Family Plot

TOM SPURGEON: How did you feel about the material you were being given to draw at Marvel? Did you recognize that what Marvel was doing was hitting people differently?

JOHN ROMITA: My whole family used to help me plot. If we were taking trips to Cape Cod, for instance, that would be six hours in the car. We'd be plotting stories all the way. I would tell them, "Stan wants me to do a certain thing, and I'm having trouble with this and that." John Jr. at the age of the 10 and 12 was helping me plot. My wife was helping me plot. My oldest son, Victor, who probably could be a writer if he wanted to - he works for IBM - has a wonderful story sense. My whole family was plotting those stories.

SPURGEON: How did you feel about the expanded creative involvement with the books. Was it simply fun for you? Did you feel a sense of social responsibility in how the books you were working on were affecting Marvel's readership?

ROMITA: I did feel that. I felt like we were really onto something. When I started to realize I was a storyteller first and an artist second, it changed my whole approach to comics. Art is only a tool, just like the lettering on the paper. If you don't tell a story, the best art in the world is a waste. I used to tell people, if you can't make a story interesting, readable and entertaining, then you can do Michelangelo's or Leonardo's drawings, and it would be absolutely ignored and nobody would buy it. On the other hand, if you're a moderately successful artist with limitations, but you tell a dynamite story, you can sell books all day long. That's my theory.

When I'm teaching young artists, I tell them, "If you're going to learn from me, check your ego at the door." One of the first things I learned was don't fall in love with you own artwork. When I first started inking comics, I would do a line on a figure, and I would love that line. I would say, "Wow, I really got a nice brushline there." Then I would decide I needed a black background. Sometimes I wouldn't put the black in there because I didn't want to ruin that line. I said to myself, "What are you, stupid? You're going to leave this open for some colorist to put a bad color in there when you should put black in there. The hell with it! The hell with the line! Put the black in there." And that's where the ego comes in. Artists fall in love with their own artwork. They lose the importance of the character and the story in the satisfaction of their technique. And that's the worst thing a comic artist can do. You're a storyteller first, and an artist second.

SPURGEON: Is there specific work from your Spider-Man run that met your ambitions for storytelling?

ROMITA: Storywise, there are a lot of stories. There are a half a dozen stories I'm very proud of. A lot of them that got knocked out because of lack of time I'm not too proud of. The storylines I'm more proud of than actual artwork, but there are two issues that I've told people are my favorite two Spider-Man issues: #108 and #109. It was a plot I had a lot to do with. And the reason I plotted it, and insinuated the ideas with Stan, was because it was a chance to do Orientals in the Caniff style. That was the Vietnam sequence where Flash Thompson comes back from Vietnam, and somebody from Southeast Asia wants to kill him because he destroyed a temple. Spider-Man saves his life, and Dr. Strange was a guest star. Those two stories I'm proudest of as artwork. It's more like me than anything else. The storytelling, the drawings, the powers and the fact that I used a lot of blacks. It was juicy, what I call a juicy piece of artwork.

I've also done covers I'm very proud of. A lot of covers I was very satisified with. But the truth of the matter is I never did a piece of artwork that came up to what I intended it to look like. I always envisioned it better. When people accuse me of false modesty, I tell them, "You gotta understand. I'm the only one that knew exactly what I wanted on that. You didn't know how good I wanted that to be. All you saw was the finished product. And you like it, and I'm grateful - thank God, that's what paid my bills. But I know what I wanted there. I wanted an epic on paper." [Laughter.]

SPURGEON: You mentioned that you and even your family did some of the plotting on the Spider-Man issues. Did you ever pursue plotting credit?

ROMITA: I didn't ask for it. Jack Kirby demanded it, and Ditko demanded it. I didn't demand it because I didn't feel the need for that kind of stuff. I felt like a contributor, but I didn't plot the story from scratch. Stan would always come up with a thought. There were times when I got very little, and then built on it. There were times when we would have a 15-minute conference and we would be interrupted, and I would never get back to Stan and I would be stuck with a very skimpy concept that I would have to flesh out. Those are the ones the family did when we were in the car traveling, because I would have a beginning and an end but nothing in the middle. When Stan started to give Jack Kirby plotting credit -- the ultimate was when it became a Stan Lee and Jack Kirby production. When you were saying it was produced, that was the ultimate comment. "Produced by Stan Lee and John Romita," that said I was the co-producer of this story and these characters and this product. It was a very, very good feeling.

