling us “The Kiss of Death Crowd.” [mutual laughter] Morrie was a real talented guy, and all I know is that, while his family was interned in California, he was fighting in Europe for us. I always told him that he deserved not to be kidded. I would never have kidded him about being Japanese. I don’t know why other guys did.

JA: How did he take that kidding?

ROMITA: He took it fairly well. He gave as good as he got, but I didn’t think he had to take it. He was a good man and used to do wonderful watercolors. He did floral watercolors and took a sketchpad wherever

he went. If he went into a bar or a lounge, he’d have a sketchpad with him. He said that’s a great way to meet women.

JA: [laughs] That’s true.

ROMITA: Yeah, you’d sit there and sketch them, and they’ve got to come over. They can’t resist it. Good trick! So he married and had a beautiful daughter. His wife had lived in Okinawa. She divorced him because she didn’t want to live in the United States, so it was a little bit sad. He was very lonely, and one time, he had a pen pal who came to the United States, and he was hoping that would work out as a long-term relationship. And I think she gave him a lot of flak and a lot of trouble. So he never got a break, I think. I always thought he should have gotten more breaks in life.

JA: Do you happen to remember his daughter’s name? Here’s why I’m asking: there was a letterer there who signed his name “Sherigail.”

ROMITA: Oh, that’s it! That was her name, Sheri.

JA: So Kuramoto was “Sherigail.” By the way, did you know Herbie Cooper?

ROMITA: I knew him for a short while before. He was doing freelance work for us for the first couple of years that I was there. He had been one of the guys in the Timely Bullpen, and he was one of the original Marvel guys. He was a hell of a guy. We used to have nice conversations whenever he came up to the office. I think he had some kind of a commercial business on the side to supplement his lettering income. I don’t think he was lettering full time when last I saw him.

JA: There’s another guy who had the perfect name for a letterer, Joe Letterese.

ROMITA: Oh, yes, I knew Joe Letterese from my DC years. He worked at Marvel in the ’40s, before I knew him. But in the ’50s, whenever I delivered a story to DC and had to do corrections, I’d go into the Bullpen, so I got to know Joe Letterese, Stan Starkman, Eddie Eisenberg, and Sol Harrison. I got to know a lot of guys in the Bullpen. That doesn’t mean I knew any of the editors. I never had much truck with the editors.

Joe Letterese and I were going through a young-children period.

You know, where you’ve got young kids? He used to say, “What are you doing with teenagers? How do you handle your kids?” I think mine were a little younger than his, just entering their teenage years, and he had a troublesome teenager that was driving him nuts. And so that was one of the things we were both talking about, raising kids, and how do you get out of it alive?

JA: [laughs] You mentioned Stan Starkman, too. What do you remember about him?

ROMITA: He was a card player. Every time we talked, it was always about cards. Stan and Jack Abel and a couple other guys used to play cards all the time, and that was before my time, too. They used to play at lunchtime, meet once a week or twice a month or something. There were a lot of card-players in the business.

Morrie Of Marvel In Sgt. Fury #38 (Jan. 1967), production man “Morrie (Super-Samurai) Kuramoto” received credit as “technical advisor.” He’d filled in scripter Roy Thomas about the Nisei Japanese-American troops in the Italian campaign during World War II. In this sequence, new recruit Jim Morita encounters racism—but hardly needs Nick Fury’s help to handle it. Art by Dick Ayers & John Tartaglione. Thanks to Bob Bailey for the scan. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: Not only because of the riots, but all sorts of things. There were terrible things happening in the ’60s, and Watanabe’s theory was, if you buy gold, you would protect yourself in case there was a collapse. I used to tell him, “You know, I don’t know if I want to be protected. [mutual chuckling] I want to go hide somewhere. I don’t want to be the only guy that has money when nobody else does.” [more laughter] That was because I didn’t have any money to invest, anyway.

Virginia and I used to talk to him, and he was always on our case to get gold. And then he was talking about gold-mining stock, and I said, “Well, gold-mining stock I’ll never touch.” If I had the money to go out and buy $10,000 worth of gold and hedge against inflation, I would have done it, but I couldn’t afford it, anyway.

That was his theory. He was constantly on our case, saying, “You’ve got to protect yourself. Things are going to happen here. The country’s going to fall apart and we’ve got to be prepared for it.” He used to scare the hell out of me. He was a hell of a letterer, one of the best.

“What The Hell Does John Romita Do Here?”

JA: Did you know Irv Watanabe?

JA: And he worked for everybody. Okay, did you ever have much dealing with Martin Goodman?

ROMITA: Not very well. He almost got me to invest in gold. [laughs] He was very well-informed and very active in the trading business. He always made a good buck as a letterer because he was fast and good. And he used to tell me during those times in the ’60s— you don’t remember because you’re a kid—but in the ’60s, we thought the country was going to fall apart.

ROMITA: Not too much, only to say hello. Most of the dealings I had were second-hand. When he’d come, he’d go to Sol and Stan and ask them, “What the hell does John Romita do here? Why are we paying him?” [mutual chuckling] That is my lasting memory of Martin Goodman.

JA: Because of the race riots and Vietnam?

Bill Everett used to tell stories about the 1940s—when Martin Goodman was riding high, he used to give him some great Christmas

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and beat him up [chuckles] before he gave me that money. I don’t know how they managed it, but I didn’t think he’d change his mind. I was desperate and raising a family. You can’t go with the same salary for two years when it starts out very low.

JA: How did it make you feel when Goodman sold the company?

ROMITA: It was a little nerve-wracking, because we were used to having a personal connection with the owner. Once we got a conglomerate like Perfect Film buying us, it didn’t look like it was going to be fun, and boy, it proved out not to be fun, because those guys didn’t give a damn who was living or dying. They were only interested in the bottom line, and we could go to hell for all they cared. My connection with Goodman was, he smiled and looked like a benevolent boss, but every time there was a slight downturn in business, he would clench his fists and no money went out. He was tight as a drum. But when times were good, he didn’t give us any bonuses, so it was like he was a fair-weather friend. He was very annoying. And also, he was very reluctant and hesitant.

The Spectacular Spider-Man was going to be a black-&-white magazine, and we were going to get into the business that Jim Warren was in. This was going to be a 35¢ cent book with no advertising. It was going to be a real magazine. Goodman figured we couldn’t advertise it. Stan said, “You’ll love it, it’s going to be great.” It was a little bit bigger than comic-size, and that bothered Goodman. He said that the printers and the binders are going to complain, and his friends warned him that it’s not a good idea: “Don’t go gambling, you’re making money on comics, why do you need to go into some other business?” So he was very reluctant and very negative on the whole thing, but we got the magazine out. Spider-Man in black-&-white.

Another Angle Here’s a splash page that had a lot of life—or lives! It originally led off the color magazine Spectacular Spider-Man #2 in 1968, and was recycled (as per above) as the splash of Amazing Spider-Man #116 (Jan. 1973), as Stan Lee was edging himself off the writing chores of the mag. Recently, Mike Burkey sent us a British version of the page, re-formatted as a Cinemascopic splash (seen at right). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

bonuses. By the time I got there, you were lucky if you got a set of dishes or a set of glasses. I remember, one time, I got a set of glasses from DC for Christmas. Six glasses with Superman on them: that was our Christmas bonus. We were talking about bonuses every year, and Bill Everett would say, “To Martin Goodman, $1500, $2000 was like nothing. He’d come in, bring a check.” I said, “Yeah, but you’ve got to realize that Bill Everett had brought him into the comic business with a bang with ‘Sub-Mariner.’”

Guys like Kirby and Joe Simon and Bill Everett and Carl Burgos: those guys were like his ticket to heaven, so he treated them very well. I said, “Well, he doesn’t treat any of us that way.” I don’t know if Stan Lee got any bonuses, but we never got many bonuses from him at all. Earlier, I told you about going two years without a raise. I just decided I wanted a raise of $100 a week. We paid that to others, and Goodman wouldn’t give it to me. Sol and Stan had to lock him in a room

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I broke my back on that book. We did a full-color cover on slick paper. We figured we were launching a line of books, and Stan and I were very optimistic. Goodman was critical all along the way. While we’re doing the second book, he told Stan, “I don’t want it done in black-&-white, and I don’t want it done oversized any more.” Stan said, “We’re committed for this one book oversized.” Goodman said, “Do #2 oversized with a full color cover on slick paper, but then I want it done in a regular comic book form.” And what he did was to stop the deal. In those days, you needed about three to six months to really tell how a book sold. They never really had accurate readings of sales until six months later. Goodman just assumed it was going to

Goodman Vs. Romita, 1968 At left is one of several caricatures of Timely/Marvel publisher Martin Goodman that appeared in Krazy Komics #12 (Nov. 1943), with art perhaps by Ed Winiarski. (Thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.) Goodman didn’t appear in any comics of the 1960s—but if he had, he’d probably have been asking what the hell John Romita did around the office!

Well, one of the things John R. was doing was co-plotting and penciling masterworks like The Amazing Spider-Man #61 (June 1968), which in the past year or so had leapfrogged the web-spinner past even Fantastic Four in sales, and thus paying for quite a few of Martin G.’s golfing holidays! This may well be the splash page John refers to on p. 111, which was originally laid out by Dick Ayers.

Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Shrugging Off Atlas A gorgeous Atlas/Seaboard cover from 1975: The Grim Ghost #1 by Ernie Colón. [©2007 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc., or its successors in interest.]

Since John R. wonders aloud whether Roy Thomas was ever invited to join Martin and Chip Goodman’s new comics line—well, yes, he was, and he seriously considered the offer, since it came at a time when he’d become dissatisfied with being Marvel’s editor-in-chief, for reasons John suggests on pp. 103-104. CBA #16 even printed the Sept. 1974 letter from Roy in which he turned down the Goodmans’ offer because, despite misgivings, he had accepted a three-year “writer/editor” contract with Marvel after stepping down as EIC. Roy was startled, in the 21st century, by his own statement in that missive that he was already thinking of “mov[ing] entirely out of the New York area in a year or two”—something he would, in fact, do in July 1976.

Thus, if John knows of nobody at Marvel except himself and possibly Roy who might not have been headhunted by Atlas/Seaboard—and since Roy actually was—then why didn’t the new company try to lure the Jazzy One over, as well?

The answer is simple: Martin Goodman had no idea what the hell John Romita did, remember?

He was out to get us. That’s another great memory I have of him, was that he promised... although I can’t speak for Roy, but I don’t know if they ever offered Roy a shot at doing stuff for Atlas. I vaguely remember that Roy and I were the only two guys who were not asked to come over. I think it’s because Goodman thought of us as company men. But he never asked me, and I was hurt. I would have told him no, but I was hurt that he didn’t ask me. [laughs] JA: You wanted the respect of being asked.

bomb. So he canceled the book, even before the second one came out.

We had to do it in color, we couldn’t do it in black-&-white after promising the readers. He embarrassed Stan and me totally, and it’s because he was chicken.

The truth of the matter was that it sold like hotcakes. Goodman pulled the plug before he found out how they sold. At least wait to find out, I thought. But he probably was too embarrassed to say, “I changed my mind. We’ll put the book out.” He really stuck to his guns and said, “It’s too much trouble to work on an oversized book.

Our production costs are higher, our printing costs are higher, our binding costs are higher, and the distribution costs are more. I don’t want to do it.” No matter how much money we made, it wasn’t going to make him change his mind because he was embarrassed.

JA: Do you think he also might have been worried a little bit about the Comics Code? I know that book didn’t go under the Comics Code. Because of the previous problems with Fredric Wertham and the Code in the ’50s, you think that maybe in the back of his mind, he was afraid the distributors or retailers might have a problem with him?

ROMITA: Well, it was partly that. He was afraid to stir up old wounds, but this was ten years or more later. Even so, one of the things that Stan said hurt it was that, because it was going to be a nonCode magazine, we couldn’t advertise it in the Marvel Comics. That was one of the things that was the drawback. If we get advertising in all of our books, that’s a hell of a big plug, and he figured we could sell ten times more. So what he did was he did let Martin Goodman have his way, because he figured we weren’t going to be able to advertise in the books. Goodman was always too tight with his money.

He sold Marvel Comics for seven million bucks and you know, that’s like chump change. He sold it for seven million because he didn’t care. He was going to take the money and run. Later, the conglomerate reneged on its agreement to let his son Chip be the publisher. A couple of years after Goodman sold it, Chip made so many errors, or so many enemies, up there, that they let him go, and then Stan was given the presidency. And that’s why Martin Goodman started Atlas Comics.

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ROMITA: Right, and the thing is the promises he made. For a while there, I felt stupid. When other people went over there to work for him, they were telling me, “John, are you nuts? You realize he’s paying big rates, and he’s promising reprint money?” His biggest promise was that he’d put it in writing: “I’m in this for the long haul, we’re here to stay—this is not a fly-by-night outfit—we’re going to stick it out and we’re going to be in business for twenty years,” because he wanted to set his son up in business. [laughs] Within three years, he shut the doors.

JA: The comics lasted less than that. The magazines might have lasted longer.

ROMITA: He left his son with one big title [the Playboy imitation Swank] that could support him. He tried to at least give his son a livelihood, but he chickened out on the comic market inside of two years.

JA: Their comics weren’t very good.

ROMITA: No, they weren’t. And poor Larry Lieber. Larry went up there to be an editor, and almost immediately, Martin cut his throat by putting some guy who worked with him as a co-editor, Jeff Rovin, who’s now doing movie and television stuff. I’m not sure where he is now, but for a while, he had a name, and he drove Larry crazy.

Whatever Larry wanted, he wanted the opposite. I know that it was a terrible thing that happened to Larry. He was lured away by a relative to go and help him out, and he took his chance and left Stan, and then they cut his throat.

“Unsung Heroes” JA: At least Larry was able to come back with Stan, though. Okay, I want to ask you about Stan Goldberg.

ROMITA: The man is a prince. One of the most talented guys there ever was.

JA: When you started there, Stan was doing the Millie books and coloring.

ROMITA: That’s right, “Millie the Model.” I did a drawing of a female character with a very thick waist and I called her “Molly the Middle,” but they never wanted to use it. Stan was doing those teenage books, and then they switched into that Archie mode. First,

they would do this Patsy Walker style, and then when they did it in the Archie mode, and when Marvel quit producing those books, Stan had a perfect entrée to Archie Comics. [NOTE: Actually, Stan Goldberg had done some Archie and DC work inbetween. —Jim.] But meanwhile, while he was still with us all those years, he was coloring most of the covers, before Marie took over. He was one of the best colorists in the business.

JA: Well, he color-designed all the Marvel heroes and villains up to that point.

ROMITA: That’s right. He was the guy Stan Lee left it to.

JA: Which Stan Goldberg doesn’t get much credit for, and I always try to fix that, you know what I mean?

ROMITA: I know what you mean, but that’s one of those things.

There’s so many unsung heroes, you know. Look at the logos people designed. I don’t know how much credit they got for the logos, so it’s a common kind of thing. I mean, I did a lot of stuff that the people don’t know I did—creative stuff.

JA: That’s right. Now Stan Goldberg worked with you for a little while in the 1980s, with you and Sol. ROMITA: Yes, in the Marvel Books section. We were doing coloring books and children’s books. Stan did some freelance stuff for Sol. And that was such a hectic 4H years of that—half of it’s a blur to me.

Anyway, Stan was one of our poker buddies. We also used to go out to dinner sometimes, three or four couples.

JA: You didn’t get to know Joe Sinnott, I know.

ROMITA: I wish I had had more of a relationship with Joe. I would see him maybe once every year or two, because he lived in Saugerties, NY. Joe and Kirby and John Buscema never even met each other most of the time. They were working together all the time, but Joe wasn’t around.

Stan And Jack—No, Not That Stan Stan Goldberg drew Jack Kirby into this story from Millie the Model #107 (March 1962). With thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

South Of The (Panel) Border After the “Millie” mags went South, Stan G. became a top artist for the Archie gang—as witness this pencil sketch which appeared on the cover of Robin Snyder’s monthly oral history The Comics! (Vol. 16, #1, Jan. 2005). Actually, Stan goes South every year, as well, spending several weeks in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where, in between doing comics, he draws pics of local life, such as the one at right. Thanks to Stan and Robin. [Archie TM & ©2007 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.; sketch ©2007 Stan Goldberg.]

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Just A Guy Called Joe In the 1950s and early ’60s, Joe Sinnott mostly penciled and inked stories for Timely and others, such as the Journey into Mystery #50 cover that was reprinted as that of the English/Alan Class b&w mag Secrets of the Unknown #161. His story “Miracle on Maple Street!” was printed inside.

By the latter half of the 1960s, though, Joe had become firmly established as Marvel’s #1 inker, especially because of his long stint over Jack Kirby’s pencils on Fantastic Four. But the 1995 illo of the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing, depicted here in both penciled and inked version with Joe smiling on, shows that Joltin’ Joe could’ve held his own as a super-hero artist, if he’d cared to do so. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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My memory of Joe is that, when I first got into the business, he was one of the guys trying to get work at the same time I did, hoping for a 3-page filler. Every time we went into the city, we’d kill a half a day, standing around in Stan’s outer office, or in Sol Cohen’s outer office at Avon Comics. I think Joe had more contacts than I did, because those were the only two contacts I had. You know, guys like Jack Abel and Davey Berg and Ed Winiarski—guys like that used to wait outside, hoping that Stan would throw us a bone.

JA: Joe became the #1 inker by the late ’60s at Marvel. It looked to me like Stan was looking for people who would ink like Joe. ROMITA: Joe did become the #1 inker, but it’s not necessarily so that Stan wanted everyone to ink like Joe. Frank Giacoia was somewhat in the same school, but Frank Giacoia had a DC style, and Stan welcomed him with open arms. Mike Esposito was DC-style, and Stan welcomed him with open arms, too. I think what Stan wanted was that quality, and can you blame him?

Bullpen, like, “You guys are still working for comic books. I’m in the newspapers.” You know, like a showoff. It was a mistake, because when he lost the strip, he had to go back there with his tail between his legs to get work. He was like his own worst enemy. It broke my heart, because he should have been enjoying those years.

JA: There was a time when he worked on staff at Marvel.

ROMITA: He worked on staff and even became my assistant art director, although some people have mistakenly written that he was the art director and I took over for him. What happened was Stan used to call me the art director, but it was never an official title. I never got paid for it. He called me art director so I would do covers, and whenever he didn’t like the covers, he would pull me off the schedule. That’s when guys used to take over Spider-Man and other books. He would let me do covers for about two months, and so what happened—he took me off and made me art

JA: Frank Giacoia was a character.

ROMITA: Oh, yes, he was.

Frank was sort-of a sad case, because he should have enjoyed himself. His reputation was as one of the best inkers in the business.

That’s a hell of a nice thing to have people call you, you know? He was never happy with it. He wanted to be a penciler, and the truth of the matter was that even if he could pencil very well, he wasn’t dynamic. He was sort-of like Bill Everett, a little bit timid, a little mild, but he could do it.

The other thing is that he could never make a deadline. He kept insisting for years, “I should be penciling. Why don’t you let me pencil?” Sol Brodsky used to tell him, “If you could get it in on time, I would love to give you a shot at penciling. I want you to be happy, but you can’t deliver. “ Well, many times they tried him, but he just never delivered. He used to get mad and say, “I’m not an inker. I’m an artist.” And he used to get insulted, in fact, by the very fact that inker credits would say, “Art by John Romita and inked by So-and-So.” He considered himself an artist, and he felt like he was not treated like an equal. I could never convince him that, “Just think what a great thing it is that you’re considered one of the best inkers in the world. Don’t you think that’s something good?” And it just never made him feel good. Even if he didn’t pencil much, he wanted to be called a penciler, and it really bothered him.

JA: But every time he penciled something, it was either full of swipes, or he got Mike Sekowsky or someone else to do the actual pencils.

ROMITA: Like when he did the newspaper strips. He was walking on air when he was doing Sherlock Holmes. I met him about that time. Then he got Johnny Reb. When he got Johnny Reb, he could not meet the deadlines or keep up the production. He had Jack Kirby and Gil Kane... everybody and his brother was helping him out. Even then, he’d never face the facts. All he cared about is that people thought, “This is Frank Giacoia, who does Johnny Reb.” But he didn’t do it himself. It never bothered him as long as he was known as the syndicate artist.

He went up to DC and sort-of lorded it over the guys in the

To Be Perfectly Frank Frank Giacoia was perhaps the one man who could have challenged Sinnott’s primacy as a Marvel super-hero inker (besides maybe Tom Palmer)—but Giacoia never stayed on one title, or even at Marvel itself, long enough to build a real following. Here, he makes a rare penciling appearance, finishing off a story begun by Larry Lieber—but he was inked, on this occasion, by Vince Colletta! Script by Roy Thomas, from Marvel Super-Heroes #20 (May 1969). Note how Frank worked a Civil War scene into the tale; for several years, he was the artist of record of a newspaper comic strip called Johnny Reb. Photo from the 1975 Marvel Comic Convention program book. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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JA: Anything else about Frank you want to say before we move on?

