John Romita Sr.

John Victor Romita (January 24, 1930 – June 12, 2023) was an American comic book artist best known for his work on Marvel Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man and for co-creating characters including Mary Jane Watson, the Punisher, Kingpin, Wolverine, and Luke Cage.

Romita was the father of John Romita Jr.., also a comic book artist, and the husband of Virginia Romita, who was for many years Marvel's traffic manager.

John Victor Romita was born on January 24, 1930, in Brooklyn, New York City, where he was also raised.

The son of Marie and Victor Romita, a baker, he also had three sisters and a brother.

Romita was of Italian descent, from Sicily.

He began drawing at 5 years old.

The work was for Marvel's 1940s forerunner, Timely Comics, which helped give Romita an opportunity to meet editor-in-chief and art director Stan Lee.

Romita ghost-penciled for Zakarin on Trojan Comics' Crime-Smashers and other titles, eventually signing some "Zakarin and Romita".

Romita graduated from Manhattan's School of Industrial Art in 1947, having attended for three years after spending ninth grade at a Brooklyn junior high school.

Among his instructors were Howard Simon, a book illustrator, and Ben Clements, a magazine illustrator.

Romita was deeply influenced by a variety of artists and illustrators.

As a young reader of comics, he admired Noel Sickles, Roy Crane, and Milton Caniff.

Caniff's Terry and the Pirates in particular was an early inspiration for Romita.

Later in his career, he also drew inspiration from Sy Barry, Alex Toth, and Carmine Infantino.

Beyond comics, he looked up to commercial illustrators such as Jon Whitcomb, Coby Whitmore, and Al Parker.

His first comics work was in 1949 as a ghost artist for Timely Comics, the precursor to Marvel, through which Romita met editor-in-chief Stan Lee.

Romita entered the comics industry in 1949 on the series Famous Funnies.

"Steven Douglas up there was a benefactor to all young artists", Romita recalled.

"The first story he gave me was a love story. It was terrible. All the women looked like emaciated men and he bought it, never criticized, and told me to keep working. He paid me two hundred dollars for it and never published it—and rightfully so".

Romita was working at the New York City company Forbes Lithograph in 1949, earning $30 a week, when comic book inker Lester Zakarin, a friend from high school whom he ran into on a subway train, offered him either $17 or $20 a page to pencil a 10-page story, possibly a crime comic about 1920s mobsters, for him as an uncredited ghost artist.

Now making more money on two pages than his usual weekly salary, Romita accepted the story and continued to ghost for Zakarin on other work.

In 1951, Romita began drawing horror, war, and romance comics for Atlas Comics (previously Timely), and also drew his first superhero work, a 1950s revival of Captain America.

The collaboration ended in early 1951, when Romita was drafted into the U.S. Army.

Taking the initiative prior to induction, he showed art samples to the base art director on Governors Island in New York Bay, who arranged for him to be stationed there to do layouts for recruitment posters once Romita had completed basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Romita was promoted to corporal after seven or eight months; now allowed to live off the post, he rented an apartment in Brooklyn.

When not on duty, Romita could leave the base and go into Manhattan.

In mid- to late 1951, he recalled in 2002, "I went uptown one day for lunch. I stopped over at Stan Lee's [office in the Empire State Building, where Timely Comics had by now evolved into Atlas Comics], and his secretary came out ... and I said, 'Stan doesn't know my name but I've worked for him for over a year'. I was in uniform! She must've told him this GI ... wants to do some comics. She said, 'Stan said here's a four-page science fiction story'. I penciled it and struggled with my first inking. That was the first story I did on my own. I did Westerns and war stories then".

The collection Marvel Visionaries: John Romita Sr. and former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, in Alter Ego 9, each identify that four-page science fiction story as "It!", about a murderous alien in the guise of a baby.

That story saw print in Strange Tales #4 (December 1951), although the Grand Comics Database lists Romita's first identified published comic-book work as penciler and inker of the six-page story "The Bradshaw Boys" in Atlas' Western Outlaws #1 (February 1951)—published nearly a year earlier.

This may refer to a ghosted Zakarin story.

He worked exclusively for DC Comics from 1958 to 1965 and was the artist for many of their romance comics.

During these years, Romita further developed his ability to draw beautiful women, which he later became well-known for.

Romita joined Marvel in 1965, initially drawing Daredevil comics.

In 1966, when Spider-Man artist and co-creator Steve Ditko left Marvel, Romita was chosen by writer Lee as the new artist for Amazing Spider-Man.

Within a year of Romita becoming the Spider-Man artist, The Amazing Spider-Man rose from Marvel's second-best-selling title to the company's top-seller.

Romita brought a new romance style to Spider-Man comics that soon became the new design for the character.

In June 1973, Romita was promoted to Marvel's art director and heavily influenced the look of Marvel comics throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Romita was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2002.

On Romita's 17th birthday, he received his first artist work from the Manhattan General Hospital.

An anesthesiologist paid Romita $60 a week to create a medical exhibit on pneumatology medicine, which Romita completed in six months.