But I never demanded it. I never demanded anything. I was sort of a sap. [Spurgeon laughs.] Frankly. I was always a good soldier. I never made waves, even though a lot of times I would grumble. I used to have a line I would grumble when I was inking, that I'm doing this work at three in the morning and somebody else cashed the check already. Whether it was Stan Lee or Gil Kane or whoever I was inking, or whoever I was correcting, I used to grumble like everybody else. But I would never go in and say to Stan, "I'm tired of this," or "If I don't get this, I'm not going to stay." I was never that kind of guy. I needed comfort and peaceful surroundings. I didn't promote myself. I traded a lot of income in exchange for peace and quiet and easy-going surroundings I was comfortable in. If I had been a squeaky wheel, I could've gotten more oil.

SPURGEON: Was credit a sore point amongst the Marvel artists in general? Or did most of them share your outlook?

ROMITA: A lot of people claim that Stan took too much credit. My attitude is that if I had done the same work for another editor, it wouldn't have been as good. Jack Kirby was a genius. But the truth of the matter is that Jack Kirby didn't have any long runs on any books -- mostly because of economics, because he wanted to go onto new things -- but he didn't have real long runs. Just think of the magnificent accomplishment of 102 issues, plus annuals, of Fantastic Four. If I had done 102 issues of any book, I would be puffed up like a rooster. That is a tremendous legacy to leave to people. He did the equivalent of the full life's work of A. Conan Doyle or Robert Louis Stevenson, all the magnificent things that were done in Fantastic Four in that ten-year run. He didn't do that with Joe Simon. He wouldn't have done that with Carmine Infantino and the team. Don't you think Stan Lee deserves some credit for that? That's what I always thought. As much credit as Stan has and gets, I think he deserves most of it. I think he was the best editor that ever lived, and one of the best writers. I always felt "Why should I ask for equal credit with the guy who did most of the creation here?"

SPURGEON: Do you think one contributing factor that left Stan open to those accusations is the way Marvel was set up as a company?

ROMITA: The corporate people could have squashed it a long time ago. It didn't have to be "Stan Lee Presents" all those years. What they were doing was doing what they thought was the best commercial trick: If "Stan Lee Presents" is the way to sell books, let's do it. Stan didn't have it in his contract that it was going to say "Stan Lee Presents" forever; that was a commercial decision by several different entities, different conglomerates down through the years. Martin Goodman allowed it to be "Stan Lee Presents" because it was good business. Martin Goodman wouldn't give you the skin off a grape [laughter] if it weren't business wise. Same thing with the all the conglomerates and guys that came after, right down to [Ron] Perelman, who knew where his bread was buttered. "Stan Lee Presents," that's the way to make it work. That's not a mean accomplishment. I don't remember that "Jack Kirby Presents" never got a huge sale out of anything. Certainly John Romita didn't get a huge sale out of anything before he went to Stan Lee. I have to face that. I'm not kidding anybody.

SPURGEON: You're saying there's a bottom-line commercial component that can't be denied.

ROMITA: I don't believe it I would have had the run for 25 years on some form or another on Spider-Man -- whether I was plotting stories for somebody else, like Gil Kane, or just inking somebody else or doing roughs for somebody else to finish, doing thousands of covers, toy designs, Macy's Spider-Man balloon -- I would not have had that run with anyone but Stan Lee. I didn't make that run as a John Romita enterprise; I was a part of a group. I was not my own unit. So to me, Jack Kirby's success on Fantastic Four, Thor, and all of those things, I think if it wasn't for Stan Lee, they would not have been successful. When he worked for himself, he had what I would call critical successes and commercial failures. That's fact, I think.

Remember, I admire Jack as the genius of comics. I admire him as an idol. But I have to admit, he never sold anything on his own.

Jack, John, Jerry and Bill

SPURGEON: The Marvel bullpen and freelancing community of the late 1960s and early 1970s was an interesting place. The biggest change was an absence. Was it shocking when Jack Kirby left Marvel?

ROMITA: It was a terrible shock to me. I knew that there was a friction. And Roz was very upset with Stan because of a lot of misconceptions. She accused Stan of all sorts of things that Stan was somewhat innocent on. But he did take credit. And maybe he didn't give enough credit. If he had said, "Co-Created by Jack Kirby," it might have made him stay. But I think they were down on Stan, mostly because a stupid article in the Herald-Tribune. That was just an unfortunate thing. Stan never got a chance to see that thing. And if he did, he probably glossed over the paragraph that insulted Jack, saying that instead of looking like the dynamic creator of thousands of characters, he looked like a bra salesman. That would have killed me. And he blamed Stan.