ROMITA: No, just that it’s sad that he retired, and when he hit 62, he started to collect Social Security. He got one check, and he had a triple bypass and died. I always wished for Frank a lot of years of peace and quiet so he could watch his movies and not feel put-upon because he was behind on his schedule all the time. It always broke my heart that he never had a long stretch to enjoy it.

JA: I understand. The next person I want to ask you about is Syd Shores.

ROMITA: I didn’t know Syd well. Well, as a reader, when Simon and Kirby left, I remembered seeing his name on Captain America. In the late ’60s he was a freelancer I knew just to say hello to whenever he came in.

JA: All right, the next guy is George Roussos.

ROMITA: George was a buddy. I have fond memories of him.

George was a solid pro, very underrated. People knew how good he was, but it was a shame he didn’t get more out of the business. He worked very hard and he was over 80 when he died. Do you know the story about his younger days? He worked for DC, and as soon as he had enough money saved up, he would take a trip to Europe. He’s one of the guys that people talk about that, while they’re young enough to enjoy it, he took that time off. I’ve known a couple people like that, and it’s amazing that they do it. They didn’t care that they were leaving the business and taking a chance on not being able to come back. Whenever he had the money, he would take the time off, and if he got work when he came back, okay.

Mummy Dearest George Roussos can be seen in the photo on p. 111—and his inking of early Fantastic Four issues is on display in both color and b&w reprints, as is his vintage “Batman” work for DC. But he was a talented penciler in his own right, as per this page from a 1940s Green Hornet, which (despite the semibackward byline of “REGEOG”) may also have been worked on by his friend and “Batman” colleague Jerry Robinson. Repro’d from the original art. [©2007 Harvey Comics.]

director full-time—what he called, verbally, full-time—as cover artist, and Frank was helping me because I wanted to set up a flow.

I would get some ideas for some covers; I would scribble and then Frank would finish them up. Sometimes Frank would scribble something and I would finish them up, so we were working as a team.

I told Sol that I needed some help because I couldn’t do ten covers a day. I was getting burned out, so what happened was that Stan needed me back on Spider-Man. So he let Frank Giacoia call himself the art director. Or what happened was he was still the assistant art director, but Frank considered himself the art director. When he got taken off that job because he really couldn’t do it, he was very hurt and it broke his heart, because whenever we’d go to lunch, he’d say, “Now this is the way it should be. I’m an experienced comics pro and I’m being paid properly for my knowledge.” And when they took it away from him, he was very, very upset. Oh, you couldn’t console him, it was terrible.

Marie got hurt with that, too, because she took over for me once, and it hurt her feelings that she didn’t get as far with it as she wanted, butting heads with Jim Shooter and other people at the time.

JA: Well, everybody butted heads with Shooter. [mutual chuckling] ROMITA: It was hard for a while there.

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George had a funny quirk. He did not like working in the middle of an open area, so he used to build a wall around him. Whenever he started on staff, wherever they would give him a new place, he would build a wall so that nobody could see him while he was working. It just bothered him that people were able to see him. He wanted peace and quiet. He didn’t want any noise and activity distracting him while he was working. He was a master colorist.

He was a great photographer, and he did a quality book on the mansions of Long Island. I don’t know if it ever got published. He lived out in Islip, an hour and a half away from New York, so he spent almost half his life on a train. He lived right near an animal preserve, and in the wintertime he used to take his pickup truck and drop feed for the deer. He even talked Terry Stewart, then president of Marvel, into donating some money for it. That’s the kind of guy he was. We used to talk for years. I was telling him I was counting the days until I could retire. He used to say, “Aah, you don’t want to retire. What do you want to retire for?”

He used to love Virginia’s parties. Whenever she threw a party for the office, she brought in cakes and cookies, and he would rave about it. He’d say, “Not only is she the best production manager we’ve ever had, but she was the best cook we’ve ever had, too. “ And she loved it.

George also considered Virginia a great champion of his, because when he tried to get a day off a week or leave early because of his trips, she always allowed it. Whenever the bureaucrats got hold of him, they would cut it down, but he always was sort-of taken care of, and he said he’d never forget what Virginia did for him. And so here he was, going into his 80s, and never planning to leave. I’m telling him, “Don’t you want to want to stay home and paint and relax?”

“Nah,” he says, “I want to come in. I want to work.” Part of it was money, but part of it was the fact that he just didn’t want to go home and do nothing. I said, “Look at you. You could feed the animals all

Go, Team!

When John says he needed help with covers, he must mean simply in terms of quantity— ’cause it’s crystal clear he didn’t need any help with the quality! Case in point: his pencils for Marvel Team-Up #48 (Aug. 1976). Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Al Bigley. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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year.” And he kept telling me, “You’ll never retire. Why would you want to retire? As long as you’re good at what you’re doing, why wouldn’t you want to keep doing it?” I said, “Because I want to do a million other things, believe me.” And I thought I was going to retire.

He was very social, and you could have a wonderful conversation with him. He went all over the world. He had stories to tell that would knock your socks off, but he was never bragging. He was quiet, but Stan trusted his judgment on coloring, and he felt very proud that Stan let him color things We’re Off… the way he wanted to. He had a little trouble with Jim Shooter Maybe one reason John wasn’t able to “physically… knock out” work is because he was so self-critical. Take his layouts for the cover of Marvel & DC’s 1975 collaboration on an adaptation of the MGM film The Wizard of Oz, when Shooter took over, and he the first joint project ever by the two comics companies. His original pencils (seen at left) had Dorothy’s would say, “No, Stan always companions in a different lineup from the finished version. I wonder if even he, at this late date, could say why wanted it this way and that way.”

And Shooter used to kid him about it was important for the Cowardly Lion to be on her left!? [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc., & DC Comics, based on material ©2007 MGM or its successors in interest.] it, saying, “Well, you know, you don’t have to do everything the That was a world-famous statement from him. And the thing is that way Stan wanted you to. Stan’s not here any more,” [laughs] that kind people like myself, whatever reputation I have for good inking, I of stuff. could never rush a job. I could not be sloppy or rush it or make time

“Interesting Character[s]” JA: Did you have much contact with the people in the magazine department? I know Mario Puzo and Bruce Jay Friedman worked there.

ROMITA: I used to do an occasional illustration for the men’s magazines. I remember going up there more than once to talk to some art directors there. I did meet Puzo and Friedman. Every one of them was writing a book, but who the hell knew Puzo was going to write a big one [The Godfather]? You know, they all used to talk the same: they were all marking time until they got their book published. It’s like the old joke about newspapermen: they’re all writing a novel, but they never do it.

I got to know Earl Norem, who was one of their illustrators.

Wonderful illustrator, hell of a guy. Virginia had some stories. When she first came to Marvel, she came to help me do my filing, clear out my filing system, and they immediately stole her from me. The next thing I knew, she was working for Magazine Management. Somebody up there offered her a job, and she was greedy, and she took it. [mutual laughter] She wanted to get paid, of all things!

JA: [laughs] Heaven forbid! I guess I should go ahead and ask about Vinnie Colletta. There’s a million Vinnie stories.

ROMITA: He was an interesting character. I hate to defame the dead.

You know, he was a very good, professional inker, but he got into a cycle where the one thing he could offer to compete with other inkers for work was speed. When there were three inkers ready for a job, and the editor needed it fast, Vinnie was the guy he would call. And what that ends up being is close to a hack. The problem is that he could do it. On any given day, he could do a beautiful job. But most of the time, you know his famous slogan, don’t you? He said to the editors many times, “Do you want it fast or do you want it good?”

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on it on a job. It was a sickness of mine, because it cost me money.

There were jobs I turned down because I was not fast enough.

I wasn’t physically able to knock it out. Earl Norem was one of the best illustrators in men’s magazines. He told me once that he would ask an editor what his budget was. In other words, if you had a budget of $200 to get your art, he’d say, “I’ll give you a $200 job.

You’ve got $1000, I’ll give you a $1000 job.” He was able to do that.

Actually, his rough color sketches were better than some guys’ finished stuff. He could say to himself, “Okay, I’m only making $200 on this job,” and he could knock it out in half a day or a day. If he was making $500 or $750, he would take a little time, and polish it a little more. The good thing was that almost all of them were good, anyway. Even his rough stuff was very good. It looked like a beautiful comp that polished up, especially when it was reduced for reproduction, and it would be successful. A lot of guys who get a reputation for being speed demons don’t always keep the quality up.

They get a little bit sloppy, especially if they hire a guy who does a background job who’s not very dedicated and does a very sloppy job.

Vinnie was the kind of guy who increasingly was given work because of his speed. Slowly but surely, he started leaving backgrounds out. Larry Lieber used to pencil The Rawhide Kid, and Vinnie was inking it, and I would hear a lot of complaints from Larry.

Larry needed a Joe Sinnott kind of guy who can pretty up his stuff, who can give a little bit of grace to the lines, because Larry was a storyteller, and his lines were not always that graceful. At that time, he was a writer who had switched to artwork, so when he was doing The Rawhide Kid, he was still learning.

And there was one story where the last couple of pages had a lynch mob. You know, a dozen guys and suggesting even more with shadows and blacks and everything. This lynch mob was going to break into a jail and hang this guy, maybe The Rawhide Kid, I’m not sure. Larry labored and every day, he worked very hard. He never

made a lot of time, but he was like me. He would not take a shortcut.

He would put in a lot of characters if the writers asked for it.

Anyway, he had like a dozen guys in the scene, so it was a bit crowded. The last page was a lot of work and Vinnie, being a pro of long standing and trying to make time, as usual, even when he’s not asked by an editor... [chuckles] what he did was ink the final panel or so, or the final two or three panels, and left out about three-quarters of the crowd. It ended up being a lynch duo or something. [Jim laughs] Larry complained about it, and Stan asked him how come he left them out, and Colletta said, “Look, I’m much more experienced than Larry. I was editorializing. The panel was too crowded and chaotic and I simplified it.” [mutual laughter] So if you’ve got the urge to simplify any panels, you know you fight it. But he didn’t. He embraced it. [more laughter] JA: Stan must have liked Vinnie, at least liked his work a lot, because Stan sure kept him busy.

ROMITA: Stan respected people with impressive lifestyles. Vinnie had, from what I gathered—I never made it to his place, but he had a place in New Jersey that was supposed to be a showplace with a pool and a cabana and big, beautiful house. The story was his wife had mob connections. [chuckles] I don’t know if that’s true or not. Maybe I shouldn’t even say that.

JA: Well, everybody says that.

Everybody thought it.

ROMITA: And the thing is that Stan went out there once. Vinnie invited him out. You know, Vinnie was very shrewd. He knew how to schmooze the editors. Stan came back and told me, “My God, you should see Vinnie’s place.” That elevated his view of Vinnie. And also, Vinnie’s long-time experience working with a variety of name artists. Vinnie probably embellished his history, and Stan was all for it.

He used to brag that Vinnie never cost him any sales. He used to say the same thing about Dick Ayers and a lot of other guys who were doubling as pencilers and inkers, or just were speed demon inkers. In other words, nobody stopped buying the books because Vinnie was inking it.

The other funny twist is that Stan was a good judge of comic art, a very good judge. He also had a slant that was close to the readers’ view of art. He could react to art the way a fan could, and he had that knack because of all the experience he had from when he was younger.

Stan used to say that the fans loved Vinnie's stuff. Vinnie would embellish stuff with a lot of thin lines, he would add musculature to Jack Kirby and to whomever else he was inking. He would do that to appeal to Stan, because Stan loved it. So the more lines you did, it was almost looking like—you remember the Rusty Riley newspaper strip Frank Godwin drew? Godwin used to do almost photographic stuff with a very fine line back when reproduction was good in the Sunday papers. When he did Rusty Riley, he did some beautiful photographic renderings, and Stan was always impressed with that. Strangely enough, Vinnie, of all people, would take the time to embellish stuff that wasn’t even in the pencils. He would add musculature and all sorts of shading, and Stan loved it. He used to say, “I love that stuff.

Vinnie, do more of it.” He did it on Thor, and a lot of Kirby freaks were very upset by that. He was adding all sorts of crazy stuff to Thor that was not in the pencils. Vinnie and Stan were proud of it, but Jack and most of us didn’t think much of it.

JA: It’s okay to add musculature, but it’s not okay to erase backgrounds.

ROMITA: Well, see, that’s the funny dichotomy. First he’d say, if he

Vinnie The Invader Another instance, besides Thor, wherein Vince Colletta (as seen in the 1964 Marvel Tales Annual) was the inker of first choice: Roy Thomas had him work over Frank Robbins’ pencils for The Invaders, beginning with GiantSize Invaders #1 (June 1975). It worked—the series sold best during the early issues when Vinnie was the inker, and sales dropped as soon as he left. But—why the “Special Thanks to John Romita” on this splash?

Probably for his inking and slight reworking of Robbins’ cover, which turned it into a real Marvel masterwork. Seen here is the splash page. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

could save drawing a dozen figures, that was saving time. But to knock in that minor stuff with a very fine pen line, I guess was easy for him. He was showing off, but I don’t think it helped much. He did that on my first Daredevil cover. He did that on Ka-Zar’s musculature in the trees and people used to come to me, say, “Wow, we never saw your work look that bad.” That I didn’t like. [mutual laughter] JA: Were there many artists who said, “Don’t put Vinnie on me”?

ROMITA: I think so. I heard more than one guy say, “Don’t put Vinnie on me.” He also had another strange behavior. Jack Kirby sometimes had to give some kind of a maniacal look to his characters.

He would give them slightly differing eyeballs; one big eyeball and one small one. Sometimes, he’d make the pupil bigger in one eye than another; and sometimes, he would have it hidden behind the lid partially, and the other one completely exposed, to get a really wild look in his eye. Well, Vinnie used to compound that problem, and sometimes he would make it a very light-looking pupil and sometimes, one would look like a brown eye and one would look like a blue eye. And many times, if he inked anything on my work or anybody that Stan wanted corrected, I used to spend a lot of time reworking his eyes, just to make them look a little bit more consistent

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I’ll just make this more like Stan wants,” which means a lot of hash.

JA: I guess the people in production liked Vinnie because he got the work on time, didn’t he?

ROMITA: Well, yes. The production manager and the editors were all happy, although a lot of editors tried to avoid using him. Stan was the one who gave him the most work, I think.

JA: What was he like as a person?

ROMITA: He was gregarious and a strange character. He used to work through the night, maybe start working like after supper or something, and work through the night and get maybe two or three hours’ sleep, then come in and deliver the work. And then he would go socialize. He would go from editor to editor, take them out to lunch, and then after hours we’d meet at Friar Tuck’s on Lexington Avenue, on 3rd Avenue. Editors from DC were there, and sometimes the Marvel people would go there. But he was always there, always buying drinks.

He was not working at all times. He was always cultivating every new editor, and there were times when I think he did even more than cultivate them. You’ve probably never heard these stories. The stories were, you know, “Don’t mess around with my income.” He would make it very clear. He had a lot of young editors who were afraid not to give him work, I think. Some of them just disregarded him, and some of them, I think, took him seriously, because he also used to tell stories about people he knew, and some goons he knew. Of course, he also ran a modeling agency for a while, [laughs] and he did that just to interview beautiful girls in skimpy outfits. [mutual laughter] And there’s some goofy stories about him with movie actresses. You’ve heard the story about him and Shelly Winters. When she was young, she was a rather wild woman, and Vinnie claims that she was a neighbor when he had this modeling apartment. And he just told some wild stories. He always had very salacious stories to tell at Friar Tuck’s. He was an interesting drinking buddy, let’s put it that way.

Putting All Your “X” In One Basket Perhaps the strangest combination ever, in the long and tortuous history of Marvel Comics, was that of Jack Kirby layouts, Alex Toth pencils, and Vince Colletta inks, in The X-Men #12 (July 1965). Super-stylist Toth is virtually lost in the crossfire! Repro’d from The Essential Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 1. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

with each other. So mostly he was not only speed-oriented, but he also had his own peculiarities. He would ink hair a certain way. No matter how you penciled it, he would do hair the same way he always inked it. Maybe that was the way it was most natural and comfortable for him. You know, if you’ve drawn curly hair and the guy gives you big waves instead, he’s changed the personality of the character. I think with all the training, all the work he did with Alex Toth, or on his own romance stuff, it was sort-of like a hashy version of Alex Toth.

JA: I’m not sure how much Alex Toth work he inked at Standard Comics.

ROMITA: He did a few Standard things, or at least one of the first ones I ever saw there was Vinnie’s inking. And when Mike Peppe started inking, it was a lot different.

JA: There was a “Kid Colt” story that Toth did, that Vinnie inked, and you almost couldn’t see Toth. This was in the ’60s.

ROMITA: That’s interesting, because I think Vinnie probably felt proprietary because he had done a lot of Westerns for Marvel and Stan, and Alex didn’t do that many. So he probably figured, “Okay,

140 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

JA: I also heard that Vinnie got girls for editors in order to get work.

ROMITA: I heard that more than once. I think it was for more than one editor, too. He always seemed to have a lot of young girls around him. We would meet him at Friar Tuck’s with a girl we knew wasn’t his wife. It was always a little awkward. You don’t want to have to—if you meet his wife at a Christmas party sometime, you’d have to watch what you say... that kind of stuff.

JA: I can see where that would make you very uncomfortable. So when he came into the offices, he spent a little bit of time there.

ROMITA: He did. He socialized wherever he went. If he went up to DC, he’d kill a couple hours up there. I think he felt it just as important to network with the editors as it was to turn out more work, but he never missed a deadline, as far as I know.

You know the story about Kirby telling Vinnie to his face that he loved his inking. Jack felt obliged to be complimentary to the inkers, whether he liked their work or not. But behind their backs, he generally would tell people he didn’t like certain inkers. Even if Vinnie was a very good inker, I think that Jack’s problem was is that he wanted all the pages back. And most of the guys like Frank Giacoia, John Verpoorten, Herb Trimpe, and myself expected to get some pages back. At least, you know, if we did five pages, we expect to get one or two pages, and Jack didn’t like giving up any of the pages, so he would choose his inkers. The guys who inked for him generally agreed to give him all the pages. The thing was that, if one of reasons you were burning the midnight oil inking a Kirby page was so you could have a Kirby page for yourself, well, you weren’t going to get it from him. And if you demanded it and got it, he’d ask for you

not to be his inker any more. Jack probably had been taken advantage of for years, and he was probably covering his own future then.

“All The Great Subtleties That Full-Time Inkers Have” JA: I think Jack thought that inkers were more like production people, because Jack felt like he told the story and that it was his story.

ROMITA: But he also didn’t take kindly to slight adjustments. I mean, the beautiful things that Joe Sinnott did for Jack—he used to polish them up and he’d give them some delicate features, and he’d put nostrils where there were slashes and things like that. And Jack did not think that was good. He thought that was masking his stuff.

The guys he loved were the ones who made it look exactly like his pencils, which was not always easy to do.

JA: It’s not very creatively fulfilling, either.

ROMITA: When I was inking stuff, Stan would always ask me to make the characters look more like Peter Parker and Mary Jane and things like that. Well, when I inked Kirby, I didn’t have to do any changes unless he had the costume wrong and occasionally a face, because Stan felt that on some of Jack’s girls, the expression was not right or—I don’t know, whatever the reason he would ask me. The thing is, I used to change people editorially for story content and for

some of the character looks, but I would not change Kirby’s stuff. I guess if I were as good as Sinnott, I might have polished him up a little bit. When I inked him, I guess I did polish him up a little. I inked the Daredevil cover and the Avengers cover; I inked him about a dozen times or so, I guess, covers, mostly. I worked from a penciled breakdown a couple of times. And then, of course, that ended up looking more like me than Jack. Yeah, I guess I fall into that category.

If you’re a penciler who’s inking someone else, if you see a cheekline that’s a little bit strange or a little bit mechanical, you sort of soften it up. I guess he didn’t like that. He once told me, “If you’re going to buy Kirby, why would you change him?” And I know that stuck in his mind.

JA: He never overtly criticized that you changed him, did he?

ROMITA: Well, I don’t think he would have overtly criticized—I don’t think he ever criticized Sinnott overtly. I know for a fact that he preferred Mike Royer because he inked exactly what Jack penciled.

Every ink line was exactly like Jack’s penciled lines. Actually, it’s not a bad way to do him, but it takes a certain kind of restraint, and Royer had to have restraint.

JA: Mike was the kind of artist who could have done more. But he did what Jack wanted him to do.

ROMITA: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. He had the discipline to do it. A lot of times, I intended to ink it exactly, but... I had the same

Raising Kane Romita says never specialized in inking. Yet his work over Gil Kane on Amazing Spider-Man made that combination something very special and individualistic—different from Kane’s other work, and different from Romita’s. This half-page is from ASM #90 (Nov. 1970) is repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Jeffrey Sharpe. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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ROMITA: Yes, I did. He was in the office a few times. He was a real guy, a hell of a talent. He was very warm and generous and very, very genuine. He was just one of those guys you were happy to meet.

