John Romita... And All That Jazz by TwoMorrows Publishing

presents

...And All That Jazz! by Roy Thomas & Jim Amash

Introduction By Stan Lee

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.

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

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

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.]

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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.]

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,

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.

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“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.]

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

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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

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?

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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.

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

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(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