SPURGEON: Did you know Jack Kirby personally?

ROMITA: Oh, yeah. We always had a wonderful relationship. He was a very interesting guy, but he was like a time bomb. He was a powderkeg. He was always like ready to explode. But he was very cordial face to face. He would be cordial to people he didn't like, but the next day he would bad-mouth them. That's what's called being business-like, and you can't go around grumbling at everybody, you know. He was a special kind of guy, don't get me wrong. He had a great sense of humor, and he had a wonderful talent. He would share it with you, and give you all sorts of tips. He used to tell me all the time, "You spend too much time worrying about the stuff. So it doesn't hold water, so it's not exactly accurate, so what?" He and John Buscema used to tell me to throw away my eraser. Stop erasing stuff you've drawn, because even your worst drawing is as good as anybody's best drawing. That was the advice they both gave me.

SPURGEON: John Buscema was, like yourself, a mid-'60s hire that became an important anchor for the Marvel line. What was working with Buscema like?

ROMITA: John Buscema was also a classic character. He was always grumbling about the crap being put out. He came in one day when I was tearing up a splash page that I had half done. He said, "What the hell are you, crazy? Why are you doing that? That was a good drawing." I said, "No, I didn't like it. There was something wrong with that. The figures were too small." He said, "You're nuts!" He used to tell me all the time, "It's only comics, what the hell are you getting so upset about?" I used to tell him, "I can't explain it to you. But if I don't like panel one, I can't do panel two." With him, he didn't give a damn. [Spurgeon laughs.] I said, "Well, it's easy for you. Your worst drawings are better than most people's best." That's the same line he used on me. I didn't believe it, and he did. And he really was. He was one of the best artists. I really idolized his artwork.

SPURGEON: Buscema was an incredibly facile artist.

ROMITA: But always acting like the gruff. [Laughter.]

SPURGEON: Bill Everett returned to Marvel for a few years before his passing. His take on superhero comics in the Sub-Mariner comics in the '40s and '50s was a crucial antecedent to what you guys were doing in the 1960s. What was it like to work with him?

ROMITA: It was like sitting next to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. To work with Bill Everett every day for about two or three years... I also had the experience of working with Jerry Siegel. He was proofreading for us. I used to say to myself, "I'm sitting next to Jerry Siegel. I'm sitting next to the guy who created this whole industry." [Laughter.] I can't tell you.

One time I met Frank Frazetta. We were on a bus going from Orlando to Tampa with a bunch of young artists. And all they're saying, I can hear them whispering, "There's John Romita. That's John Romita. Do you realize that's John Romita." I sidle over to them, and say, "Do you want to hear something funny? You want to know what I'm saying to myself? That's Frank Frazetta over there!" [Laughter.] That encapsulates what comic artists mean to each other.

SPURGEON: Was Everett in good health when you worked with him?

ROMITA: He had gotten himself straightened out. He wasn't drinking. He was still smoking a little bit, but I think he had even straightened that out. It looked like he had solved his health problems, and then he had a heart attack and we lost him while he was still working there. But those years were really great. He was inking guys, he was teaching us so much. We used to do birthday cards: Marie Severin would draw me up in a work situation, sort of a put on of me, joking. And everybody would sign it, saying "Happy Birthday, John." I've got a couple signed by Bill Everett that are treasures to me. Here I've got the whole Marvel crew -- Stan Lee, everybody -- signing my birthday card. I've got three or four of those. They're just absolutely my treasures.

SPURGEON: When Everett was "on" as an artist, he was capable of really lovely-looking art, although he wasn't a fan favorite near the end of his career.

ROMITA: He was the best example of what I would call a creative artist. When you were in Bill Everett's world, you knew where you were. He did it when there was crudity in comics, when the printing and the work was so low-priced you had to knock it out. He was doing piecework for pennies and turning out original masterpieces. That first generation had the glory of breaking new ground. He broke new ground every time he did a drawing. To me, when you're doing something in 1935 and 1936 in comics, before anybody else had even made any rule -- you're making your own rules -- that's a giant. That's what I meant by George Washington.

Other People's Art

SPURGEON: Was there a point at which you began to phase out of penciling? I was trying to track your credits, and it seems like you gradually moved away from the penciling workload you took on when you first started working at Marvel. On Spider-Man, it seems that you started to ink Gil's stuff as much you penciled it yourself.