JA: In the mid to late ’60s, George Klein came over to Marvel from DC. ROMITA: He was doing some good stuff on The Avengers and Thor. He’d come in and drop stuff off. He’d talk with the editor, and if he had to do anything in the Bullpen, he’d sit down for a while.

But no, we never really had a conversation. I don’t think we even ever got a chance to go out to lunch together.

JA: Tom Palmer.

ROMITA: Tom Palmer is not only a good inker, but he’s a very good penciler, too. I feel a little responsible for him being a full-time inker.

problem with my son. I don’t want to lose anything of my son’s personality, but sometimes I just can’t help it. I round out a thing or I square up a thing, and it’s one of those things I can hardly help. But when I ink my son, I consciously try to make it look exactly like the pencils.

JA: You said that you weren’t as good as Joe Sinnott. I think you were a damn good inker.

ROMITA: But I wasn’t a specialist inker. If I’d inked every day, I would’ve been a better inker. When I didn’t ink for like three or four months and then had to ink something, it was like having to learn it all over again for me. I didn’t fall right back into it. Virginia says I’m being too modest. But the truth of the matter is, if I inked all the time, I don’t think I would have been as good as Sinnott anyway, between you and me. Very few people were as good as Joe Sinnott.

JA: Joe is the very best inker who ever lived—but, John, there are comics I’ve bought solely because you were on them.

ROMITA: I’m glad to hear that. Listen, I’m not saying I was a bad inker. I’m just saying I didn’t have all the great subtleties that full-time inkers have. If Frank Giacoia had put in everything that Joe Sinnott put into his work, Giacoia would have been as good as Joe. But he wanted to be a penciler, he didn’t want to be an inker, so it’s a case of full-time. You should see me now when I ink. I just inked a Red Sonja cover and my hand was trembling. I was uncertain, I was worried about every kind of a curve I was doing with a brush. It’s something you need to do every day. It’s like playing the piano.

JA: Speaking of inkers, did you meet Sam Grainger?

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The (Tom) Palmer Raids Roy Thomas wishes he could accept the credit John R. gives him on the next page for recognizing Tom Palmer’s penciling abilities; but he mostly just recalls how neither he nor Stan felt Tom’s debut work on Dr. Strange #171 (Aug.) was quite what they wanted, even though the Palmer/Adkins combo was reasonably effective. Still, Roy sought Tom out to do full art on the adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s creepy classic “Pickman’s Model” in Tower of Shadows #9 (Jan. 1971), which was introduced by Tom’s caricature of them both.

Palmer’s true ascent, however, began at the end of the 1960s, with his stellar embellishing of Gene Colan’s pencils on Dr. Strange. He inked Colan again on Tomb of Dracula, and, especially after Marv Wolfman came aboard as writer with #7 (March 1973), as depicted above, the Vampire Lord’s mag became a true and enduring showcase. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

He was around 21 years old when he brought in a 4- or 5-page sample. I think it was a Dr. Strange sample. If you could have reproduced those pencils, they would have passed for inks. They were tight and flawless and if there was a rap against it, it was what every young artist’s rap was: it needed more dynamics and movement. It was a little bit quiet, but after all, at twenty years old, he never had a Stan Lee to goad him into more and more excitement.

I remember showing them to Roy Thomas, or maybe Roy showed them to me? I said, “Wow, this kid is good.

He’s a polished artist already.” Roy said, “The only thing is we don’t have any penciling to assign him to, no fillins or anything like that.” I said, “You want to know something? This guy would probably make a hell of an inker because his finished pencils even have thick and think lines on them.” I remember distinctly they were done Climbing The Walls like about on 8" by 10" paper. They were not full-size. They weren’t repro This poster was done in 1979 for Scholastic magazine. Thanks to Al Bigley. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] size, they were a little bit bigger, and I did one or two finished pieces, and the rest were done by Steve Geiger think that’s the reason Roy might have gotten him some inking work. and the Raiders. Tom Palmer saved the project, even though they were Once he showed people what a good inker he was—and also, not with the holes or as big as I wanted; they made them small remember, being a good penciler, he was also valuable, because if you enough to be shipped out in a regular small envelope. He made a great had a guy who was a good storyteller but not a very polished penciler, simulation of an animated cel. Tom was the guy who solved the a guy like Palmer could polish up his work while he was inking it. So problem. He must have done a lot of commercial art in his time, that’s it. Once he got into that, once he showed them how well he because he was able to do an awful lot of things that regular comic could do that stuff, then I think the majority of his stuff became ink people couldn’t. He’s as talented as they come and as versatile, too. work, and I always thought, gee, what a dirty trick I pulled on him.

And he could still pencil a damn good story. [mutual laughter] I was actually trying to get him work. To help him out, I may have started his career a little differently than he hoped.

He probably did the best inking in Marvel’s history when he inked that Dracula series. When he got on that stuff with Gene Colan... he JA: Considering that he’s still working, I’d say it worked okay for and Colan were the greatest team. It was pure illustration. Imagine him. doing a hundred illustrations in a month. [chuckles] ROMITA: He’s had a terrific career, and I feel very, very good, JA: Brian Morris, our transcriber, said I should ask you about Steve knowing that I was there at the beginning, and that Roy and I recogGeiger. nized his talent and wanted him to get work right away. So if he could forgive me for ruining his penciling career, at least I can take some ROMITA: Steve’s wife was a very good designer in the production credit for that long career of his. He’s also a great colorist and a good department. She actually took over for Virginia when we retired, so painter. I hope he’s doing more painting than I’ve seen, because when she was a big cog in the wheel. Steve took Don Perlin’s place when we were doing those full-color posters or lithos up at Marvel for a Don went to Valiant. He supervised two or three Raiders jobs while I while, he did a dynamite Daredevil poster—full-color painting. He’s was busy with a lot of big toy projects, and things like that. He was done some covers for us, too. sort-of running it himself, but he would always have to come in and check with me.

We did a simulated set of animated cels back in the ’80s. We did a half a dozen cels that were supposed to be exact replicas, like The only problem with Steve was that he was a very talented guy, manufactured simulations of actual animated cels. We were going to but his mind was only half on comics. He wanted to be a rock star. do it the exact size of an animated sheet with the holes in it for the He was a musician, and his heart was really not in comics. He could animation film. But they chickened out on that and they just made have been pretty good, but I don’t think he gave it his full attention. If acetates. But we had a tough time simulating the way the coloring was he could have been a rock star, he would have dropped comics like a on the cels, because if you do a regular color stat, it came out looking hot potato. He was one of the guys who got into the Penthouse a little bit washed out. So we sent it to Tom Palmer, and he did the Comix.

He told me he was going to have to quit unless Marvel gave damnedest simulated coloring. him a lot of money. I said I think they were paying him as much as they could at the time, and he said that Penthouse was going to pay Those things came out looking very good because we had to print him $700 a page. Most of us were working for like $150 a page. I said, them on the back side. We printed the acetate in black-&-white, and “If you get $700 a page, you can’t afford to stay here. By all means, go then the color was printed on the back side to get to simulate the cels. work for Penthouse Comix. In fact, if I had any guts, I’d quit here They were Spider-Man scenes. I would sketch them in, and I think I

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 143

From Supergirl To Spider-Man Jim Mooney had been a comic book artist since the early 1940s, but really came into his own when he inherited DC’s “Supergirl” feature with its second outing, in Action Comics #253 (June 1959). Script by Otto Binder; repro’d from The Supergirl Archives, Vol. 1. [©2007 DC Comics.]

At right is the Romita/Mooney splash from The Amazing Spider-Man #69 (Feb. 1969). John did the story breakdowns, and Jim provided the finished art. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

and go there, too.” But that’s not the way I work. And it’s a good thing, because the whole thing petered out in short order.

There were half a dozen guys who gave that a shot. The money really called to them, and you can’t blame them. It looked like Penthouse was going to expand, and that there might be a good market there. I guess it was just badly managed from the editorial side of it. Otherwise, it should have taken off, really. I think they got a little bit raunchy. They were very raunchy in Penthouse anyway.

JA: Who came up with the nickname “Romita’s Raiders”?

ROMITA: It might have been Jim Shooter, because that whole idea was Shooter’s. It was a brilliant idea, and it led to a lot of guys coming into the business who otherwise might not have had a chance.

JA: You mentioned Jim Mooney before, but you haven’t really talked about him.

ROMITA: I remember seeing Mooney’s stuff when I was in high school. I remember idolizing that stuff; he was such a solid pro. In the first couple of years that I was working for Stan, he would mention Mooney quite a bit, saying, “I wish we could have Jim Mooney do more stuff.” He was doing a lot of “Supergirl” at the time. Jim and Stan were buddies, from when Mooney had worked for Timely. He did some stuff whenever he had the extra time from DC. Stan always told me what a great, great talent, and what a great guy Mooney was.

And I found out the truth when we worked together: he was as good

144 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

a guy to work with as anybody. And capable. Here he was inking, sometimes from my very rough blue pencils, and turning them into gems. We had a great run on Spider-Man together.

JA: Did you know Chic Stone?

ROMITA: Yes. Chic and I had some conversations. I thought he was one of the best inkers on Kirby. I hadn’t seen much of his penciled stuff. For some reason, he’d worked for a lot of other companies besides DC and Marvel. I found out, after I met him, that he had a long career as a penciler, going way back. He was one of the pioneers, practically. When I saw his inking on Kirby, between George Roussos and Chic Stone, I loved that stuff, and there was Paul Reinman occasionally. But those guys were like in a class by themselves.

JA: I was not a big fan of Reinman on Kirby.

ROMITA: He was always in a rush. You know, they were always late on those jobs. But Chic was a very, very genial, professional type of guy, always with a cooperative approach, always willing to go the extra mile.

“All Of Us Who Did Love Stories…”

JA: Did you get to know Werner Roth at all?

ROMITA: I did. I worked with Werner Roth. I think he did some love stories at DC while I was there, so I knew his stuff. When I got

back to Marvel in the late ’60s, he was penciling over Jack Kirby’s layouts on The X-Men. A good solid professional guy, and he could handle anything you threw at him. Very versatile and completely underrated. People never knew how good he was. He was very quiet, not the kind of guy to blow his own horn.

When he passed away, we tried to get some reprint money for his wife, and at the time, the company wasn’t set up properly to do that kind of stuff. We had a couple of situations where we were hoping that the wives would collect some reprint money. I don’t know what Kirby thought of his stuff, but I didn’t hear Jack complaining about Werner’s work on The X-Men. Stan probably was always asking Werner to do a little bit more exciting and dynamic stuff.

JA: Roth’s work was rather quiet for super-hero art.

ROMITA: True. All of us who did love stories were used to doing pastoral-paced stuff. But you know, when you’re working with Jack Kirby’s breakdowns, you can only get so pastoral, anyway. There’s expressions that could be more fierce and intense, and mouths could be wider open; things like that. But Stan never asked me to give Werner any kind of direction. It was later in the relationship where I was telling people what Stan wanted. I never had a chance to, then.

Maybe if he was working on X-Men in ’69 or ’70, I might have had to. I mean, I even had to ask John Buscema to do things that Stan wanted more of, and I always felt very sheepish doing that. [mutual chuckling] I couldn’t call John Buscema and tell him to do this or that. That seemed crazy to me. It might have happened with Werner, but I never remember anybody criticizing him, and he kept his series going for quite a while that way. He certainly was a solid pro.

JA: I’d like to ask you about Win Mortimer.

ROMITA: Win Mortimer was another real solid pro. He did dynamite stuff when he worked for DC, and when he worked for us, it was always a little less dynamic, and I don’t know why. I had a gut feeling that he didn’t feel like it had to be as good for Marvel as it had to be for DC, but that’s maybe just my own feeling. Let me tell you, I saw samples by Win Mortimer that knocked my socks off. He was a true illustrator. Guys like Bob Brown, Win Mortimer, and Frank Robbins were so versatile, and could be so powerful. Their characters were so strong that I don’t know why they’re not mentioned more.

Bob Brown was one of the best, and here’s Win Mortimer doing our second-line books. I used to have to try to get him work.

Win Mortimer was the main artist on Spidey Super-Stories, and he

A Win-Win Situation After years at DC drawing Superman, Batman, and Robin, Winslow (“Win”) Mortimer spent several productive years at Marvel. He did full art on all four issues of the legendary Night Nurse; seen above is the splash for #3 (March 1973). He was also the original penciler of the educational Spidey Super Stories, as per this splash from #5 (Feb. 1975). Scripting of both was by Jean Thomas, Roy’s first wife. Photo of Mortimer from the 1975 Might Marvel Comics Convention program book. [NN ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; SSS art ©2007 Children’s Television Workshop, with Marvel characters ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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was very good on it. He was doing a lot of silly stuff like the Living Wall character. I mean, here’s a guy who’s a section of brick wall, walking around with eyes and mouth, and Mortimer took it all in stride. He was capable of doing the most beautiful artwork, but he was always relegated to doing second-level stuff. It killed me. When he did Night Nurse, he would do the damnedest job on Night Nurse. People still remember it.

He lived in upstate New York, and he had a lodge in Canada, which drove me crazy. You know, I had a little bungalow in Queens. [mutual laughter] It’s just that hearing about a lodge in Canada where he could hunt on his own land was very impressive to me. I only knew guys from Brooklyn who had lived in lower middle-income houses, and they worked their way up to a nice house on the island or in Connecticut.

We used to have a lot of talks. I drew the covers on his Spidey Super Stories, and he would be stuck with some of my interpretations of the characters, but he was able to handle it all. He was maybe ten years older than I was. I always admired and respected his stuff very much. He was rather lowkey, and looked like a guy who would have lunch with Norman Rockwell every day. [mutual chuckling]

“[Ross Andru And I] Were Kindred Spirits In A Way” JA: Individually and collectively, tell me about Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.

ROMITA: Well, I’ve known Mike a long time. I knew Ross all the time he was working for Marvel. I didn’t know him as well as Mike, but they were quite a team, and one of the things that irks me is that Ross doesn’t get mentioned enough when they talk about SpiderMan artists. Ross was a guy who deserves to be mentioned. He had a long run, and he was one of the good ones. I think if there was any fault he had, it was a slight—not awkwardness, but a slight lack of glamour, or less glamour than a lot of guys. John Buscema was probably the most glamorous artist I ever saw, and he could make everybody look beautiful and heroic, and then he could do ferocity, too. Ross was a serious story-

Look! Up In The Sky! John Romita himself drew a mean Superman— if only for this 1997 fan drawing. But why the gloves, JR? [Superman TM & ©2007 DC Comics.]

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then it would break his heart, and he’d come back and try to make it up.

JA: He’s had more ups and downs than most people I’ve known.

ROMITA: True, and he was such a hard worker. Mike was such a craftsman. A lot of times, he earned more money than I did. I would be penciling a major title and he’d be inking it, and he would make more money than I did. And that was only a tribute to the fact that I never demanded the rates I was supposed to get all the time. [mutual laughter] Mike was a good businessman.

Andru And Esposito Show Their Metal Ross Andru (left) and Mike Esposito (right) formed an artistic team for much of their careers—especially at DC, where these photos appeared in the house fanzine The Amazing World of DC Comics #15 (Aug. 1977). While their longest stint there was on Wonder Woman, they are even more fondly remembered for Metal Men, as per the above splash from #3 (Aug.-Sept. 1963). Script by Robert Kanigher. [©2007 DC Comics.]

While Ross was inked by many different artists at Marvel in the 1970s, he and Mike still worked together whenever they could. This included numerous issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, such as #157 (June 1976), as reprinted in The Essential Amazing Spiderman, Vol. 7, in which the WallCrawler battled the metal tentacles of Dr. Octopus. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

teller; his characters lacked glamour, but the storytelling was very good. I think I’ve told you before: I don’t believe anybody else in the world could have done as good a job on the Superman/SpiderMan treasury crossover. I think he did a magnificent job on that.

We were kindred spirits in a way, because we both labored over our stuff. Ross worked very hard and was very diligent; he never took any shortcuts. He didn’t shirk his duty, but it was very hard.

It was not easy for Ross or myself. He had to really struggle. A lot of guys, it came very easy to them.

JA: Personally, did you know much about him?

ROMITA: Well, only what Mike used to tell me, that Ross was very careful and soft-spoken. They were almost like opposites. I don’t think Ross was as chance-taking or as flamboyant as Mike.

JA: Not too many people are. [mutual laughter] And I say that with great affection.

ROMITA: Oh, me, too. Mike did a lot of things that I wish I had the nerve to do—like, he used to take chances on going into business at the drop of a hat. He would risk all his savings, and

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Mike was a valiant gambler. He was always at the track if he didn’t have any work to do. One day, Mike took Sol Brodsky and two of Sol’s brothers to the Meadowlands Racetrack. Mike promised to show them the ropes, and offered Sol 10% of his winnings. So Mike bet $200 on a particular horse, using a system that he had created. The odds were such that if the horse won, he’d win $2000. The race starts, and the horse was putting on a good race. It was leading coming off of the stretch. And there at the rail, Mike and the Brodskys were cheering this horse on. This was going to be a great day for them because the horse was winning. Ten feet from the finish line, the horse broke its leg, fell, and slid, and the jockey fell off the horse, and they did not reach the finish line. The guys lost the race and were devastated. [mutual laughter] But Mike told a lot of stories like that: things that happened to him that didn’t happen to a lot of other people.

JA: How good a card-player was Mike?

ROMITA: Mike was a very good cardplayer, very good gambler, a much better card-player than I am.

Everybody’s a better card-player than I am. I generally beat myself. I generally am too pessimistic, and then all of a sudden I’ll get too optimistic, and both times, it hurts. [chuckles] I play Texas Hold ’Em on line. I play six robots. [mutual laughter] Sometimes I clean up, and sometimes I get killed. It depends on the cards.

“Idols” JA: George Tuska.

ROMITA: Tuska was one of my idols, growing up. There was something very macho and glamorous about his style.

When I was a kid, there was a lot of trash in comics, a lot of bad artwork.

The guys who stuck out in my mind were Simon & Kirby, George Tuska, It Pays To Advertise and Charlie Biro. The original Daredevil was my favorite character. The first John Romita also inked Andru’s Amazing Spider-Man on more than one occasion. This page is from issue splash page by George Tuska I #151 (Dec. 1975). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] remember was a “Shark Brody” story, and it stayed in my mind my entire life. asleep, you know? A lot of other guys drew passive figures. They Every time I heard the name “George Tuska,” I would visualize that could be saying, “The bridge is falling,” and their eyes would be splash page. It was dynamite because he had a way of making his lidded and their mouths would be closed. [mutual laughter] characters look so sincere and serious. And he also made them awake.

Right from the beginning—I realized when I started doodling, I A lot of guys had this terrible habit of making everybody with their must have been about 12 when I drew a whole Sunday page with a eyes closed and looking half-asleep. The reason that Kirby and Biro fountain pen. I think it was a war story, I’m not sure; it might have and Tuska appealed to me and stayed in my mind was that their been the Lafayette Escadrille or something like that. I consciously characters were alive. When they were speaking or shouting, their decided I was not going to make my characters sleepy and passive. mouths were open and their eyes were open. They were not half I’m going to make them proactive, so I had them shouting and

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people’s attention, and they’re going to buy books. If you show off with technique, and there’s no substance to your characters or stories, then they immediately get tired of you.

JA: Did you spend any time with Frank Robbins?

ROMITA: I was grateful that I did. The amazing thing about Frank Robbins was his speed. Not only was he one of the best artists that ever did a comic page, in syndication or in comic books, but he was so fast, he actually drove me crazy because I couldn’t believe my eyes.

He came up to the office and said he’s going to talk to Stan, and see if there’s some work he could do. I said, “Does that mean you’re not going to do Johnny Hazard any more?” And he said, “Oh, no, I’m going to keep doing that.” I said, “How have you got time to do it?”

He says, “Oh, I get done with Johnny Hazard dailies and Sundays in half a week. “ He wrote it, he penciled it, and he inked it, I’m not sure he didn’t even color it; but the thing was he would finish it in a half a week. Something that would have taken me two weeks to do one week of dailies and Sundays, he did it in half a week and had time left over to go look for other work. And you know the quality of his work was so powerful and so rich and juicy. He picked almost like a perfect, juicy part of Caniff’s evolution and he locked in on it, and his work was just so beautiful.

Three’s A Crowd Mike Esposito had a colorful career at Marvel, first as “Mickey Demeo,” then as “Joe Gaudioso”—and finally under the most unlikely name of all: “Mike Esposito.” Here, under his middle monicker, he inks Sal Buscema on The Sub-Mariner [sic] #26 (June 1970). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

twisting, their scarves were blowing in the wind; all of the things that I learned from those artists I mentioned, and then later on from Caniff.

Maybe ten years later, I was up at Timely and I saw a photostat of a George Tuska page. I put it in my portfolio because it was discarded, it was in the trash. I could see the pencils underneath, and the brush line he was using. I kept it on my drawing table for a couple years as a guide on how to ink. It was my blueprint.

