One of the all-time great comic artists, John Romita, has died at the age of 93. The son of a banker, he grew up in Brooklyn and broke into the comic book field in 1949, working primarily for the company now known as Marvel. Heavily influenced by Milton Caniff and a half-dozen other artists, he drew westerns and war comics and romance comics and a brief revival of Captain America. In 1958 when the company underwent major cutbacks, Romita landed at DC Comics where he drew almost exclusively for their romance comics, often rendering the covers and lead stories.
A quarrel there with one of the editors there sent him back to Marvel in 1965. After all those years of love comics, "Jazzy Johnny" (as Stan Lee would eventually dub him) feared he could not capture the new dynamic style at the company best formed in the work of another of his idols, Jack Kirby. Romita asked to just ink other artists for a while until he caught on…and he did for one issue of The Avengers. But the resignation of Wally Wood had left Daredevil with no artist and Stan persuaded John to take a crack at drawing the comic.
At first, he needed layouts by Kirby but he quickly caught on…and the following year when Steve Ditko departed Spider-Man, Romita was the obvious (and really only) choice to succeed him. Even John himself was skeptical he could fill those shoes but he soon was doing it so well that many came to see him as the guy who drew Spider-Man "the best." Working in the Marvel office, as opposed to at home like most artists, Romita became a valuable staff member, designing covers, correcting the work of others and eventually becoming Art Director. His influence was all over the artwork in Marvel books in the late sixties and for several decades thereafter.
I loved the guy's work and he had just about as many fans as anyone drawing comics in those days. He was also a very nice man and a great encourager of new talent. Tonight, we send our condolences to his family — including artist John Romita, Junior who sure learned a lot from his father — to the man Jack Kirby called "The man who saved Spider-Man."