ROMITA: I didn't give up penciling. What happened is Stan would come to me and say that Captain America was having trouble, could I do a few issues of it. So Stan and I would plot the story, I would give the plot to Gil Kane, then I would do Captain America. When Gil Kane sent in the pencils I'd have to do corrections because Stan would want to change things. I would do corrections on the pencils from Gil. And then sometimes there would be inks by Jim Mooney or Frank Giacoia or somebody, and I might have to do corrections on those. Sometimes the Mary Jane faces didn't come out right or something. When I inked Gil Kane, I used to have to make a lot of changes, not because I'm an egomaniac, but only because Stan used to ask me to. Stan didn't want Gil Kane on Spider-Man, he wanted John Romita. So he said, "I want you to ink Gil Kane, but I want you to make it look like you." That was insulting to Gil, but Gil of course didn't care as long as he got the money.

The truth of the matter is that a lot of guys were hurt by that. Don Heck was very incensed when Stan would say "I want you to work more like John Buscema or John Romita." Don Heck one day blew up and told me, "Listen, you tell Stan if he wants John Romita or John Buscema to use them and not me." And I understood. But I also used to tell him, "Listen Don, you don't have to draw exactly like us. He doesn't mean that. What he wants you to do is approach them like we do. Glamorize it; more dynamic, more movement, that kind of stuff."

But guys like Don and the other artists that felt they were not getting work from Stan because he preferred Jack Kirby and me and John Buscema. Stan wasn't down on anyone's artwork. He never changed anybody's artwork because he disagreed with the artwork; it was the storyline that he changed. The artwork had to be changed because he was changing the storyline. I changed a lot of Jack Kirby, but not because the artwork was wrong. Stan wanted a new expression, or he wanted to change the position of a character, because he was always changing a storyline. What Jack would send in was always invariably different than what Stan had asked for. Stan would write another story, and I would have to do changes to make it work. People think that because I was art director, I made that judgment, but I never did. I wouldn't have changed Jack Kirby's artwork if my life depended on it! But when Stan wanted a change in story, I had to change the artwork. I changed Colan, I changed Barry Smith -- did you ever see those embarrassing Barry Smith covers with my faces on them?

SPURGEON: [Laughter.] Yeah, sure.

ROMITA: Do you know what a reputation I have, and how many people criticized that? [Laughter.] I got criticized by quite a few people as being an egomaniac.

SPURGEON: Was every change you made directly from Stan, or had you internalized what Stan wanted and made changes yourself on that basis?

ROMITA: Every single one from Stan. I never changed -- I'll rescind that. I changed a Spider-Man figure on an artist I won't mention. [Laughter.] Because he had the arms and legs so long it was ludicrous. I had to cut a half inch out of each arm and each leg.

SPURGEON: Was that Gil Kane?

ROMITA: No. But I will tell you that yes, Gil Kane used to make Spider-Man six foot five. My answer to that was that I would make his head bigger, so he would look five foot ten. That I did. But that was not a knock at his artwork. That was a knock at his characterization.

SPURGEON: Of all the important artists I can think of who did a great deal of work for Marvel, I think of Gil Kane as someone with whom you worked particularly closely. What did you think of Kane's work, his approach to comics?

ROMITA: The quote that I give to most people is that every time I inked Gil I learned something. Every single panel. I always learned something. He didn't do things perfectly, but he did dynamics. A lot of guys in my situation, my rough drawings are very exciting, very dynamic. But by the time I finish them, it gets moderated and sort of stifled a little bit. I'm putting accurate details into it. Gil never lost the thrust of his figures. He would go from his rough drawing and have these figures extended, fully extended and moving in space, and he never compromised with it. The finished drawings never lost any of that. I always respected that. Jack Kirby had that, too. His figures had thrust and mass in space, and they never lost it. People like myself, when you get the accurate details and start to modify it, you modify it to death. That's a danger. My rough drawings are always better than my finished drawings.

SPURGEON: Another thing that's unclear to me when I'm tracking your career: At what point did you officially become an art director?

ROMITA: [Laughter.] It was never official. It was a handshake. It was so unofficial that Stan used to be paid as art director. I never got a penny for being art director.

SPURGEON: That's not a very good arrangement at all.

ROMITA: I used to say that Stan would give titles instead of salary increases. He would call a person an assistant editor, but not give them a raise. He used to give us nicknames instead of raises. [Laughter.] That's why I got so many nicknames.

The Transitional Period

SPURGEON: By the early 1970s, weren't you passing on covers and other things that one would think of as an art director's work?