I didn’t get to see him much. He used to come up occasionally, always smiling and always cordial, quick with a handshake, but I never got to go to lunch with him or talk to him. I was always a little bit shy on that stuff.

JA: Roy told me that whenever they put George Tuska on a book, the sales went up.

ROMITA: George was that kind of guy. You could see he got a response out of readers because his characters were genuine and the readers, even if they didn’t know it, were drawn to his work.

JA: Right, because he never seemed to be a fan favorite, but you can’t argue with success, either.

Tuska Was Terrific

ROMITA: That’s true. When you tell a story and make the reader forget that they’re looking at a piece of paper, you’re going to get

George Tuska was depicted on p. 17; his art speaks for itself. And this splash he penciled for The Incredible Iron Man #8 (Dec. 1968), for his longest-running series, speaks very loudly indeed! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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In The Arms Of Morbius Frank Robbins already had a long-established career as the writer and artist of the comic strip Johnny Hazard when he began to draw (and sometimes script) first for DC, then for Marvel.

His newspaper work is showcased on p. 26.

While his Marvel art was perhaps best exemplified by The Invaders and Captain America, his depiction at DC of Man-Bat made him a perfect choice to draw Morbius, the Living Vampire, as in this splash from Fear #25 (Dec. 1974). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: In some ways, I liked his work better than Caniff’s, especially in Caniff’s Steve Canyon years.

ROMITA: The fact is he was a lot looser than Caniff. Caniff got a little bit tight in his later years, a little bit quiet, not like the nice early, juicy stuff he did while he was working with Noel Sickles. He got a little bit too polished.

JA: Not only that, but Robbins’ stuff was more active. His characters had more rhythm, and despite the slight clunkiness, they had a lot of movement.

ROMITA: It’s the same kind of power we’re talking about. I know that Lee Elias was the same way. Lee Elias was another proponent of Caniff’s who took that juicy, big beautiful ink line with a lot of great juicy folds, big black folds in the clothing, and he could draw a leather jacket better than anyone in the business. They adopted Caniff at a certain level and stayed with it, but it always drove me crazy that Caniff’s work had changed a little bit.

JA: How tight were Robbins’ pencils?

ROMITA: They were never really tight, but the pencils were complete. There was nothing faked and nothing left to the imagi-

nation, but it never was rigid and tight. The work was nice and loose, but it was all complete, every finger, every eyeball, everything.

JA: What was he like personally?

ROMITA: He was not modest. He wasn’t modest because he couldn’t be modest. He was too good, but he was never arrogant. He was an absolutely genuine guy.

Stan Goldberg probably told you that he used to go visit him in Mexico. He was so cordial and friendly that Stan used to make an annual visit to stop and see Frank in Mexico. I always envied Stan for seeing him there, because I would have loved to spend a day just talking

Johnny And The Pirates Like Frank Robbins and many another artist of the 1940s and ’50s, John Romita was heavily influenced by the early work of Milton Caniff on the comic strip Terry and the Pirates.

You can savor a specimen of Caniff’s original on p. 18; here, Romita does his own take on young Terry, Pat Ryan, and The Dragon Lady. (And if you’ve gotta ask which one the latter is, try taking your pulse… if you can find it.) [Art ©2007 John Romita; characters TM & ©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

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Splitting Adams By the time Neal Adams’ pic was snapped for that 1969 Fantastic Four Annual, he’d already been a young newspaper comic strip artist (as per the above Ben Casey daily for Oct. 22, 1964)—then become a major artist for late-1960s DC. The cover for Superman #204 (Feb. 1967) was his first for that title. The Ben Casey strip appeared in Brian Walker’s lush 2002 volume The Comics Since 1945.

[Ben Casey art ©2007 NEA, Inc.; Superman art ©2007 DC Comics.]

Adams broke in at Marvel by penciling mutants, their skycraft, some beautifully birdlike wings on The Angel, and the ancient Egyptian temple at Abu Simbel, all for the splash of The X-Men #56 (May 1969). In Tom Palmer he immediately found one of his three most important inkers, the others being Dick Giordano—and himself. [X-Men art & photo ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

to Frank, but I never did push that kind of stuff, to my regret. Oh, God, he was good!

I used to cut strips out of the Sunday newspapers. I saved a lot of Caniff Sundays, and Robbins’ Johnny Hazard was in the Mirror. There was a Saturday comic section in the New York Mirror for a while, and he used to have a full page of Johnny Hazard. He did a couple of Sundays that are still right in between my eyes.

He did one with a dozen monkeys jumping around this cave, and Johnny Hazard had to deal with all these monkeys jumping all over him. I can still visualize it. I had it in my collection for so long. I don’t know where it is now, but it was one of the things that just drove me crazy with the beautiful technique he had. He was in a class by himself.

“Neal [Adams] Is A Giant In The Industry” JA: He sure was. All right, Neal Adams is next.

ROMITA: The one thing that pops in my mind with Neal is that I

had seen the Ben Casey strip in the newspapers, and when the strip was canceled, I came to work, rushed into Stan’s office, and said, “You know, Stan? We oughtta get in touch with this guy, because he’s awfully good.” And within the hour, we found out he had just gone over to DC and signed up with them. We missed the boat.

JA: But he did some Marvel work. He drew a couple issues of Thor, The X-Men and The Avengers with Roy. Did you ever have any dealings with him?

ROMITA: Not really. He drew a Dracula special, and I think I did a cut-and-paste on one of his covers. I cut up a Photostat and rearranged a couple of things, but I don’t think I ever inked him.

One of the crazy things was that, a lot of times, Stan didn’t like Neal’s covers just because of subject matter, not because he didn’t like the drawing. He didn’t like the approach or, as it’s been pointed out recently in the Kirby Collector, Stan would reject covers, no matter how beautiful they were, if he didn’t think they were the right subject matter, or the right moment to capture for a cover. Neal would end up doing a lot of them over, and they used to think that Stan and I were crazy.

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the one I connected with the technique revolution, where the technique got to be more important than the substance of the characters and the story. It sort-of stems back to him, because he could make it look very good and he could make it work, but a lot of young people who learned under him figured that “If I do the technique, I don’t have to be as good an artist as Neal.” And what it did was spawn a whole generation of artists that were techniqueoriented, not substance-oriented.

Having said that, Neal’s a giant in the industry, and of course everybody knows what he did for Siegel and Shuster. He’s been a very good influence on the artists, because I think a lot of artists gained self-respect when Neal got into the business. He goaded us into having more self respect than we had in the old days. Most of us were used to having footprints on our back, you know.

The other milestone in my memory is that Neal was one of the movers and shakers when we did ACBA [Academy of Comic Book Arts]. The only problem was that there was a power struggle between two groups. Some of us were sold on ACBA as a guild and interested in elevating the art form, gaining stature for the art form instead of being called a trash article. We wanted to get respect for an art form, so I succumbed to the guild idea.

One Draws Most of Neal Adams’ major work for Marvel and DC is currently in print, including his runs on Thor, The X-Men, “The Inhumans,” The Avengers, and a couple of “Conan” stories. But some way should be found to reprint the story “One Hungers,” which he wrote and drew for Tower of Shadows #2 (Nov. 1969). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

If Stan came in and said, “I want you to do this cover over,” I did maybe two or three covers, re-dos of stuff Neal Adams had drawn that were rejected. I did one where I thought Neal’s was very good, but Stan wanted a different angle on it, maybe something exposing the individual X-Men better. Instead of clustering them together, I sort of separated them, but I did it about two or three times... having to do a Neal Adams cover over. I had the same feeling I had when I had to do anybody’s stuff over, especially like Jack Kirby’s or Neal Adams’ or even John Buscema’s. I always felt, you know what, this is crazy. It’s never going to be the same. I always admired the stuff and I hated to do them over.

I think Neal and I got along okay. I used to talk to him occasionally about how some of the kids that were coming out of his tutelage were his clones. They weren’t as good as Neal, and couldn’t get away with the stuff that he would do. He could do the wrong thing and make it look great.

When these kids came in, they were drawing like Neal, but there wasn’t any substance there. I used to tell him that these guys have got the look, but they don’t have the real guts of the style. And Neal used to say, “They’ll get it. They’ll come along.”

The one thing that he brought into the business was that he was

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But almost from the first meeting we had, there were guys that were getting up and saying, “When are we going to go on strike?”

They wanted to make it a labor movement. I was against that, because I always felt creative talent up against business people is always going to come in second. I figured I’m not going to tell people to risk their livelihood to make a point in a labor way. So that was the problem.

Neal was interested in having a guild, too, but he was also interested in showing some kind of strength against the publishers. His philosophy was that publishers don’t always tell the truth. In other words, they tell you they’ve got a deadline, but Adams told the artists, “Don’t trust the publisher’s deadline. They always pad the deadline so that they get the work extra early.” And he sort-of raised a whole group of young people not to care about deadlines. [mutual laughter] JA: Well, he had a reputation for not making them himself.

ROMITA: See, that’s what I mean. His philosophy was “If it’s good, it doesn’t have to be on time,” and the truth is, if it’s not on time, it can be as good as Michelangelo’s work, but it’s still not going to do anybody any good. That’s an old dichotomy between publishers and the talent. You know when guys go on strike, other people are out to get their work. I said Neal Adams and John Buscema and maybe I would get work again, but a lot of guys might never get work again.

And some people were very foolhardy and said, “Yeah, let’s go on strike. Let’s show them who’s the boss here.” I used to tell them, “I think we know who’s boss here. We don’t have to go.” [mutual chuckling] When Stan Lee and Carmine Infantino got together and started ACBA, it was quite a wonderful thing, and for that time—just like with The Hero Initiative now—it’s the welfare issue that I’m interested in. The welfare and the guild end of it, to get respect as an art form, and to protect guys who are not healthy and not getting work. Those were the things that interested me then. As soon as ACBA started to sound like a labor union, I got off the board of directors. I was there as a vice-president one time, or I was about to be, and I just walked away from it.

It was a good idea, but I think some people were using it for the wrong reasons. The other thing was that Neal and Dick Giordano set up a system where they were getting work for young people, which was very good, introducing new talent to the publishers. He had a lot of good ideas. The problem was, what some people ended doing with them is something different than what he might have wanted.

“A New [Editorial] World” JA: Let’s discuss Len Wein. He was editor-in-chief for a little while.

ROMITA: At the time, it wasn’t as though we were fashion plates at the office. I used to wear a coat and tie every day, and I was one of the freaks. But Len Wein started a tradition, coming in with sandals and no socks. And Marie and I would roll our eyes and say, “Well, you know, this is a new world.” And there was a period when Stan was coming in with cowboy boots, and with his shirt open to the waist, through his beatnik period. We just stood by and figured, okay, we’re old fogies and we’re not with it like Stan is. [mutual chuckling] But Len Wein coming in wearing a tank top and shorts and sandals with no socks, and walking around the Bullpen, checking on people, and jokingly saying, “I’m the boss. You know, the boss is here, watch your step.” [Jim laughs] It was like a zoo. It was crazy. He was a very bright guy, and he had a great feel for comics. He did some wonderful writing, creating a lot of good characters, but his personal style was not what we needed back then. We needed something else; that’s why he didn’t last. I guess nobody really took him seriously.

Afterwards, Marv Wolfman came in, trying to become a martinet, which didn’t work. Gerry Conway came in at one point, and even if things were working, he wouldn’t have lasted, because he could not stand the tension with the front office. He despised the front office.

JA: I know Roy did, too.

ROMITA: Well, Roy didn’t despise it. He understood more, but Roy fought them like a tiger and he just exhausted himself, trying to fight. At least Stan always had the benefit of being a writer. He could stay out of the office, and let Sol run the office.

Stan could retreat to his typewriter and write for two or three days without worrying. But the other editors-in-chief all felt they wanted to write, but they also all felt like they were going to run it like a general, which didn’t work.

Archie In Armor Archie Goodwin, who had cut his eyeteeth in the mid-1960s as editor of Warren Publications’ Creepy and Eerie b&w horror comics, served as Marvel’s editor-in-chief from spring of 1976 through the end of 1977. He also had a long and much-remembered stint as the writer of “Iron Man,” working in turn with artists Gene Colan, Johnny Craig, and George Tuska. Here’s the splash from the transitional Iron Man & SubMariner #1 (and, at it happened, only). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: But Archie Goodwin wasn’t quite like that, was he?

ROMITA: No, Archie Goodwin was really an editorial guy. He didn’t care if the stuff came in late. Virginia was traffic manager at that time, and Archie, as gentle as he was, would ignore her demands. She’d say, “If an artist is not available, you can’t keep him on a book.

The best artist in the world is no good if the book doesn’t come out.

You’ve got to have a backup, and you’ve got to give somebody else a chance.”

Archie would say, “This is a big title.

This is an important book. I

Musical (Editorial) Chairs Over the next year and a half after Roy Thomas relinquished the job in September of 1974, Marvel had no less than three editors-in-chief, all talented writers, seen here from left to right: Len Wein (for roughly six months)… Marv Wolfman (for about a year—and he’d overseen the black-&-white line far earlier)… and Gerry Conway (who quit after 2-3 weeks, before his name as “editor” could be printed in any of the mags! All photos on this page are from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Comic Convention program book. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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can’t have a novice doing this book. I have to wait for Walt Simonson or Neal Adams, or somebody like that.” Archie was strictly thinking quality comics, which was a laudable thing, but it was not realistic. It was not getting the work out. When you’re doing production, and you’re the art director, and you’re asked to muster a bunch of guys to do a weekend rush job because somebody was two weeks late with his pencils, you can only go on so long that way.

JA: There were reprint issues on some titles.

ROMITA: And fill-ins, and fill-ins by novices. And if it was by second-line artists, then Archie couldn’t stand that. He’d have had a heart attack if he had stayed in the job anyway. He couldn’t take it.

JA: Do you have a personal story about Archie? I liked Archie quite a bit.

ROMITA: I never knew anybody who didn’t like Archie. He was a great man. He had a very great sense of humor. Very subtle, very low key, but dynamite. He was a brilliant, brilliant man and I admired him tremendously. I have an Archie Goodwin story for you. Virginia just reminded me of the time they decided to put a time clock up in Marvel.

VIRGINIA ROMITA: They wanted to, but they didn’t actually do it.

ROMITA: They were discussing whether or not people would stand for having to punch a time clock when they came in.

VIRGINIA ROMITA: Because they were coming in so late and everything. Who knows if the employees were told about the time clock? John and I were the only ones who always got in before nine.

ROMITA: I used to drive her crazy; everybody else would come in late. One morning—

Busman’s Holiday For Two Retired Comic Book People Virginia and John Romita at a comics convention a couple of years back.

Photo by Keif Simon & Jim Murtaugh.

VIRGINIA ROMITA: Eleven o’clock!

ROMITA: [chuckles] Well, yeah, some people would come in as late as 11:00 and go to lunch at 12:30. Archie’s protest to getting in early was this: we’d come in, and we’d go down the hallway towards our office. And there’s Archie outside the editor-in-chief’s office in a long nightshirt, with bare legs and a stocking cap on his head. Now there were no lights on; we used to turn them on a lot of times. There were no lights on down at his end of the hall, and Archie had a lantern in his hand. He looked like Gepetto from Pinocchio with his mustache and a nightcap, and that was his protest. [mutual laughter]

“Young Talent” JA: That sounds just like something Archie would have done! Next is Barry Smith.

ROMITA: Barry Smith reminds me that I’m not a very good judge of young talent, because I told Stan I didn’t think he was ever going to make it. Shows you what I know. Same thing with Todd McFarlane later, on. When Barry came over, he had sent in some samples that

Smith Primeval Barry Smith, in a 1975 caricature drawn by Marie Severin—and a late-1960s drawing reputedly done by Barry for British reprints of Marvel material. If so, it was in his very early days, perhaps while he was still living in his native England.

Within a year or two, he’d be turning out his classic Conan the Barbarian art.

Thanks to UK collector Steve Mitchell. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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were dynamite, but they were all pin-ups. But when it came to doing nuts and bolts... all the little panels and the storytelling things, well, he was really not prepared for that. The first story he did was an X-Men story [issue #53]. I worked with him on it and it was a tough situation. Almost every panel, we had to rethink and work out, and I’d have to show him exactly how to approach it. I told Stan, “This guy’s never going to be able to tell a story on sequential pages. He could probably do covers and posters. He’d be dynamite, but I don’t think he can tell a story in a book.” And a couple of years later, he was drawing Conan, and knocking everybody’s socks off. He worked at developing his style.

JA: When you went over those pages with him, how did he take your criticism?

ROMITA: You know, I think he was pretty good about it. I don’t remember any kind of friction. I am very much a perfectionist, and I’m sure I must have driven him crazy, but I don’t remember him giving me any flak. I think you’re right, I think he did learn. I don’t know how much I taught him, but between Stan and me, I think we got the message across... Stan probably more than I did. But he developed a style that was very distinctive and very interesting. It was illustrative, it had a lot of technique and a lot of form, but the characters were so distinctive and different from anybody else’s characters that it stood out. It was amazing to bring in new stuff like that. He claimed that he never was a Kirby-oriented artist, [Jim laughs] but I remember his pin-ups were Kirbyesque.

JA: Barry’s early stories were very Kirbyesque.

ROMITA: But he claimed otherwise, as did John Byrne. I thought John Byrne was a Kirby clone and he’s claimed otherwise. He said no, he never was interested in Kirby. [laughs] Of course, what everybody remembers about John was his speed, but he also was a very, very influential artist. Whenever a writer teamed up with him, or an editor, I think he affected the line of books that the editor was working on.

He was a very influential and very important addition to the emotional storytelling approach, because he became an artist who started to influence the stories and the direction of a book. A series changed direction whenever he got involved with it, so he was a thinking man’s artist. He had the energy and the toughness to push his own agenda, and I think a lot of times it was very good, because it was one of the few times that an artist jumped in with both feet and started to affect the direction of a storyline. He is a giant in the industry.

JA: What was he like to deal with on a personal basis?

ROMITA: I didn’t have a lot to do with him. Actually, I think when he was really going strong, I was doing those coloring books. I was out of the comic book end of Marvel by the early 1980s. I saw the books come in, but I didn’t have a lot of time and energy to devote to it.

While he was thriving, I was out of touch, and by the time I got back into it again, John was doing Fantastic Four. I remember Shooter and me talking about his Fantastic Four, which was selling.

Shooter came to me and said, “What do you think of John’s Fantastic Four?” I told him, “Well, to me, if a guy doesn’t make the characters look like Kirby did, I always felt like it was a failing.” And he was making the characters somewhat like Kirby’s first couple of issues.

Reed Richards was skinny and— JA: Smoked a pipe.

ROMITA: Yes, but whatever happened, it was not the Fantastic Four I had become a fan of. He was changing them a little bit. He was making them all a little bit narrow-shouldered and a little bit strange,

Byrne-ing Legends John Byrne retold the origin of the Fantastic Four—then showed what might’ve happened if they hadn’t gained cosmic powers—in What If #36 (Dec. 1982) [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

and so I told Shooter, “Listen, this is not the way I’d do Fantastic Four. I would do it exactly like Kirby, but that doesn’t mean what he’s doing is wrong. It’s selling.” He said, “I know it’s selling. I’m asking you what should we do about it.” I said, “Well, I wouldn’t tamper with a book that’s selling.” It was selling very well, but Shooter finally said, “I think what we ought to do is tell him to change or get off the book.” [Jim laughs] I think Shooter would have done it. Shooter was ready to do it, and I said, “Well, even though it’s not the way I would like to see it, I would hesitate to tamper with something that’s selling well. I mean, we don’t have that many big sellers.” [mutual laughter]

“Gil [Kane] Was A Guy Like No Other” JA: We haven’t talked about Gil Kane yet.

ROMITA: Gil was a guy like no other. Gil was a walking theoretician. He could expound on all sorts of theories on comics, and we used to have long conversations about it. He would come into the office and just settle down, and we would talk. I’d be working and he’d be talking, [mutual chuckling] and you know, he was a great guy for vocalizing. He was full of ideas and he was a doomsayer. Like I used to always expect that every year we had was going to be our last year. There were a lot of us from my generation that expected the

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it. And he used to have theories on Jack Kirby, saying that Jack Kirby can’t help himself, he just turns out this stuff, it comes out of him like some kind of miracle. We used to have long discussions on Jack’s philosophy and Jack’s production ability. And Gil saw so many top-notch artists first-hand, he had many more connections than I ever did. He used to work in a studio with comics greats.

He learned so much in his teens. While I was still in high school, the son of a gun was learning, and he got a big headstart on us, you know. And he absorbed all of those things just like Alex Toth, Joe Kubert, and Carmine Infantino did.

Those guys were people he worked with, and I envied him for that because I never was in the adventure department at DC. I was drawing love stories. I used to listen to him with open ears and absorb whatever he could tell me. He was an interesting guy: very intelligent and very, very articulate, and he could expound on stuff for hours and hours. And we used to kid him a lot.

JA: Do you have any personal memories of Gil? ROMITA: I know I went up to his place. He was married twice, and his first wife probably couldn’t stand the hours that he was keeping. He was working too many hours and she wanted to go out to cocktail parties every night, and he wanted to get up early to get to work in the morning, so they split. And then, he had this problem when he remarried and was supporting two families. He was always scrounging to get work. He would jump back and forth between Marvel and DC, trying to get the best deal that he could. He was an amazing guy.

Citizen (Gil) Kane Gil Kane (again as per the 1969 FF Annual)—and what collector Jeffrey Sharpe, who sent this page of Kane pencils, says is a “layout for an unknown issue” of Amazing Spider-Man. Actually, these are pretty close to what Gil called “pencils,” though Stan Lee always thought of them as layouts since the artist didn’t place any black areas (shadows, etc.) for the embellisher to follow. Note, too, that Gil didn’t indicate “gutters” (white space between panels), and that his penciling of Spidey’s webbing was quite different from the way any inker would’ve finished it for Stan Lee’s tastes. But, all that said—it’s a dramatically dynamic page, and shows why Gil Kane’s reputation remains solid and enduring, several years after his untimely passing. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

industry to collapse every other year. I remember when he first started coming in, he used to say, “Where do you think we’re going to be working next year?”

And that was the sort of an underlying sentiment from a lot of us.

We were always waiting for the other shoe to drop, like where are we going to work? We were always looking for some other place to land.

And when it didn’t happen, Gil came up with all sorts of theories on

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Talk about Frank Robbins! Gil was the same kind of guy. Remember he did the double-tiered Starhawks newspaper strip? I don’t remember if he did a Sunday strip; it might have been just a daily, but he did them all in about 2H to 3 days.

That means like 12 dailies in 2H days. It would have taken me 14 days. He would do them from 6:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night and then work on some Marvel stuff. I don’t know when he slept, but for the rest of the week, he drew covers and whatever he could, because he needed a bundle of money, like close to six hundred bucks off the top of his salary, just to break even.

He was always hustling, trying to get work, and was fast enough to do it. I actually learned my lightbox method from him. He used to do his rough drawings on a piece of bond paper, not on tracing paper like I do, and then he would lightbox them. This way, his finished pages were very neat and very clean. You know my quote, the one that I always use about Gil, was that I never inked anything by him that I didn’t learn something from. He affected my approach on how to do certain things. His ability to turn out ideas and layouts was amazing. He didn’t always

put all the details in. A lot of times, his background figures were just heads—circles for head and mittens for hands—I used to have to do a lot of the work. Even when I inked his covers, it was a lot of work.

JA: I’ve seen where you reworked individual pages on stories like “The Death of Gwen Stacy.” I saw those Xeroxes of Gil’s pencils, and then I saw what you did over them. You did a lot of fixing there, a lot of changing.

ROMITA: Stan was always on my case that Gil would make Peter Parker much too tall and skinny. I was always enlarging the Peter Parker and Spider-Man heads to make him look five-ten, instead of six-foot-five. A lot of times, Gil would miss some gesture of expression that Mary Jane should have. He drew beautiful girls, it’s just that they were his girls, and Stan was looking for Mary Jane and Gwen to look the way the readers had come to like them. I was always put in a situation where I was inking him mostly so that I could true it up in Stan’s judgment, true it up to the continuity we had established. It was hard work and there were a lot of times I would grumble while I was inking. Three in the morning, I’m inking a cover of his and grumbling that he slurred over something with a couple of rough lines, and I’d have to figure out what he intended.

You know, the old joke is that we used to say—this is not only for Gil, but for a lot of guys—I’m here working and this guy already cashed the check. [mutual laughter] I was always cutting down Gil Kane’s figures because his people were always six-foot-five. He was like the El Greco of comics. [laughs]

“Valuable Part[s] Of Our Family” JA: The next person is Don Perlin.

ROMITA: Perlin’s a good man. It’s interesting, Don Perlin was looking for work and we did an ACBA sketchbook. It was a blue folder with drawings from everybody in ACBA we could get a drawing from. Don Perlin drew a very good, strong drawing of a GI standing there with a helmet on and everything. Stan Lee said he had met Don at the ACBA meeting, but he had met so many people that he didn’t remember which one he was, and he said, “You know, I was looking through the ACBA artwork here and we ought to get this guy.” I said, “Sure, why not? I think he’s looking for work.” I think Don was working at a box factory then. He was out of comics for a while. He was very happy to hear from us.

I called him up. “Stan saw your GI in the ACBA folder and he wants to know if you want to do some work.” And sure enough, he said, “Sure, let me know.” The next thing I knew, Don was back into comics full-time. It was a very gratifying thing to do, because then he became a very valuable part of our family. He did some good stuff for us.

JA: He was on a lot of different titles.

Perlin Tears Loose!

Jack Russell turns into a terrier—we mean, Werewolf—by night, in, what else, Werewolf by Night #21 (Sept. 1974). Pencils by Don Perlin, inks by Vince Colletta. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

you know he took him away from Marvel. When Shooter started Valiant, he took Don Perlin with him. And that’s a hell of a tribute, because Shooter didn’t agree with a lot of artists, but he certainly agreed with Don Perlin’s take. Perlin was a great professional comic artist.

JA: Even though his layouts at times were a little quiet. Compared to Kirby or Buscema, that is.

ROMITA: Well, everybody doesn’t have that—listen, I feel the same way about my stuff compared to Kirby and Buscema. Everybody can’t be that powerful and explosive on the page. Very few come along like that.

ROMITA: He was very versatile and very sound, so much so that when I was looking for a guy to be my assistant in the apprentice program, he was the one I chose. We worked together for, what, three or four years, I think, and it was great.

JA: Even Gil Kane didn’t start out like that. He had to work at it.

The one thing I will tell you is that he was an absolute Nixon advocate. He said that Nixon was the best President we ever had. And even after he resigned, I think Perlin’s answer was, “If he were running today, I’d vote for him.” That was one thing we disagreed on. [mutual laughter] I never had any other disagreement with him except for that one. Don was a regular good guy. He was a fellow comic artist with all the same scars and all the same good attitudes. He was a good, solid comic artist, always ready to do some work for you.

I always got along great with him. Shooter really trusted him... well,

JA: Dave Cockrum is next.

ROMITA: Right. Kirby had to get into his veins, too. The same with John Buscema. When he finally translated Kirby into his own style, his work took off. I was somewhat the same way.

ROMITA: A solid guy, and let me tell you, I wonder how many guys, given the opportunity that he got to come up with a new line of XMen, could come up with that many great characters. Just think of it.

I mean, just think of Storm and Nightcrawler. The only one he didn’t come up with was Wolverine. But the thing is, just think about what an accomplishment that was. Remember I told you that I didn’t create anything in business? I always felt, outside of a few villains—what I

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call departure stuff—I didn’t create anything. Dave turned a corner and came up with absolutely new territory. Those were the most imaginative departure characters I’ve ever seen. To take the re-launch of The XMen and turn it into what it has become, they can never take that away from him. Cockrum is probably going to be remembered forever because of that, and rightly so. And maybe people should be reminded how much he had to do with it.

JA: What was he like to work with? I know he worked in the office on staff for a few years in the mid- to late ’70s.

ROMITA: Dave could be very vocal. When Marvel did something he didn’t like, he became vocal, and I was always sort-of trying to make peace between people. The company was always ready to collapse on somebody who was a nay-sayer, so Dave was always, I think, on the verge of crossing somebody, crossing a line, because he wanted to get his point across at Marvel. He didn’t think Marvel was doing the right

Man And Mutants Dave Cockrum and his zenith moment: his splash page for Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975). This revival led the way to the ongoing rivalry between SpiderMan and The X-Men for the most popular hero “franchise” in the Marvel empire. Sadly, Dave passed away in November of 2006. Thanks to Glen Cadigan for the photo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

thing all the time, and it was company people against noncompany people, that kind of stuff.

But he was a good man. A good solid pro, and office politics, sometimes, can make some hard feelings. There were people that used to give him trouble and he would give them trouble.

JA: His wife Paty worked in the offices, too.

Paty-Cakes

Gorilla My Dreams John R. was known to draw a hairy critter or two himself, during his younger days—as in this “Greg Knight” filler for Lorna the Jungle Girl #17 (Jan. 1956). Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Dave met his future wife Paty when she worked on staff at Marvel. She pronounces her name with a long “a.” Both spelling and pronunciation came about because someone once accidentally left the second “t” out of her one-time name “Patty.” [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: Did you know that she was a fan? She constantly wrote to Marvel, and used to decorate her envelopes with full-color drawings of the characters. She would have a fan letter inside, asking questions about everybody. I believe Marie was corresponding with her. And then suddenly she shows up and the next thing you know, Marie’s hired her.

Paty was a great character; full of energy and a million ideas, and again, she has no patience with people. If

you’re not a Marvel person, then you didn’t— Did you ever hear about the chessboard she made for Roy Thomas? The pieces were replicas of Marvel characters.

That chessboard was amazing; it shows you the kind of energy and stick-toitiveness that she had. Paty worked for me in the coloring book end of the Marvel Books division for a while, on staff; she, Marie, and then-freelancers like Alan Kupperberg and Win Mortimer.

Those were the people that were keeping us going. She did a lot of work, a lot of coloring, and a lot of posters and pin-ups.

She did a couple of birthday cards for me, too. What a character and a lot of fun.

JA: Tell me about Danny Crespi.

ROMITA: Danny Crespi goes back even before I got there. He was working at the Empire State Building as one of the letterers during the Timely days. And then he wasn’t working with Stan for years, and all of a sudden he was back in the Bullpen again. When I went up there in ’65, Marie Severin had just come on, and she was like a one-person production department. Then they hired John Bedtime Story Verpoorten, and he started doing the This spot in the interview, in which John relates his “stripper” incident, seemed the perfect place—if there is board work; and the next thing I know, such a thing—to run this pair of penciled Romita panels from an unknown story. Thanks to Mike Burkey.

Danny Crespi is there, whom I had [©2007 the respective copyright holders.] already heard about. He was a great guy.

Jim Shooter thought he was special, and defensive, “They better not give me any trouble because we’ve been made him production manager. He once told Dan that he would feel turning out as good a cover as we can, and I hope they’re not going to like he really learned how to be a production manager when he found drive me nuts.” She comes in a suit and she stops—I had all of the last him with his feet up at his desk and not doing any work. Danny four or five covers spread out on a work table. And she comes over couldn’t get out of the work habit, although, later on, I think he and starts talking. They briefed her very well because she said, “You started to take Shooter’s suggestion and didn’t do as much work. know, this cover was a little bit quiet, and we wanted to see Barbie a [mutual laughter] But Shooter told him that you can’t be a manager little bit bigger on the covers.” I explained to her why we did certain if you’re going to do all the work. things. We had a big figure on the first one, and on the second one, we wanted to do a locale, and I’m talking very seriously. All of a sudden, “They Got A Stripper For Me” in the middle of the conversation—I was really impressed with her— and she reached over and turned on the radio. And I hear burlesque ROMITA: [cont’d] Whenever Marvel had a stripper come up, I was music and she starts to take off her clothes. I said, “Well, this girl always embarrassed and mortified for whoever was the subject of the doesn’t work for the toy company.” [mutual laughter] stripper. They did this for Danny’s birthday. I was embarrassed for the poor guy, and his face was beet red, you know? He said later, he JA: Was Virginia in on this? was getting red in the face mostly because she had a terrible body ROMITA: No. They tested Virginia. They thought Virginia was odor. [Jim laughs] I always was mortified for the guy. I would cringe going to say, “No, no way, no.” And she said, “You want to get a inside, saying, “My God, I hope that never happens to me.” stripper? Go ahead. I don’t care.” They were watching her more than JA: Did it? they were watching the stripper.

ROMITA: On my 60th birthday, they did. They got a stripper for me. [chuckles] JA: And how embarrassed were you?

ROMITA: You know, it’s funny. I sort-of got in a shell and I didn’t let anything bother me. I just grinned through the whole thing. She came into the office for me, disguised as a Barbie executive. Someone said, “Listen, somebody from the toy company is coming over,” because we were doing Barbie at the time. I was in charge of the covers, and they wanted to talk to me about the covers. I was very

The funny thing was that one of the things the stripper did was to put matchsticks on her breasts. Paper matches. She moistened them, and stuck them on her nipples. Then she lit both matches with about a half-inch of paper between her and the flames. And everybody was singing “Happy Birthday” and they were starting to sing it slower and slower, [mutual laughter] and the group thought the girl would get burned or something, to see if she would chicken out—and she’s going, “Come on, faster, faster!” [mutual laughter] The rest of the show didn’t go any better, so Tom DeFalco, then editor-in-chief, said no more strippers after that. [more laughter]

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[More] “Top Guys In The Business” JA: Good idea! Okay, Dan Adkins.

ROMITA: The first time I met him, I said I saw his inking on Wally Wood’s stuff and I said, “Wow, that’s good stuff. You’ve really got Wally Wood down pat.” He said, “I’ve got to tell you a story. Wally Wood, remember those conventions? Wally Wood got an award for a cover. Wally goes right down there and accepts the award. And I’m in the aisle, I’m looking at Wally, Wally’s looking at me. Wally knew I did the cover. He didn’t do the cover. [mutual laughter] I can’t believe that Wally Wood accepted that award. Never even said ‘Dan Adkins helped me with it.’ All he had to do was say I helped him with it, he didn’t have to say I did the whole cover.” [more laughter] That’s my first memory of Dan Adkins.

The other terrible memory was—I’d been living in New York my entire life. I was raised in Brooklyn, I worked in Manhattan when I was 14 until I was 65, and I never had any problems with street crime.

Dan Adkins moves from Pennsylvania, and I think on the first weekend, he got mugged. He came into the office—I think he had a black eye, I’m not sure—and I told Dan, “I just don’t understand.”

Maybe it’s because I didn’t stay in Manhattan overnight. You know, late in the evening, I would always get out of town at 5:00. But I used to play ball in Central Park. We used to go to Central Park to get to the card games sometimes, and we never had any trouble. Then an out-of-towner comes in, and within two weeks, he got mugged. I don’t know how to explain it to you. All I could tell you is that, at the time, it was like 50, 55 years I’d been in the city and never had any problems, and how can I explain that to Dan Adkins? He’s thinking this is hell, you know? [chuckles] I felt bad, but my mother had an expression; the dog always bites the rag-picker. And it meant that the least of people are the ones that get the short end of the stick.

But that’s the two memories that I have of Dan. A good, solid inker.

JA: Carmine Infantino came there after he left DC. Did you have any contact with him?

ROMITA: No, the editors dealt with him. I was just glad to have someone like Carmine working there, because I didn’t have to do the cover sketches for him. We had an asset there, saving me a lot of time.

I met Carmine when I was a kid, and he gave me some good pointers. But I was so busy when he came in, or maybe he worked by mail. I don’t think he came in the offices much. He did some great stuff on Star Wars and Spider-Woman. Carmine was one of the top guys in the business.

JA: When Jack Kirby came back in the 1970s, it didn’t seem to go very well for him.

ROMITA: Well, he was working from across the country, and he was his own editor. He was autonomous, and there was an awful lot of push and pull. I remember there was a question of who gets the artwork. Jack didn’t want anybody to get the artwork but himself, and all the guys who inked him were hoping to get a couple of the pages. If they inked ten pages, they’d love to get at least two pages out of it, and he said no, he was going to get all the pages back. And he was never happy if a guy like John Verpoorten inked him. I don’t think he minded Frank Giacoia. He never complained about me either, but I figured that if he didn’t like John Verpoorten’s work, he probably didn’t like mine, either.

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The Adkins Diet: Get Outta New York!

Dan Adkins (from the 1976 Marvel Con program book). Alas, after his mugging in Manhattan, Dapper Dan probably felt like The Sub-Mariner in Tales to Astonish #93 (July 1967). But he’s still working away, all these years later! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: I thought Verpoorten was one of the best inkers he had in the ’70s, on Eternals.

ROMITA: John Verpoorten was one of the best. If he wasn’t a production man, he could have been a very good inker. He was a good inker. He did some great work on the big 1976 Captain America Bi-Centennial. He also inked me on the FF. But Jack was a little bit hard to deal with then. He got the best sweetheart deal I ever heard of in my life. It gave him editorial control, and a huge contract, and he wrote his own stuff. He dictated from California whatever he wanted. And if it didn’t sell, Marvel just had to swallow it.

JA: It’s my feeling, based on things I’ve heard and read, that that caused friction in the office between him and Marvel.

ROMITA: There was friction. Jack had an entourage feeding him with all sorts of “Don’t let them say that about you,” “Don’t let them push you around. You’re Jack Kirby. Are you going to let them say that about you? You’re going to take that from him?” That kind of crap; it was all counterproductive. It’s a shame, because Jack had some good ideas. He was doing all sorts of goofy ideas at the time. Some of it was good, some of it was bad.

I always thought whatever Jack came up with could have been dynamite, if only somebody had harnessed that power. Left unharnessed, without Stan to compensate or to keep him on the tracks, it was very hard for Jack. No matter how brilliant his ideas were, he

Carmine Goes Cosmic Carmine Infantino in a 1999 photo with a Superman cover re-creation.

He had risen to prominence at DC in the 1960s as artist of The Flash, eventually becoming first art director, then publisher. Later, at Marvel, he was noted for his run on Star Wars, the comic book based on the blockbuster movies launched by George Lucas. Case in point: this page from Star Wars #15, scripted by Archie Goodwin and inked by Terry Austin from Carmine’s breakdowns; with thanks to Greg Fischer for the scan. Photo by Joe Petrilak. [Superman art ©2007 DC Comics; Star Wars art ©2007 Lucasfilm.]

Jack Springs Eternal Come 1975-76, Jack Kirby was back—albeit, as it turned out, only for a couple of years—and was trumpeted on the cover of FOOM Magazine #11

by John Byrne and Joe Sinnott, as well as inside. Kirby’s landmark series of that era, in retrospect, is clearly The Eternals, which was inked by John Verpoorten. The cover of #1 (July 1976) is repro’d here from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Kirby? Romita? You Decide!

Okay, we confess: they’re both Romita! At left is a half-page of Kirbyesque panels by John Romita (pencils) and John Verpoorten (inks) from Fantastic Four #103 (Oct. 1970), the first post-Kirby issue; repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, with thanks to Jeff Bailey. Below is an unused 1980 Romita cover sketch for Fantastic Four, symbolizing their 1961 origin, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

would shoot them out like a machine gun instead of building things slowly, and let them take root. It’s a philosophical difference that never reached me. I never had a chance to talk to him about it because he was in California.

JA: Kirby felt like some people in Marvel editorial were undermining him. Do you believe that?

ROMITA: I never saw any evidence of that. There was some grumbling because he had left us in the lurch in 1970, and some

people were figuring, “Why give this guy a fat contract when he left us to die on the vine?” That kind of stuff. Listen, Sol Brodsky left and started a company that competed with us. And when he failed, Stan took him back, and there was a lot of grumbling about that. And Sol was a friend of ours.

JA: Right, and in fact, the same was true of Stan’s brother Larry.

ROMITA: Well, Larry we understood, because he had a chance to become an editorial director, and it’s just bad handling by the Goodmans that screwed that up. But I never held that against Larry. I understood what he was doing. It should have succeeded. It’s too bad that the Goodmans didn’t have the guts to stick it out.

JA: Since they’re a married couple, I’m going to ask you about both of them: Walt and Louise Simonson.

ROMITA: Good people.

Weezie was a sweetheart, and Walt Simonson—the only rap you’ll hear from Virginia about Walt is that he never kept his deadlines.

And it’s funny, when Walt and Virginia met in Philadelphia recently, he sees her and said, “Hiya, Mom.” [mutual chuckling] They hugged each other, and I said,

Thor Point Walt Simonson revitalized Thor as both writer and artist, with some of the most audacious storylines ever, like this one from issue #353. Thanks to Danny Fingeroth. [Thor art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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“Enough of this crap. Where are the pages?”

JA: In the 1980s, Walt revitalized Thor, which had been a dull, boring book for some time.

ROMITA: It was nice stuff; Thor with a beard and everything else. That was good stuff. But I think I’ve told you that the worst problem that people have is, when you succeed for ten years, and you have a boom period is, what do you do next? How do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it from looking like rehash? Rehash is the worst fear of anybody in a long-term business, and when guys like Walt come up with fresh ideas, it’s a godsend. That’s what you try to do. You try to make it a fertile ground for people to exercise their creativity, and hope that something’s going to take root. If you cannot predict it and you cannot plan it, you just hope that you put the right elements together.

Stan always used to say he was blessed. He always seemed to have the right guys come into the company, just when he needed them.

That was the truth. John Buscema started just at the right time for Jack Kirby to leave. It was just a lucky break. I came at the right time when Ditko left. Stan said he’s always thanked his lucky stars.