ROMITA: I only did it in conjunction with people like Roy Thomas. In my last few years, people like Bobbie Chase and Ralph Macchio relied on me heavily for covers. I would do a lot of sketches for them. They would send them to the artist, and the artist would follow my sketches. A lot of editors never asked me for help. I did work out a lot of Gil's covers. Roy and I would get together with Gil once a week, or once every two weeks, and work out cover concepts on half a dozen or a dozen books. There was time there where he was doing like five or six covers a week for us.

SPURGEON: Working with Roy Thomas on covers -- I take it this was when Roy had taken over from Stan after Stan moved upstairs in 1972?

ROMITA: Roy was Editor In Chief.

SPURGEON: What was the office like after Stan made his move?

ROMITA: It was strange, after many years of Stan being there constantly. He had started coming into the office three days a week so that he could stay home and write on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes he would come in on Tuesday and Thursday and stay at home the other three days. So we had sort of gotten used to operating without him being there. Sol Brodsky would do the administrative work. When Roy took over, and Stan decided to write full-time, and when he went to California, Roy had to become Editor in Chief to make the daily decisions. It was strange, but we had sort of drifted into it. Roy and I had sort of taken over, thinking of the covers, because Stan wasn't coming in every day. We had gotten a taste of it before we left. It wasn't so bad. Some people had trouble with it. When you're used to working with Stan, a lot of them had trouble taking orders from Roy, Roy being a fairly newcomer compared to some of the older artists. They felt like he was a kid who shouldn't be in charge. When other editors came in from the outside, there were grumbles in the bullpen. "Here's a DC guy; he shouldn't be our Editor In Chief." No names. [Laughter.] But there were many calls for a strike or something. "He doesn't know how to do Marvel stuff. He's a DC guy."

SPURGEON: Didn't the whole culture of Marvel change as young creators -- many younger than Roy -- started to come in? In fact, many of the editors and editors-in-chief from that decade were culled from the younger generation.

ROMITA: Guys like Len Wein and Archie Goodwin becoming editor was quite a change. When Jim Shooter came in, it was even moreso. Young people who had started in the business 20 years after we got into the business is always a shock. It's true in business. You can't always choose who your leaders are going to be.

SPURGEON: I think I've read that you felt you were able to offer help to the newer guys, but you never imposed yourself.

ROMITA: No, I never did. Shooter made me full-time art director. It was official then, come to think of it. That's when I didn't have to do any work -- I didn't have a quota of artwork to do to earn my money. I guess this is like 1985. When Shooter gave me that, I had been working in Special Projects for Sol Brodsky. We were doing children's books and coloring books. I was doing the newspaper strip in the late '70s and early '80s. Shooter asked me, "How would you like to be here full-time?" We instituted an apprentice program. We ran about 35 guys through that department in seven years, whatever it was. We got maybe 25 of those guys working in the business. That was a great project, and it was Shooter's idea. I implemented it, and it worked very well.

That was the first time we had a whole batch of young editors. Shooter told me, "I told them to use you as a tool, an asset. And anybody who doesn't use you is going to be fighting me. I've told them to use you, if they don't, then that's their problem. That's between them and me." I told him, "Listen Jim, I'm not going to be the kind of guy who says I demand an artist on a book, or I don't like a certain artist so take him off that book. I don't want to have that power. I don't want to have the tension that arises from it. I will be available to anyone who wants to get my advice, and if they get my advice and don't use it, I don't care." I said, "That's the only way I'm going to do it," and he said he agreed with me.

Confrontation is no way to get things done. I used to tell people, "I think this is a mistake." For instance, when McFarlane did the Hulk, I told Bob Harras I didn't like McFarlane's Hulk. So he took him off the Hulk and put him on Spider-Man. So if it weren't for my stupidity, he wouldn't have been on Spider-Man all those years, and I would have been happier.

SPURGEON: So if anyone doesn't like the arc of Todd McFarlane's career, we have you to blame.

ROMITA: He might have made Hulk the biggest character of all time. You never know. I shouldn't have tampered with it!

My style is I can to tell you what I think: "I don't like this stuff. I don't like the way this character is drawn." But I'm not going to demand that if you don't do it my way I'm going to go to Shooter and tell Shooter it's him or me. I can't work that way, if I have to have a confrontation every day. Other people that have tried my job since I've left, have tried butting heads. It got them nowhere. All it did was get them animosity and tension and nothing produced.

[To read the rest of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #252.]

All site contents are © 2002