Walt was one of the first guys who was an art major from a university, and had a degree in Art. Most of the preceding generation were guys who learned how to draw on the kitchen table. I learned how to draw with chalk on the sidewalks of Brooklyn, and Walt was a guy who studied and got a degree. I consider him and the Sienkiewiczes of the time as the new blood. Unfortunately, a lot of the guys in that period disappointed us by getting out of comics. And not only Sienkiewicz, but Barry Smith, who should have had a long career in comics. It’s too bad that he felt like he had to go on to entrepreneurship. It hurt Marvel.

So Walt was a part of that generation, but at least he stayed in comics. I’m very grateful for it. He’s also a good writer, which really is amazing.

JA: Walt can do anything. Louise was an editor and a writer. Did you have much contact with her?

ROMITA: Not really. I was in another department then. John, Jr., dealt with her. She was his editor for a while. Virginia dealt with her.

My department and the editors didn’t get together very often. I had a few editors who used me quite a bit, and a lot of editors who didn’t use me at all. One day, Shooter chewed them all out, saying, “You know, you’ve got an asset over here in this office, and you’re not using him.” They were very selective. Some guys liked what I suggested, and they liked my sketches—other people didn’t.

JA: Frank Miller also came along and made a big impact.

ROMITA: He redefined Daredevil. He brought a lot of guts to it. He made it darker, but he did the same thing that he did years later in Batman; made him “The Dark Knight.” But I didn’t deal with him, or Mike Zeck, either.

JA: Okay, Jim Starlin.

ROMITA: I met Jim Starlin when he came out of the Army. He was a young guy, and Stan wanted to get him some work because he was a GI, “Can you use him? How about letting him do some breakdowns for you on Spider-Man?” I said, “Okay, if he does it in blue pencil.”

Along Came A Starlin Jim Starlin (shown here at a 2005 comics convention in Philadelphia)—and a page he laid out in pencil for John Romita for Amazing Spider-Man #113 (Oct. 1972). Thanks to Gregory Fischer for the scan; photo by Keif Simon & Jim Muraugh. [Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

So we tried him on it; he did about the first 6 or 7 pages of SpiderMan #113. He did a very rough blue pencil breakdown of it, and I tightened up the pencils, and made changes before it was inked.

I didn’t know a lot about him. He was just a nice, cooperative kid at the time, soft-spoken. Who could dream that he’d go on and do the first successful graphic novel, and all those other sensational things; that he’d become an entrepreneur and a pioneer? I’ve seen a lot of guys come in as kids and end up running the shooting match. I remember Bob Harras was just a kid when he first went there. He became editor-in-chief. Shooter was a guy who came in as an assistant editor, and in about five years he was editor-in-chief. Half the guys that I trained in the apprentice program are still working in the business.

“I Am Very Proud… That I Launched So Many Guys’ Careers” JA: That must make you feel really proud.

ROMITA: I am very proud. That’s one of the proudest things of my whole career, the fact that I launched so many guys’ careers. It was a great, great run on that. That’s got to be the most satisfying part of my job, that a lot of guys have said that I gave them some tips that paid off.

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A Model Super-Hero Even as new talent was coming into the business in the 1970s, John R. managed to keep at the top of his game. Here’s his cover for a 5-page comic that came with an Aurora model kit in 1974. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: You critiqued my work several times, but it was your last bit of criticism of my portfolio... I followed what you said, and I got a job.

ROMITA: Now that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard. [mutual chuckling] JA: It’s true. I got that job, and I know it was because of what you told me. So for that, and the other times, I’ll always owe you, John.

ROMITA: I appreciate that. Do you know the story about Charlie Barnett, Joe Sinnott’s protégée? This was right towards the end there when Image was hot, and a lot of guys were not getting work because of their old-fashioned style. I advised Charlie to use a little bit of that Image technique. You know, the crosshatch and the fine lines? He tried and it was terrible, much worse than what he had been doing. I said, “Charlie, oh, God. I gave you the wrong advice. I just told you, just do a little bit, just a little hint of it. Don’t do that much.” [mutual chuckling] He went overboard and it looked terrible. I said, “God, I hope I didn’t cost you any jobs.” [mutual laughter] JA: Well, your advice got me into the business, because it worked for me.

ROMITA: Well, let me tell you, those are the things that keep me going.

JA: There’s a lot of times that I’ve done work and would remember little bits that you told me. More than once, I’d make a line and, “Wait a minute. John Romita said do it the other way.” I’d white it out and fix it because I remembered your advice.

I’m sure I’m not the only one.

ROMITA: I’m still costing you time, huh? [mutual laughter] JA: Right. I’ll send you a bill. [laughs] Frank Brunner is next.

ROMITA: Frank Brunner was a good young artist and very versatile, although he started to get wrapped in the gothic kind of stuff. A lot of period stuff. Brunner was a very clever guy and I don’t know why he drifted away from comics for a while.

“There Were A Lot Of Guys Like That” JA: I think he was unhappy over creator rights.

ROMITA: Oh, yes. I think he might have been. We had a lot of guys

164 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

who demanded some kind of compensation that most of the publishers didn’t believe they had to give. And I guess he was pretty insistent. There were a lot of guys like that. They sued the companies.

I was never one to do that. I always thought that that’s the quickest way out the door.

JA: But didn’t it bother you that you didn’t get any money when your stories were reprinted?

ROMITA: Well, the thing was, it just hadn’t been done, so I just accepted the rules. I never dreamed that we would ever get reprint money. And what’s interesting is that reprint money kicked in right after my first round of artwork of reprints got finished in Marvel Tales. [Jim laughs] I’ll never forget that. I don’t know how much it cost me, but if it had been in earlier by about a year, I would have

made a bundle. [laughs] It always came too late for me.

JA: By the way, do you have an Al Milgrom anecdote for me?

ROMITA: Yes. When I retired, Milgrom made a short statement— Roy Thomas did, and a lot of guys did. And one of the things Milgrom said is that he didn’t know if he’s going to make his deadlines any more, because I lived near the city line and he’s about 20 minutes east of me. A lot of times, he and Mike Esposito would bring me artwork, and I would bring it into the office because I was one of the guys who went into the office every day. And so we always tried to calculate how many thousands of dollars we saved Marvel every year on FedEx bills because the guys would drop stuff off at my house like at 5:30, 6:00 in the morning, and then I would take them into the office. That would give them an extra day and night to work. They didn’t have to send it out the previous day.

Al often brought work over to my house like maybe 7:30, 6:30, just

Strange Interlude A fairly recent photo of Formerly Far-Out Frank Brunner, and a 2006 pencil drawing of Dr. Strange and Clea, plus a certain caterpillar left over from Frank’s 1970s days as the artist who, along with writer Steve Englehart, produced one of the best runs ever on the Sorcerer Supreme. Thanks to Anthony Snyder. [Dr. Strange & Clea TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

before I would get into the car and go into the city. A lot of times, he was on my front steps and we were talking, and he would raise his voice to make a point. I’d say, “Al, I have neighbors who are trying to sleep here.” This used to happen to me like we were on a corner in Times Square, and I tried to make him understand. “Please, my neighbors will kill me.” [laughter]

But Who Watches The Watcher?

The Watcher could doubtless conjure up an image of artist Al Milgrom if he wanted to (but all he’d have to do, actually, is turn to p. 101). This cover for the 1991 trade paperback The Best of What If was inked by Al over pencils by Jim Valentino. Al also had a long run on West Coast Avengers. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Many times Al and Mike would just miss each other. Esposito would drop pages off for me, Milgrom would drop pages off, and it reminded me of a time when Stan Lee lived in Hewlett. It’s a little community about 20 minutes away from here, and when I didn’t go into the city, I used to take my work and deliver it to Stan. You know, three in the morning, four in the morning, whenever it got done, and I would leave it on his doorstep. Often I’d run into Gene Colan. I’d be driving into Stan’s driveway at two and three in the morning, and Colan was coming out. [mutual laughter] We were always joking that one of these days the police were going to stop us. I think the police did stop Colan once and questioned him because he looked like a prowler, [Jim laughs] and this was a fancy neighborhood. He had to prove to them that he was delivering artwork.

Milgrom never had any prowler problems over here, because this neighborhood isn’t as fancy as Stan Lee’s neighborhood, I guess. [mutual laughter]

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Layton It On Heavy Bob Layton co-plotted and drew the story “Deep Trouble!” in Iron Man #218 (May 1987). Script/co-plotting by David Michelinie. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

sort-of brought him along, doing cover sketches. He had a nice knack for it. I thought he had a great future. Then he went to DC, and I don’t know whatever happened to him.

He had a big head of hair, like he hadn’t had a haircut in years. [chuckles] We were always after him to get a haircut. I don’t know if he got a haircut, but Marie Severin did this cartoon—maybe she did it before he got the haircut—of Ed Hannigan running through the Bullpen for his life with a short haircut. He had a big ball of red hair, rolling after him, threatening him.

Speaking of funny stories: one time, Virginia was in a meeting with Jim Shooter and Mike Hobson, who was the vicepresident of comic publishing at Marvel. Virginia got one of those trick pens, the kind that you splash ink on people and then it disappears. She brought it into the meeting, and she was in a devilish mood. Before they started the discussion, she took the pen, shook it like she’s trying to get it to work. And blue ink goes all over the vice-president’s white shirt. Virginia said his jaw dropped. He didn’t know what the hell to make of it. All he could say was, “You’re fired.” [mutual laughter] Virginia was laughing very hard because she knew that, in a few seconds, it was going to disappear. And she came over and said, “You know, I’m tired of all this chit-chat. Let me get out of here.” It was hysterical because she was usually all-business and no clowning. I tell you, the whole room erupted in laughter.

Hobson didn’t know what to say, just, “What the hell did you do that for? You’re fired!” [more mutual laughter] Did you know Hobson’s mother was a great novelist? His mother was Lora Z. Hobson, who wrote Gentleman’s Agreement. He was our vice-president for about eight or nine years. A nice man.

JA: How about Bob Layton?

ROMITA: Because he was a friend of John, Jr.’s, and one of Shooter’s buddies, I spoke to him more often, but not that much. He was really working directly for Shooter, and didn’t have to answer very much to anybody else.

There was that period in the early, mid’80s when I was doing special projects, and children’s books, and coloring books. So I was out of the mainstream then. When I got back in, I was doing so much toy design, merchandising, and advertising stuff that I really needed to have four hands and two heads to work with everybody. They were always throwing me to the merchandising and licensing department. I was looking for variety, and I got it. It kept me out of the comic mainstream for quite a while.

JA: One guy who did some really nice covers was Ed Hannigan.

ROMITA: Hannigan was one of my projects. He was doing art corrections, and I

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Hair Today…

Ed Hannigan (at right) in the Marie Severin cartoon referred to above. [©2007 Marie Severin.]

JA: Did you know Bob McLeod?

ROMITA: A good, solid inker. He was one of the newer guys, but I didn’t have a lot to do with him. I actually inked a couple of his covers.

JA: Did you get to know Bill Sienkiewicz?

ROMITA: I did. We’ve been very cordial whenever we meet. He used to come up to the office quite a bit. At first, I thought he was just a Neal Adams clone, but then he changed his style. He was one of the guys that I mentioned from the ’80s, who didn’t really stay with comics. We were sort-of counting on him, and he had a following. But though he did comics at various times, he didn’t stay as a regular as some others did.

JA: In Sienkiewicz’s case, when he changed, I thought that was a pretty jarring change in style. And for the better.

ROMITA: He decided he wanted to be more himself than anybody

Every McLeod Has A Silver Lining Bob McLeod’s art from New Mutants Annual #1 (1984). Script by Chris Claremont. Bob now also edits the TwoMorrows magazine Rough Stuff.

Thanks to Bob for the art. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

else. He’s a very original thinker, and a very clever stylist. Some of his paintings were spectacularly noticeable. Everybody took great notice of his daring stuff. It was a big thing when people like Bill left. It put our lineup in the dumps for a while. I used to tell them I wished they would do some steady work, even while they were doing their own entrepreneur stuff.

JA: Well, they were trying to get out of this ghetto, or this sweatshop, or whatever they thought it was.

ROMITA: Maybe. Maybe it was the deadlines, I’m not sure. A lot of them were modern thinkers, and they were thinking that we artists were being taken advantage of. In that period, the guys were saying that they should get more money, more residuals, and more reprint money. And so there was a lot of discomfort between management and some of the talent, and I was sort-of caught in between.

JA: Did you feel like they were right?

Throwing In The Kitchen Sienkiewicz Bill Sienkiewicz’s pencil art to the cover of Fantastic Four #226 (Jan. 1981).

Thanks to Bob McLeod. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: Of course they were right. Nobody ever gets paid enough for all the effort you put into doing comics. The thing with me was, I didn’t expect it, and these guys said, “Why shouldn’t we expect it?” I was so used to the old way, that we didn’t get our artwork back and we didn’t get a lot of money, and when there were slumps, we’re going to get rates cut. I was old-school and didn’t expect anything better. These guys didn’t want to accept it. When Gerry Conway got mad, he just got tired of saying, “Okay, the checks weren’t ready,” or

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 167

“There was no reprint money.” If you created a character, it didn’t mean a thing, you know? So they got very short with the company, and it was a problem. A lot of guys were in that frame of mind for about five or six years. I remember that they were always grumbling, and always threatening to walk.

“We Got A Lot Of Benefits From The Guys Who Spoke Up” JA: And in your case, you did all your creating on staff, so you couldn’t say anything anyway.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

ROMITA: Well, it didn’t do much good. Marv Wolfman created Blade and wanted to have credit for that. I don’t blame him, but I never thought like that. I bought into the idea that if you worked for a chemical company and you create a cure for cancer, the company owns it. So I was not up to speed on that stuff. I was just a traditionalist, so I didn’t understand the intensity of their disagreement. They used to really attack management all the time. Looking back, I don’t blame them. I think they were right, and actually, we got a lot of benefits from the guys who spoke up—like Neal Adams and all the rest of them. They gave us some higher rates and some more respect. I can’t argue with them.

They were right.

Chris Claremont, who took over the “new X-Men” with their second revived issue, propelled them to new heights, aided by artists Dave Cockrum and then John Byrne.

No wonder Stan Lee called him “Cheerful Chris Claremont”! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: I once filled in when he couldn’t make one of his classes at the School of Visual Arts. Klaus is another giant in the industry. He’s one of the best there ever was in the business: capable, amiable, and good to work with. Klaus and John, Jr., made a great team on The Punisher.

JA: Fred Kida.

ROMITA: Kida worked with me the last couple of years of my run on the Spider-Man strip. I did four years, and the last couple of years he was a savior for me, because I really got behind because of my other work. He was a godsend because he could ink in my style.

Between Kida and John Verpoorten, they could produce a daily that you wouldn’t know wasn’t mine, though I always did the faces. The least I ever did was the faces if I didn’t have any time. John Prentice started that procedure—or maybe Alex Raymond before him—that when somebody ghosted for them, they insisted on doing the faces.

Which is a very clever idea, because the rest of the stuff, the folds and the hands and everything, you can match, but everybody does their faces in a special way.

For those two years, Kida would sometimes pencil the whole week of dailies for me, and I would ink the faces. And sometimes I would

JA: We haven’t talked about Chris Claremont much.

ROMITA: I always kidded him was that he used to write very, very detailed plots. I didn’t do much with him, but I did do a 3-page filler on the origin of Storm. His script was enough for 5 or 6 pages, and I had to cram it into three. And half the panels were filled with copy. I remember kidding him, “If you want to write a novel, write a novel.

Next time, let’s do one page of copy, and another page of art.” [laughs] I was always needling him a little bit.

But we’ve had a good relationship throughout the years. We get along great, and he is a giant talent. Talk about bringing a group of characters to life for the fans as he did with X-Men! We talked extensively about Dave Cockrum, and how I thought it was amazing how much he brought to the table with that line of characters. Conversely, Chris Claremont is owed a great debt of gratitude, too, because he was very instrumental in the success of the new X-Men. His work still is resonating through that whole history.

JA: Let’s move on to Mark Bagley.

ROMITA: You know the connection with Mark and me. Bagley was the contest winner of the treasury-sized How to Draw Marvel Comics. I was the judge, and I chose him. Every time we see each other, he treats me like I gave him his career. The truth is, I just picked him out of a group of guys as the best of the group, and I didn’t expect him to be as prolific and as long-lasting as he has been. At the time, he was practically an amateur, but he learned the ropes very quickly, and he sure has had a great run.

JA: Let’s talk about Klaus Janson.

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Fangs For The Memories!

The cover of Amazing Spider-Man #363 (June 1992) was penciled by Mark Bagley and inked by Randy Emberlin. Thanks to Danny Fingeroth for the scan of the original art. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

It’s Miller/Janson Time!

Frank Miller penciled and Klaus Janson inked this page from Daredevil #159 (July 1979). Script by Roger McKenzie. Thanks to Bob McLeod. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Man” And “Boy,” Fred Kida Was The Greatest As John says, some of the best “Airboy” stories ever were drawn by Fred Kida, as per this 1946 page of the young aviator and his recurring foe Misery; repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, which appeared in the 1970s Who’s Who of American Comic Books, edited by Jerry G. Bails & Hames Ware. [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

After John resigned from the Spider-Man newspaper strip, Kida had a memorable run. Below is the daily from June 23, 1982, featuring that ultra-villainess, Muffy! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Alex In Spidey-Land Alex Saviuk, and his pencils for the Spider-Man strip for March 6, 2005; courtesy of Alex.

[Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ink the Spider-Man figures. Sometimes I would pencil and run out of time, and Frank Giacoia would disappoint me, so Fred would ink it for me. He could pencil and ink in my style. Let me tell you, Fred Kida may have been one of the most underrated or forgotten great artists in the business. If anybody should have a book written about them, it should be Fred Kida.

When you look back at his “Airboy” work, you can see that he was one of the true pioneers in the business. What a talent he was. He was absolutely one of the most versatile guys I’ve ever seen.

Remember his Ringo Kid stuff? He could do Westerns, war... anything you wanted.

He was a very modest, quiet guy. We used to have nice conversa-

tions. He and his wife Ellie are the sweetest people. One day, Fred and Ellie came over to deliver some stuff, and they found me in the middle of me scolding my little beagle because he had chewed up one of our sofa pillows. The stuffing was all over the place, and we were mad as hell. So they came in and asked, “What’s happened?” We told them that this pup had just destroyed a piece of our cushion. Well, the next time they came, Fred came in with the most beautiful pencil drawing of a beagle, sort-of crouched and down, and sheepishly being scolded, with a little look of guilt. It’s one of my prized possessions.

Sunday In The Big City The Spider-Man strip for Sunday, March 25, 2007. Pencils by Alex Saviuk, inks by Jim Amash, standing in for Joe Sinnott. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

170 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

JA: Alex Saviuk is next.

ROMITA: Alex was a classmate of my son Victor. He used to come here to my studios when he was 15 or 16. He asked me questions, and was a real fan. By the way, his brother was my chiropractor.

A few guys used to come over. Tom DeFalco used to come over when he was a kid, too, and Tom always tells the story about the time he visited, when we got a new TV delivered. He had to help me put it on the table. He said that he got drafted for work just by visiting, to see one of his favorite artists.

Anyway, Saviuk used to just question everything, and he absorbed information like a sponge. Then, like 7 or 8 years later, he’s working for DC and he was amazing.

Jim “Straight” Shooter

JA: Of course, you know I’ve been inking him on the Spider-Man newspaper strip.

Jim Shooter, who had been a comics writer (originally for Superman) since he was a young teenager in 1964, posed like other staffers for a set of photos to be sold by Marvel—probably no more than a year or so before he became editor-in-chief. Thanks to R. Dewey Cassell. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ROMITA: I think it’s wonderful for him to have that gig, especially in a market where a lot of guys are not getting steady work. I’m very proud and happy for him. And for you, too.

By the way, are you getting the Sundays in threes, or do you get them one at a time?

JA: I get two at a time.

ROMITA: When I was doing them, I had to do three at a time. It was always a killer, because I would get behind on the dailies then.

JA: I’ve got to tell you something. It felt odd when I talked to you yesterday. We talked for a few minutes, and there I was, inking straight lines on Spider-Man backgrounds, while I’m talking to the artist who started on the strip. [mutual laughter] ROMITA: Well, it’s interesting, because I never thought that strip would last. I gave it three or four years. Shows you what I know.

JA: [laughs] Oh, well. Nobody expected you to be Nostradamus, John.

ROMITA: [laughs] No, nobody had to worry about my judgment.

“I Think [Jim] Shooter Was The Most Capable Of Keeping All Those Balls In The Air” JA: When Jim Shooter came in, he became an assistant editor and then he became an editor, then an editor-in-chief. That’s a pretty quick rise.

ROMITA: It was, which was interesting, because of all the guys that had filled in for Stan after he left, from Roy Thomas to Marv Wolfman to Len Wein and Archie Goodwin... even Gerry Conway for a couple of weeks... [chuckles] I think Shooter was the most capable of keeping all those balls in the air. He could juggle a lot of things, and he impressed Stan with his confidence. I know Len Wein and Marv Wolfman were confident, but for some reason, they could not do both ends of the battle. They couldn’t do the editorial battle, and then do the front-office battle. Shooter managed that very well, and Stan was very impressed with Shooter’s ability to handle big-time trouble.

JA: But he had a reputation for being difficult.

ROMITA: For the first couple of years he was there, it was great for us. I don’t know how many people tell you that, but he tried to get respect for the creative people that they had never gotten. There was a long period of time at Marvel when the production department used to actually battle the editorial department. It would also be front office against editorial. There were so many factions and so much tension, that it was impossible to get things done. Stan used to absolutely close his eyes to all of it. He didn’t want to hear anything, and he used to tell people, “Just do your job and don’t come complaining to me.” But when Stan wasn’t there, all of those factions became a real liability to anybody who was editor-in-chief.

Archie Goodwin was so intent on the editorial content that he did not bother with squabbles between personalities, so we had a lot of tension. What Shooter did was to give the editorial department stature. He started to treat us like first-class citizens: “You guys are creating the work; you’re the important guys here. You’re going to go first class.” When we went to conventions, we went first-class. We lived in the best hotels, we went to the best conventions. He really made Marvel shell out, because he had the weapon of big sales.

Remember Secret Wars and all of that stuff? He had such big sales that they were starting to say, “Okay, whatever you want, Jim. We’ll give you whatever you want.” So he had the upper hand for about a couple of years, and things were wonderful and they treated us very well.

He also made Virginia the traffic manager, and she got us on schedule for the first time in the history of Marvel Comics; they had never been on schedule. We used to pay more late penalties than we had profits on some books. One of the biggest bugaboos was being late all the time, and Stan was responsible for that, and other editors— like Archie Goodwin—wanted a quality product. He didn’t care if it was late.

Shooter, instead of riding the wave and keeping us ahead of schedule, suddenly changed personality, thinking, “Now I can do all the things I want to do.” Instead of just turning out the best comics that we could do and get them out on time, he now decided he was going to be as finicky as Stan Lee. He started holding up books, rewriting entire books, and it became a real nightmare. It snowballed to the point where everybody was unhappy.

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It’s A Long Way From Rodeo Drive A Romita page from a Spider-Man promotional comic, The Great Rodeo Robbery, obviously for a firm called Foley’s. Details uncertain. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

172 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

JA: People were leaving the company.

ROMITA: Writers were leaving because he was rewriting their stuff, and then he also started making demands on artists that were unnatural. They all had to work by a formula. He wanted us all to design our stuff the way he designed his stuff. You know, I used to beg artists to do a scene-setter, a panel where you would set the scene. You need a scene-setter to show the reader where you are. Well, Shooter believed in a scene-setter on every page, and it was starting to become very oppressive for a lot of artists. I guess some of them didn’t want to hear about scene-setters and formula, and “clarity of location.”

For instance, Gene Colan could do a series of panels where everything was clearly shown. But that’s not Colan. He wants to look down the barrel of a gun, he wants to look up from the sewer. He wanted variety in every shot, just like I did. I wasn’t doing regular comics then, so I wasn’t hurt that much, but I had trouble with the covers because it was very hard to please Shooter.

He went through this period where he was starting to take the fun out of doing the work. He was criticizing and sometimes embarrassing people.

I think he just had this vision. It was going to be the Shooterverse, I guess. Stan Lee had his universe and we did the New Universe... it was going to be the Jim Shooter Universe.

JA: Which was a disaster.

ROMITA: See, that’s another thing. I think it could have been okay, if he had approached it the way I always advised everybody who was trying new projects: don’t do too much. Do a couple of books, let them get really worked out. Get the mechanism worked out and get the characters rolling, and then introduce the third and then the fourth book. His philosophy was, “No, you’ve got to introduce a whole block of books, 7 or 8 books with new characters.” I said, “There’s nobody in this company who is going to be able to drop what they’re doing and do your New Universe. You’re going to have to use second-line artists.” He said, “No, no, no.

We’ll work it out.” And I, as a practical thing, told him right to his face, “Jim, this is not going to work.”

Star Bright, Star Brand…

And the first day he had us all at an editorial Maybe the “New Universe” was a less than stellar hit two decades ago, but today its meeting at the King George Hotel, or George the Fifth flagship hero Star Brand is making something of a comeback, and Marvel has even issued a Hotel—whatever it was—I told him. I said, “Jim, this is trade paperback titled Star Brand Classic. Above is the splash from Star Brand #1 (Oct. too much. You’re doing too many books at one time.”

1986). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] But he ignored me. All I ever did was give him advice. I never fought him on it. I just told him, “Here’s what I new line. He had John believing that this was going to be the biggestthink.” And if I were part of the editorial and the art team on those selling book at Marvel. It laid an egg, and John never quite made up books, I would have just quit. You could never create a whole new for all the money and prestige he lost on X-Men. It was a sad thing line of books without hurting our regular books, and without keeping because, from three good years, he went into three bad years, and it the quality down on the new books. He didn’t have enough of a was very hard on him. It was very hard on all of us. supply of artists and writers to do it. He tried to use the same people to do all the books, and it was murder. And it failed.

JA: So there was a big relief when Shooter was let go.

JA: I ran a comic book shop at the time. I couldn’t give those books away.

ROMITA: No matter how we tried, he would not listen. We tried to tell him that they were not working, but he was crazy about it. John, Jr. was doing X-Men and Shooter conned him into leaving that book and doing Starbrand, which was going to be the main book in his

ROMITA: It was almost like it was either that, or most of the staff was going to leave. Yes, it was a very big relief. It was very traumatic.

The whole thing was hard to take. I don’t like that kind of confrontation. He just didn’t cower. He was willing to go to war with everybody, and it just backfired on him. It’s ironic that he went to another company, which was successful, and then they threw him out anyway. So strange.

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4000 Words Worth Of Pictures Tom DeFalco (photo) has had a life beyond the editorial chair as a writer. He even plotted, for Stan Lee to script, the 1997 SpiderMan/Kingpin: To the Death, featuring Spidey and Daredevil teaming up against the corpulent crime lord. That graphic novel was penciled by John Romita and inked by Dan Greene. This page is repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Jerry K. Boyd. It lacks dialogue balloons because they were either added electronically or on an overlay. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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“A Good Time In Some Ways” JA: Then Tom DeFalco took over. What was it like working with him?

ROMITA: Tom was a guy who had come up the ropes at Marvel. He had his own idiosyncrasies, and it’s funny—the attitude of the department—there was a lot of push and pull, a lot of people trying to get their own projects advanced. Overall, it was a tug-of-war for which books would get in, and which books would not. It was a good time in some ways, but it was a repairing time after Shooter, and it had its own problems, too.

At that time, Jim, you’ve got to figure, we’ve had great success and some great years. In the down years, it’s a scramble, because how do you recapture it? There’s no guarantee you’re ever going to be able to recapture the good years. And when you’re having bad years, there’s all sorts of doubts about a new guy. If they’re proven wrong, we’d say, “Oh, my God. I thought he was going to be the answer and he wasn’t.” You know, you can’t tell.

trash. We want to get into movies and television.” There was one conglomerate—I think it was Cadence—that decided merchandising was going to outstrip all of the comic industry income, and they decided that they were going to sell jackets, pajamas, socks, and boots, and everything else. And they were going to sell so well all over the world that they wouldn’t even need comic books any more. If they had put as much money into comics as they put into that merchandising venture, we would have had a golden age. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the garbage that they produced was terrible. It was awful clothing, using awful materials; it was just bad. They didn’t know what they were doing.

JA: The worst was the toilet paper. They came out with SpiderMan and Hulk toilet paper.

ROMITA: As a novelty, and if it was funny enough, it’s not a bad idea. Marie Severin said, “Toilet paper wouldn’t be a bad idea if it had

JA: But you got along with DeFalco pretty well.

ROMITA: He was a kid who once came to my house as a fan. You know, it’s not like I had to get along with anybody. It was that I had known some of these guys when they were teenagers. Some of them came in as assistant editors. Chris Claremont came in as a college intern, watching us work when he was like 19 or 20. So here’s a guy who’s now a multimillionaire, writing X-Men, and I remember him when he was an intern. [mutual chuckling] It was not hard for me to get along with people. People used to treat me with respect, and I was very grateful that they didn’t turn on me in bad times.

Tom DeFalco didn’t think that my going to conventions was very good for Marvel, because I would be out of the office for a few days.

If I went to the San Diego Con, I would spend another couple of days there, on vacation. So he was sort-of down on the idea, saying, “It’s not really getting any kind of money for Marvel. It doesn’t help us get the books out if the art director’s out of the office.” And I’d take Virginia along, who was the production manager. Tom said that we hurt their daily production by being away for a few days, but that was the only struggle we had between us. He didn’t see the benefit of my meeting the fans. I thought it was good for the company, but he didn’t believe it.

JA: While he was in charge, Marvel went public.

ROMITA: All of those conglomerates that took us over during that period took a piece out of us. [laughs] JA: Going public seemed to hurt the company.

ROMITA: Well, it could have been good. I think it depended on who’s in charge. We got too many conglomerate businessmen who saw the bottom line, but didn’t see the future too well. There was a period when people thought, “Oh, the comics were not that important. As long as we’ve got the characters, we’re okay.” In fact, Ron Perleman and others made public statements that they didn’t even need the comics any more, that the comics were the least part of their holdings now.

JA: That must have made you feel good.

ROMITA: [chuckles] Well, we were ready to jump ship, I’ll tell you that. It was not a good time. It was demoralizing. It was a very bad time because their businessman’s approach was that there’s some value in Marvel, but their impression of what was valuable was different than ours. We were thinking that we were building characters that could be a great future hedge against anything. They’re thinking, “We don’t want to spend too much money on comics. After all, comics are

Li’l Spidey Strikes Again!

A Spidey cartoon by Romita—but Lord only knows what the occasion was!

Thanks to Mike Burkey. [Spider-Man TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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a lot of laughs. You can tell a comic book story on toilet paper.” She thought we needed to do panels and gags with our characters like Brand Echh and Crazy. She said that would sell. I would agree the stories didn’t go anywhere. [laughs] JA: As it turned out, the stories that were on the toilet paper were eventually used for the proper thing, [mutual laughter] in my opinion.

ROMITA: Well, that’s another thing. If you’re going to try a new venture, that’s not the time to knock it out with second-hand talent. That’s the time to get your best stuff out. In fact, when they did the animated shows, they didn’t really demand quality. They just accepted whatever the animated shows were, and it used to drive me crazy, so we had this philosophical difference. The front office said, “Whatever we get on the television screen or in the movies is okay, no matter how bad it is, as long as we’re there.” I used to say, “I would rather not have it on the screen if it’s not good.” Of course, they ignored me and they went on with their own stuff. Sometimes they proved me wrong, but mostly, in the long run, I was proven right.

JA: You were. Because if it was aimed at the fans, they were getting a bad product.

ROMITA: The contrary point that I kept getting thrown at me was that a lot of people said that they’d never heard of Marvel Comics until they saw the Spider-Man cartoons—even the cheap initial thing in the ’60s—not Hanna-Barbera stuff. The first ones [done by the Grantray-Lawrence Studios] where they had the Don Heck and Kirby panels talking. I wanted to cringe when they came out, but they pointed to all the people that said, “You know something? That was the best thing that ever happened. That’s where I found out about Marvel.”

They said, “You see? We were right.”

JA: Bob Harras took over from DeFalco. Was there a difference between how Harras and DeFalco ran the company?

All Artists Are Not Alike!

ROMITA: A little bit. Harras had his own clique of Maybe John kept his spirits up through the bad times by maintaining his sense of humor. editors who worked together. It was a little cliquish, but I Here he posed for a parody of a TV Bayer aspirin commercial for Crazy Magazine #5 (July tried to ignore the editorial musical chairs. It always 1974). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] disturbed me, because every time a new man took over, like when Bob Budiansky was an editor-in-chief for a Everybody was trying to avoid jumping ship, and trying to keep a while, it was run a certain way. Then Bob Harras did it, and then they foothold in for their own security. It was a very bad time. I don’t had five editor-in-chiefs for a while, remember? I felt like I just had to think there was anybody making sound decisions at the time. live through them. I did not want to get into a confrontation, because my alternative was, “I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t take it.”

JA: And I know it was time for you to go.

JA: Then Marvel went bankrupt, and that’s about the time you left.

ROMITA: I had wanted to retire when I was 65. I waited until I was 66.

JA: I remember talking to you on the day of the bankruptcy announcement.

ROMITA: Yeah, it was terrible.

JA: I didn’t know what was going to happen to the work I was getting. There was a Ditko project I was supposed to ink, and because editors were let go, that project ended up going to someone else. You tried to save that project for me. It didn’t work out.

ROMITA: There was no reasoning with people in those days.

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ROMITA: I was ready. [laughs] JA: I could tell. You told me that day not to say anything, but you’d had enough, and you were going to leave.

ROMITA: Yeah, I had told everybody. They didn’t believe me. I told George Roussos that after I turn 65, I’m going to retire and he said, “Nah, you’re never going to retire. Why would you retire? You’re having fun here.” I said, “Well, it’s not hard work, but I could be sitting at home, practicing my guitar and my piano-playing, and reading the books that I’ve stored up for 30 years. I want to catch up on that reading.” And he pooh-poohed it: “Ah, you’re never going to retire.” George died while he was still working at Marvel. He was in his middle 80s and he said, “You’re 63. You’re not going to retire.” I fooled him. When I went in and told him I was leaving, his jaw dropped.

Split Decision When Marvel was lurching toward bankruptcy in the ’90s, John may well have been as divided as this drawing of Peter/Spidey.

Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Aaron Sultan. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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“The Guys Who Founded Image Comics” JA: I’d like to back up a bit, if you don’t mind. Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and Rob Liefeld were among the guys who founded Image Comics. Did you ever have much to do with them?

ROMITA: The first time I met Jim Lee... the only place that we had room for him was in my office. He spent a week or two working in my office. Very quiet and very workmanlike, and impressive. When he first came in, he was already a polished artist. His stuff was really popping off the page. It was nice that we had a chance to talk for days on end, even though we were both busy. It was nice to be there at the inception of a great talent.

Spider-Man With The GooGoo-Googly Eyes (Above:) Todd McFarlane, on the left, with Jim Salicrup, the editor of Todd’s hugely successful run on the early-1990s title Spider-Man, at a New York comics convention a couple of years back. Photo by Keif Simon & Jim Murtaugh. (Right:) Todd’s innovative page breakdowns—and humongous Spidey eye-slits—from Spider-Man #13 (Aug. 1991), which he wrote, drew, and even lettered. [Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

As for McFarlane, I remember his DC work, which I thought was good, solid art, though he was doing his DC stuff strictly by the book. It looked like DC stuff. He was always inventive, and when he started penciling for us, I was very upset with the way he drew The [Incredible] Hulk. I tried not to impose my own tastes on anybody. Well, part of it was because he was inking it, too, and I don’t think he had done that at DC.

Bob Harras was immediately taken with him, just as Jim Salicrup was a few months later. They were absolutely ga-ga over the guy, and I said, “Bob, I don’t like to complain, and you know I never make any demands.” My style was not to make any demands. “But I really don’t like the way this guy does The Hulk, especially the way he inks it.” McFarlane was inking with a very fine line, which was very counterproductive when drawing a big, massive character. He also drew the Hulk with very strange, scrunched-up features, and I really hated it. [mutual chuckling] I advised that Bob find another character for McFarlane to work on. And can you believe it? That’s the only time any editor really took my advice! [Jim laughs] You want to know something? I feel responsible for him getting the shot at Spider-Man. If we had left him on The Hulk, two things would have happened. Either he would have played himself out of the lineup, or he would have made the Hulk one of our biggest characters.

And it wouldn’t have bothered me at all, because I didn’t like what he did with Spider-Man, either. [mutual laughter] Occasionally, he was very respectful and very conscious of my version of Spider-Man. He once told me, “I know I can’t follow in your footsteps. There’s no way I can draw Spider-Man the way you do. I have to do it my own way.” I said, “You don’t have to do my way, but at least make him a little bit closer to what Spider-Man looks like, instead of creating a whole new measurement on it.” To me, Spider-Man looked too tall and strung out.

JA: He also changed the way the eyes were shaped.

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ROMITA: The eyes and the mask. I said, “I’m not asking you to draw like me. I mean, that’s stupid and nobody should do that. “ Ross Andru didn’t draw like me, and I had no objections to Ross Andru.

And Mark Bagley never drew like me, either. He knew I wasn’t asking him to draw like me. I said, “Nobody has to draw like somebody else.

But for God’s sakes, make him look more like Spider-Man. Make it look like there’s a man in there instead of a rubber doll.”

He said, “I’m going to try and get closer to the look of SpiderMan. As long as I don’t have to do everything else. In other words, as long as you allow me to do all the other stuff I do.” I said, “I don’t care what kind of panels you use. You can use long, skinny panels, you can use short, fat panels; I don’t care.” But I didn’t like the way he drew Spider-Man, and I certainly didn’t like the way he drew Mary Jane Watson. I know he tried, but [chuckles] he never succeeded. My problem was that I assumed that the public was going to react and say, “No, we don’t like this guy. He doesn’t do Spider-Man the way we like.” When the public turned out to love it, I was absolutely baffled.

I expected them to come in and run him out on a rail. [Jim laughs] And when they didn’t, I told Salicrup, “You know, you’re probably going to have to face the music later down the line.” But it shows you what I know. There’s a parallel to what happened with Barry Smith ten years earlier. I was sure Barry Smith was never going to make the grade, and I was 100% wrong. I certainly was wrong about McFarlane, because he turned Spider-Man into an international

event, and you can’t argue with his success. The only thing I can argue with is that I didn’t like what he did with the look of the character, but I never made a stink about it, and my biggest regret is that I got him off The Hulk. [mutual laughter] I hope when he reads this, that he takes it with good humor. I certainly mean nothing negative toward him.

generation of artists. Well, you know my judgment.

JA: Did you ever deal with Liefeld?

ROMITA: It’s not a case of favorites. The hardest guy I ever had to ink was Gene Colan. I did have some trouble with some guys in the romance department. The guy that I loved to ink was John Buscema, because he made shapes the way I would have. If I could have, that’s the way I would have drawn shapes. Of course, it was always a joy to ink Kirby. Working on Kirby was like asking me to touch up Michelangelo and Leonardo’s stuff. The Daredevil #13 cover—that was a cover I would have inked for nothing. That was more fun than making money.

ROMITA: Only peripherally. Liefeld was a guy who had a million great names for characters, mostly names. But I swear, I don’t know how anybody accepted his Captain America. He looked like he was a ballet dancer with the pointy toes stuck in the ground. He’s a nice kid, and he made more money in two years than I made in 10, 20, maybe. I can’t argue with his success. All I know is that I didn’t think much of the way he interpreted the characters. Of the three guys, I think Jim Lee was a legitimate artist who could carry forth our characters. He did a pretty good version of X-Men. But the other two guys—their success baffled me. [mutual laughter] They were very clever. They were ingenious and very cocky, and they had the fans behind them. I used to ask fans, “Do you really like this?” And they’d say, “Well, we know it’s not great, but we love these guys.” They had the Robin Hood thing going for them. These were the guys who stood up to Marvel. I have a philosophy. It’s a little bit unpleasant. [smiles] My philosophy is that guys like that who succeed are succeeding socially, because the fans were behind them in a social way. It had nothing to do with the stories, it had nothing to do with the artwork. It was a social event, and they were just given a blank check for about ten years. No matter what kind of unsuccessful attempts they made at characterization and stories, the fans stuck by them, fully aware that nothing was happening. It was a phenomenon.

It had nothing to do with any real great creations. I know Spawn has had a long run, and that Liefeld had some great successes, and that Jim Lee has been a sensationally successful guy, but the whole thing is a phenomenon. It’s a quirk, and I don’t know if they’ve built anything lasting. I don’t know where they stand now. What’s your take on what Image does now?

“It’s Not A Case Of Favorites” JA: I do. [mutual chuckling] Who were your favorite and least favorite people to ink?

JA: Don’t say that. Stan may ask for a refund.

ROMITA: I didn’t say it at the time, but I’d say it now. I’ve already cashed the check.

JA: Statute of limitations, John. [mutual laughter] ROMITA: I didn’t mind inking Don Heck. When Don Heck was really penciling, he was a good, stylish guy to ink. Every time I inked Gil Kane, I learned something. He didn’t do things my way, but I did admire some of his shapes, and certainly his compositions. He was a great cinematographer. It was hard working on his stuff because he didn’t always finish his background figures. I always had to do a lot of work for him, but I learned a tremendous amount about shapes from Gil and Fred Kida. When I inked Fred Kida, I felt like I was inking myself. In fact, it was the way I would like to do it, too.

JA: Was there anybody you wish you had inked?

ROMITA: I wish I had a chance to ink guys like Wally Wood. I did ink Frank Robbins on a couple of covers, but it wasn’t the real Frank

JA: McFarlane, of course, has built something lasting, because he has that toy company.

ROMITA: Yes, that’s the thing that lasts, I know.

JA: Spawn still comes out, but he doesn’t draw it.

ROMITA: I know that, but he’s giving people work. That’s good. Erik Larsen experienced a lot of growth in that period, too, and did some big, important stuff. His run on Spider-Man was better than McFarlane’s, I think. His success is mostly because he’s a good entrepreneur. I don’t know if Savage Dragon was a great character, but he certainly has made it work. I can’t argue with his success.

Guys like Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, and Marc Silvestri were legitimate artists.

Marc Silvestri did some wonderful XMen stuff. They all deserve their success. They worked hard. They’re very clever guys, and they understand marketing. Certainly different than my

Four On The Floor A comely quartet at a 2006 comics convention. (L. to r.:) Virginia & John Romita, Vanguard publisher J. David Spurlock, artist/writer Jim Steranko. Photo by Keif Simon & Jim Murtaugh.

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The Green Goblin Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out! “Every time I inked Gil Kane, I learned something.” We’re not sure what John learned on this final page from Amazing Spider-Man #96, but readers were about to learn—in the very next issue—that a two-part super-hero dealing with drugs could have a considerable impact.

Repro’d from the original art, courtesy of Aaron Sultan. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

180 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

Robbins. It was the “Marvel” Frank Robbins. I wish I could have inked Johnny Hazard just once. I enjoyed working with Sergio Aragonés, believe it or not. I did a 3-page or 4-page sequence. I think we all did a couple of pages in it. That was fun.

JA: I don’t know if you know much about this person, but just in case you happened to run into her sometime...

Virginia Romita. Have you ever heard of her?

ROMITA: I don’t know anything about her at all! I’ve known Virginia since she was about 9 years old. When I was 11 and she was 9, I moved into her neighborhood. You know, we used to open up the hydrants in the summer heat to cool off.

Well, we were playing that way on a Brooklyn street and there’s this little brat [laughs] and she’s got an empty Coke bottle that she’s splashing people with. She would get water in it and throw it at people. She’d say, “I’ll throw the bottle,” and they were saying, “I dare ya!” And son of a gun, she lets it go and I just caught it, like about a half inch from hitting the pavement and scattering all over the place. That was my first memory of Virginia.

JA: How long did it take her to get interested in you?

ROMITA: Well, it’s funny. I was so shy, I couldn’t talk to people. I moved into her building about a year after the first time I met her. If she was coming out, and I was going in, I’d be too shy to say hello. And she thought I was crazy. She thought, “What’s the matter with this guy?” It’s just a neighborly thing to say hello, and I was too stupid to say hello.

When we were teenagers, her brother and I used to be buddies, and when we started going out to church functions like basketball and dances and things like that, she’d come along a lot of times. I got to know her because maybe a dozen of us would travel together. And later on, it was like she was an old friend to me. As she matured, and I matured, it became a little more. [laughs] And it was nice. It developed very well.

JA: It seems like it’s worked out.

ROMITA: Yeah, I think it’s going to last. [Jim laughs] We’ve been married 55 years now.

We’re very proud of that.

dressed in a Spider-Man outfit showed people around. He’d go to each office and say, “This is the office of John Romita, the Spider-Man artist. He’s our art director.”

And then he’d go down into the other offices. “This is the editor for The X-Men, there’s the editor for Spider-Man.” And he’d get down to the production office where Virginia was the traffic manager.

And the Spider-Man guide would say, “This is John Romita’s wife.” [mutual chuckling] And she wanted to hear them say, “This is Virginia Romita. She’s our traffic manager.” All they kept saying was, “She’s John Romita’s wife.”

JA: Was there ever any kind of weird feeling because you two worked in the office together?

ROMITA: No, no. But one time, she got overly efficient. I was trying to help her out with an emergency, and she was trying to handle the problem herself. And I think I said one thing too many and she said, “Get out of my office!” [mutual laughter] That was when I realized, hey, I was not dealing with my wife, I was dealing with the production manager.

Did I tell you the story about whenever there was a tour in the office? Down through the years, they had regular tours. A guy

Two Romitas—And A RomitaMan (Above:) John Sr. & John Jr., seated—with collector Mike Burkey, a.k.a. RomitaMan. (Top right:) John Romita, Jr., does his own rendition of SpiderMan and MJ, for Spider-Man #11 (June 1991); inks by Scott Hanna.

Repro’d from a photocopy of the (autographed) original art, courtesy of Anthony Snyder. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The funny thing was, years later, I wasn’t doing Spider-Man and the SpiderMan guy comes in and he goes down to the production department and he says, “This is Virginia Romita, production manager.”

And then he comes all the way down the other end of the floor to my office and says, “And this is John Romita, Virginia

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 181

182 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

Romita’s husband.” Turnaround was fair play.

JA: We never said anything about John Romita, Jr., working in the office. Do you remember him?

ROMITA: Yes, I do remember him, and he had two good years. When he was a kid, I didn’t want him coming up there because I did not want him subjected to charges of nepotism. I really felt that was a hell of a thing to put on the kid. And sure enough, he did get that for years, but the point is that he did such a yeoman job. He was like Roy’s hands when Roy was in California, and John was in New York. Roy would call and tell him what he wanted done on a certain book, and John would do it. John was dealing with John Buscema and other artists, and all kinds of emergencies in the office, helping Roy out.

He did a great job and made me very proud. No matter how many times people insinuated that he was there through nepotism, John proved them wrong. It was a great foundation for him.

He was able to handle an awful lot of stuff, solving all of those problems on a day-to-day basis.

JA: Well, look how it informed his work.

ROMITA: Oh, absolutely. He’s a pro right down to his toes.

JA: Of all the years you were at Marvel, what for you, was the most fun time working there? Or most exciting time?

ROMITA: You know, all of it was exciting. The most fun, I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe that, but all I know is that we had a great family feeling there. I was always very proud of that, because people used to say other companies were not the same. You know, there’s always a little bit of tension in the air and always a little bit of criticism, unwarranted sometimes. I always was proud of the fact that Marvel was a rather nice place to work at. So I don’t know if I can pick any one particular time.

The Essence Of Romita (Facing page:) John calls the educational comic Spidey Super Stories, in which Marvel was partnered with the so-called “Electric Company,” which was essentially “Sesame Street” for slightly older children, “the most satisfying thing I ever did.” Seen here are his pencils for the cover of the first giant collection of those stories; thanks to JR. [©2007 Children’s Television Workshop; Marvel characters ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Above:) Peter Parker becomes Spidey, in a Romita drawing that was doubtless published somewhere, sometime. It seemed a fitting bookend to this interview, since it underscores JR’s attention to detail. He always liked to show what Pete did with his shoes and street clothes when he changed to the Wall-Crawler! [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I guess having to deal with Jack Kirby on a personal basis was a nice feeling. You know, it’s like when you’re ten years old, you see Jack Kirby, and you realize how important he is to the business. And then here you are, 25 years later, and you’re going out to lunch with him at The Playboy Club. So I have a lot of great, great memories.

JA: And you’ve also come away—I think almost universally—with everyone’s respect.

ROMITA: That’s a great feeling. I have to admit that. I can’t vouch for other people. All I know is that I’ve had some great times, and I’m

grateful for all of them. Probably the most satisfying thing I ever did was Spidey Super Stories. And I felt like, wow, I never thought I was going to contribute on such a basis to the culture of the world. That was a complete surprise. I didn’t expect it to happen, and so that’s one of my better memories, too.

JA: John, again, I appreciate your patience and your willingness to do all this. I thank you for everything that you’ve done for me, including this interview.

ROMITA: Aw, it’s okay.

FIN

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JOHN ROMITA Checklist The following far-from-complete Checklist is adapted from information appearing in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books (1928-1999), established by Jerry G. Bails. This website can be accessed at www.bailsprojects.com. Names of features which appeared both in comic books with that particular title and also in other magazines are generally not italicized below. Some of this data has been provided

by John Romita, via Jim Amash, with some additions by Thomas C. Lammers. Key: (a) = full art; (p) = pencils; (i) = inks; (w) = writer; (e) = editor; (S) Sunday newspaper comic strip; (d) = daily/Monday-to-Saturday newspaper comic strip; (rep) = reprint.

Name: John Romita (now a.k.a. John Romita, Sr.) – (1930- ) – (artist; writer; editor) Family in Arts: John Romita, Jr. (son) & Virginia Romita (wife) Influences: Jack Kirby; Milton Caniff; Alex Raymond Member: Academy of Comic Book Arts (1970s) – past vice-president Print Media (Non-Comics) as Artist (p)(i) or (a): Album covers (1972); cover Hulk Crossword Puzzlebook; penciler, juvenile books Spider-Man 1978, G.I. Joe 1983; magazines Cream 1972-73, Super 8 Filmmakers Magazine 1974; X-Men Poster Magazine (as contributor, X-Men) 1992; posters, 1938-88; Spider-Man 1983, 1985; Captain America 1985; National UNICEF Day 1988; promotion (Armed Forces recruiting posters and booklets) (dates uncertain); etc.

Commercial Art & Design: Merchandising Marvel line Honors: Harvey Award 1999; Jack Kirby Award (Lifetime Achievement) 1999; Inkpot Awards (San Diego Comic-Con) 1978; Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award 2006 Syndicated Comic Strips: Amazing Spider-Man (d)(S)(p) for Register & Tribune Syndicate, 1977-80

The First Hundred Issues Are The Hardest John Romita holding up the original art to his cover for The Amazing Spider-Man #100 (Sept. 1971), at a 2005 New York City comicon. Photo by Keif Simon & Jim Murtaugh.

Comics in Other Media: “Back to School” (a) 1971 in National Lampoon; Spider-Man (p) with Aurora Models; Spider-Man (a) 1970 syndicate submission printed in Marvelmania magazine Promotional/Charity Comics: Kool-Aid (a) cover for Marvel 1983; Phantasy against Hunger (i) 1987 Assistant to: Les Zakarin, as ghost penciler 1949-51 Comics Studio/Shop: Romita’s Raiders 1986-89 (head 1986-87) How-to Instruction: How to Draw Comics (a) 1985 rep, Solson Entertainment

I’m Ready For My Closeup, Mr. Romita!

Talk about getting down to basics! The Romita-penciled cover to DC’s Heart Throbs #93 (Dec. 1964-Jan. 1965), done only a few months before John moved over to Marvel. Inker unknown. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [©2007 DC Comics.]

184 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

See You In The Funny Papers?

(Above:) This sample for the daily comic strip Mrs. Lyon’s Cubs was probably prepared not long after its original artist, Joe Maneely, was killed in a freak accident in 1958. Stan Lee was the strip’s writer. Al Hartley got the job—but Stan and John would indeed eventually team up on a newspaper comic strip. [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

(Right:) See? Have we ever lied to you? Stan Lee and John Romita launched the Amazing Spider-Man comic strip together in the 1977. At top are John’s roughs— in the middle, the same art plus John’s handwritten notes, Stan’s penciled-in word balloons, plus a circled note from Stan directing John to show Dr. Doom standing instead of crouched—and finally, the finished daily for Feb. 26, 1977. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ | 185

COMIC BOOK CREDITS (Mainstream US Publishers): Avon Comics/Periodicals: romance (p) 1950-53 Dark Horse Comics: illustration (a) 1995 DC Comics: covers (p/some i) 1961-66; Falling in Love (p) 1960-66, 1968; Girls’ Love Stories (a) 1958-71; Girls’ Romances (a) 1958-59; Heart Throbs (a) 1969; Mary Robin, RN (p) 1963-65; Secret Hearts (p, some i) 1961-71; Young Love (p, some i) 1963-71; Young Romance (p, some i) 1963-66, 1971, 1973 [NOTE: Work appearing at DC after early 1966 = rep or inventory.]

Marvel/Timely Comics (incl. affiliates): All-True Crime (a) 1951; The Amazing Parkers (p) 1997; Astonishing (p) 1955, 1957; The Avengers (i) 1965, (p) 1987; Battle (a) 1952-54, 1956-58; Battle Action (a) 1957; Battlefront (a) 1956;

Three Decades Of John Romita (Left:) Splash page for Battle #57 (April 1958). With thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo.

(Center:) Cover of The Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar, 1976. (Opposite page:) A Green Goblin sketch, 1992, courtesy of Aaron Sultan. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

186 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ | 187

One Hero’s Initiative John Romita, as a member of the disbursement board of The Hero Initiative (formerly ACTOR), drew Spider-Man on a flagpole for this Certificate of Thanks designed by Steve Giacomelli. These certificates are sent to people who donate money—or artwork or artifacts that can be turned into cash—for a good cause. The 21st-century organization gives short-term financial assistance to comic book creators in need. For information, contact The Hero Initiative via www.heroinitiative.org or at 11301 Olympic Blvd., #587, Los Angeles, CA 90064. [Spider-Man TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Battleground (a) 1956-57; Cable (p) 1992 (for Epic); Captain America (p, mostly a) 1953-54, 1966-72, 1976; cartoons/funny animals (p) 1986; Combat (a) 1952; Commando Adventures (a) 1957; Contest of Champions (p) 1982; covers (p)(i)(a) 1954-57, 1969-92; crime (a) 1951, 1954-56; Crime Cases Comics (a) 1951; Crime Exposed (a) 1951; The Crusader (a) 1955 in Black Knight; Crystar (a) 1983; Daredevil (p) 1966, 1990, 1993-94; (w) 1994; Dazzler (p) 1980-81; Dr. Strange (i) 1975; Droids (p) 1986; Dusk (p) 1998; Fantastic Four (p) 1970-71; Ghost Rider, Wolverine, and Punisher (p) 1991; Gunsmoke Western (p) 1956; horror (a) 1951-54; Hulk (a) 1966, 1972, 1991; humor filler (a) 1992; Iron Man (a) 1973, 1978-91; jungle (a) 1950; Jungle Adventures of Greg Knight (a) 1956-57; Jungle Boy (a) 1954-55; Kid Colt (a) 1952; Kiss (p) 1978; Love Romances (a) 1954; Marines in Battle (a) 1954; Marvel Universe (p) 1983-87; Mary Jane Parker (a) 1992; Menace (a) 1954; Men’s Adventures (p) 1953; My Own Romance (a) 1954;

mystery/occult (a) 1953-57; Mystery Tales (a) 1956; Mystic (a) 1952-53; Navy Action (a) 1956; Prowler (layouts) 1993; The Punisher (p) 1992; romance (p) 1954, 1957-c.

1969; science-fantasy (a) 1953; Six-Gun Western (a) 1957; Spellbound (a) 1954; Spider-Man (p)(i)(a) 1966-77, 1982-90, 1996; Spider-Man (w) 1969-70, 1996; Spider-Man and Daredevil (w)(p) 1997 – graphic novel; Spider-Man and Dusk (p) 1998; spy (a) 1951; Strange Tales (a) 1951, 1955; support (production) 1977, (art director) 1979-87; Suspense (a) 1952; Tex Dawson (p) 1957; Thor (p) 1998-99; Top Dog (p) 1986; war (a) 1956; War Adventures (a) 1952; War Comics (a) 1953, 1956; Western (a) 1951; Western Kid (a) 1954-57; Western Outlaws (a) 1956; X-Men (p, some i) 1980, 1983-87, 1992-94; X-Men: Heroes for Hope (p) 1985 Topps Comics: illustration (a) 1993 Trojan Comics: covers (a) Westerns 1950-53

188 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

FIN

Getting A-Head In The World!

A Spidey head penciled by JR on a 1982 letter to a fan. Thanks to Jeffrey Sharpe. [Spider-Man TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Afterword

by Jim Amash & Roy Thomas

R

eflecting back on John Romita and our interviews with him now that this book is completed, it seems almost superfluous to discuss how diverse his career has been in its scope.

We all know that he brought elegance and glamour to the Marvel style as no one else had before (and maybe not since, either). Those of us who bought those comics saw John’s hand in so many different places, for so many different reasons, even when we weren’t aware that he was designing the costumes of characters who were entertaining our super-hero fantasies. And we all know how totally dedicated John was to the proposition that Marvel’s comics should be as good as the company could make them.

This point, of course, was made on virtually every page of the volume you have just read. But we don’t want to exit at stage right without adding that John’s tireless, unselfish mentoring of so many young people who wanted their own chance at delineating their childhood heroes (or new ones) was equally impressive.

John’s influence on comics goes beyond merely his artwork. It is continued by the former “Romita’s Raiders,” by the young wannabes who went to him with their portfolios, and by those who stood in line at conventions hoping to learn the secrets of being a good professional.

Romita preliminary sketch for a Spider-Man poster. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

John never let us down. He has a piece, big or small, in the careers of many of today’s finest comic books artists. On behalf of all those he helped when they— and we—needed him most, he has our everlasting gratitude and respect.

Thank you, John.

Jim Amash has been involved in comics for most of his life. He’s run a comic book shop, staged successful comic book conventions, inked for many different companies, and written for fanzines such as Alter Ego (where he is also associate editor). Someday he’ll get a hobby.

Roy Thomas helped jump-start comics fandom in the early 1960s, and since 1965 has been a writer and often editor in the comic book field, primarily for Marvel and DC. He currently edits the monthly Alter Ego and is writing for the Marvel Illustrated line, as well as Anthem for Heroic Publishing and several book projects.

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JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 189

Romita In Color

John’s cover for a 1972 rock album. Thanks to Mike Catron. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | i

And here are the comic “strips”—literally—that went with the rock album on the preceding page.

Thanks to both John R. and Mike Catron. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ii | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | iii

Trading card art starring the original X-Men. Along with preliminary color art for an alternate Beast card, sent by Al Bigley. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

iv | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

Two presentation drawings done for a projected Saturday morning TV cartoon series starring The Sub-Mariner. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | v

John Romita’s parody Mad Magazine cover done for National Lampoon in 1971. [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

John Romita’s original color sketches of Mary Jane Watson and Robbie Robertson, both done in 1966. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

vi | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | vii

John says: “Paty Cockrum (Greer then) 30 years ago & right on target!” Everybody on staff signed the card “celebrating” John and Virginia Romita’s 25th anniversary. [©2007 Paty Cockrum.]

The anatomy of a cover!

John combines two of his specialities—super-heroes and romance. The first, more agonized sketch he says he wasn’t happy with. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

viii | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

John says: “This is a hastily-knocked-out cover done for Time magazine. I penciled and inked and Marie knocked out the color. They’d called [Jim] Shooter and asked if he could help them out—they needed an alternate cover (the progress of the Vietnam War that week determined which they used). Ours was not used—but we did a Time cover!” [©2007 John Romita; color ©2007 Marie Severin.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | ix

This page done for The New York Times Magazine of April 16, 1972, was, John says, “colored by me (crudely, because the Times insisted it be colored on acetate overlay). This page was never used in color (as far as I remember), though the b&w version was.” [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

x | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

John himself did this color rough for the cover of The Amazing Spider-Man #80 (Jan. 1970). [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

John Romita and associate Mike Burkey clown around with a friendly neighborhood visitor. Photo courtesy of John Romita.

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | xi

John Romita provided the pencils, and Alex Ross the lush paints, for this special rendering of MJ, Robbie Robertson, and Captain Stacy, done for a poster for Dynamic Forces. Used by permission of DF, with special thanks to Nick Barucci. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

xii | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

John’s original art for the cover of Captain America #114 (June 1969)— and his color guide for same.

Special thanks to Heritage Comics Archives & Dominic Bongo. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | xiii

(Above:) John's color sketch for the cover of a Fantastic Four paperback.

(Top right:) The finished cover by John Buscema. Thanks for both to Al Bigley. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Right:) Romita cover for Stan Lee’s recent autobiography. [Characters ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

xiv | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

John did the color layout for the cover of Marvel’s black-&-white magazine The Haunt of Horror #2 (June 1974). The finished cover, right, was done by Earl Norem, an artist JR greatly admires. Thanks to Frank Motler & Barry Pearl for the finished cover. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | xv

John’s preliminary color sketch for a Marvel project. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Art for an X-Men trading card. Thanks to Al Bigley. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

xvi | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

Preliminary color sketch for a specialty publication starring Spidey and The X-Men. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Flash Gordon TM & ©2007 King Features, Inc. All other characters shown TM & ©2005 Marvel Characters, Inc.

n this new book, “Jazzy” John Romita—the artist who made The Amazing Spider-Man Marvel’s #1-selling comic book in the 1960s—talks about his life, his art, and his contemporaries! Authored by former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief and top writer Roy Thomas, and noted historian Jim Amash, it features the most definitive interview Romita’s ever given, about working with such comics legends as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, following Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko as artist on the strip, and more! Plus, Roy Thomas shares memories of working with Romita in the 1960s70s, and Jim Amash examines the awesome artistry of Ring-a-Ding Romita!

Lavishly illustrated with Romita art—original classic art, and unseen masterpieces—as well as illos by some of Marvel’s and DC’s finest, this is at once a career overview of a comics master, and a firsthand history of the industry by one of its leading artists!