John Romita Jazz Preview

presents
...And All That Jazz!

by Roy Thomas Introduction
& Jim Amash By Stan Lee
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.]
Fifty Years
On The
“A” List
A Candid Conversation With

Marvel Artist/Art Director Supreme
JOHN
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
ROMITA
John Romita. [Spider-Man TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Conducted by Roy Thomas
Transcribed by Brian K. Morris
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
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
late. Because one of my biggest regrets is that I wasn’t in the first manhole and finishing at the next. That was the distance between
generation of comic artists. While I was in junior high school, Joe manholes in Brooklyn.
Kubert, who’s only a few years older than me, got in on it, doing
“Hawkman”! RT: “From sewer to shining sewer,” huh?
RT: Of course, if you’d had your wish, you’d be a decade older. ROMITA: People were coming from other neighborhoods to see it
and hoping it wouldn’t rain. I also used to draw Superman, Batman—
ROMITA: Yeah, I’d be eighty now. [laughs] I started drawing when I all the super-heroes that were coming out. [Virginia Romita says
was five. Parents and relatives say, “Ooh” and “Ahh” and how great it something in the background.] Virginia reminds me, as she always
is, and you continue drawing because you like to get the pats on the does, that I also became the source of little drawings of nude girls for
back. all the boys in the neighborhood. Guys would beg me to do them,
12 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

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 this kid—his name was Louie McDuff and he was a real weasel—was
drawings. She was nine when I was eleven. Actually, she caused me to practically in tears. I can see him pointing to my house and telling the
stop doing them. 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
When they did plays at the school auditorium, I was stuck with to be arrested for stealing a box of soap!
doing the backgrounds and scenery. Once they taped a huge roll of
wrapping paper along the entire school corridor, and I did a mural When I was choosing a high school, somebody told me about the
down both sides of all the heroes I knew of, even Zorro, Flash School of Industrial Arts in the city, where you were taught by
Gordon, and Tarzan. professional artists. That captured my imagination. My local priest
wanted me to go to a Catholic high school and later become a priest,
RT: The comics pros a little older than you had grown up before but I wasn’t going to give up girls.
Superman, so when they started drawing super-heroes, it wasn’t as
natural a thing to them. 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
ROMITA: Yeah, but they probably did Washington and Lincoln, like was—he advised me, “John, you shouldn’t waste your time going to
I did. I became a celebrity in school. I used to carve Lincoln heads, the School of Industrial Arts. You’re not polished enough.” He went
Mickey Mouse, things like that, out of cakes of soap. When I was 12- to the same school I did, and he never, ever made a living at artwork.
13, my buddies thought we were gonna go into business. They [laughs]
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 RT: Some people have talent but never get it together to actually do
street in the tenement section of Brooklyn—you could see for two anything with it.
blocks, no trees, no nothing—there’s a policeman talking to him, and
JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ! | 13

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 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
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.”
popping out of the pages. Look at how he does that!” They thought
[L. to r.: Tuska, Romita, & Cardy; photo courtesy of John Romita.] 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
Biro was a genius. I maintain that Biro did a lot of the stuff that Stan hand.” Years later, I used to hear that echoing, and say, “What am I,
did later, but it wasn’t noticed, even though he was putting a lot of crazy, doing 120 drawings for how many stories?” [laughs]
personality into his comics.
RT: You found out how many drawings people can do, right?
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 ROMITA: I learned the hard way. But for a while I definitely felt I
work. I remember ‘Shark Brodie’!” That was a back-up feature, a was doing comics only on a temporary basis. In the Army I did full-
hobo adventurer connected with the sea. He was always on a dock color illustrations and posters. The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s,
somewhere. Actually, I’d seen Tuska years earlier, when I was deliv- Ladies’ Home Journal—there were about a dozen magazines that had
ering a horror story to Stan in the ’50s. I saw this big, strapping guy, double-page illustrations to make your mouth water; but that field
and I didn’t know it was Tuska till afterward. He looked like a super- was slowly dying. My final year in art school, I studied magazine
hero himself! illustration and had given up on comics. I wanted to be a magazine
illustrator.
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 RT: Not a baker? [laughs]
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 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. A Tuska Tableau
A recent George Tuska illo of heroes he drew during the 1970s.
He did some beautiful work later in Steve Canyon, but the Terry [Heroes TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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.]

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
RT: When did you draw for Avon? did some Westerns for
Avon, too, I think.
ROMITA: While I was working
for Lester Zakarin, I I worked for one guy
would have time who was a real strange duck. I sometimes think he
between jobs, and he didn’t really have an office but was using somebody
had a list of all the else’s office at lunchtime, when I would deliver work
editors in the city, all to him. The outfit was called Trojan Comics. He was
the companies in the doing bondage covers. Every time I did a Western
city, maybe half a cover for him, there were no horses on it. Instead,
dozen. I went up to there was a girl with half her blouse torn away,
Avon Comics, whose
editor was a guy
named Sol Cohen. He
was a nervous wreck
who spoke a mile-a-
minute, 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 Commie Smasher
must have used a toothbrush or a whiskbroom on The cover and all three title-
it. I labored over a love story, and this guy went hero splashes from C.A. #78.
over it with a big, heavy hand and mutilated every- How could John R. ever have
thing. The second story I did, I complained to imagined his art was
responsible for the failure of
Cohen about the inking: “You know, I could ink
Cap’s 1950s revival? But note the
this better than this guy.” He says, “Who the hell lack of inked stripes on Cap’s
do you think you are? This guy’s a professional. shield. The single red and white
You could never ink as good as him as long as you stripes in the printed issue were
live!” He tried to tear down my confidence, but I laid in crudely by the hard-
knew better. I mean, that guy was a terrible inker! pressed 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

An Abel Inker? just so excited that he’d let me do “Captain America”! I was
Romita inked by Abel? paralyzed with fear, but excited, and I was feeling so lucky to get the
Could be. From Captain chance that I never even questioned it. I was just thinking that it
America #76. [©2007 Marvel foretold a good period of steady work; that’s all I cared about.
Characters, Inc.]
RT: It turned out not to last very long. But I can see where it
tied up on a chair, with some villain approaching her with his gun, and looked like the coming thing, because by the time those books were
the hero comes crashing through the window, or something, to save cancelled, there’d been five different comics titles starring the “Big
her. Three,” counting the two
anthologies. Young Men had
I did maybe two or three Western covers for even gone from bimonthly to
this guy, and he paid me $45 a cover, more than monthly!
anyone else paid at the time, so I couldn’t stop
doing them. I don’t remember that guy’s name. ROMITA: I think I inked all
But I know he was a nebbish. the Captain America stories
until Jack Abel inked the three
RT: Getting back to that mid-’50s super-hero stories in the last issue [#78]. I
revival: When I showed you the splash for think we did something with a
the first “Captain America” story in it Korean prison camp, too.
[Young Men #24], you said it was by Mort
Lawrence, though you drew the rest of the RT: You actually drew two
story. You thought he might’ve been slated to POW-camp stories—one in
be the original artist. Cap #76—and another in #77,
which you signed. The one in
ROMITA: I think he started the story and Stan #76—with the charming title,
stopped him, for some reason. When I came in, “Come to the Commies!”—is
the splash was done and it was signed “Mort not signed. Did you sign
Lawrence.” Stan asked me to do the rest of the stories when someone else
story. I’m not sure if there were any panels inked them?
underneath the splash or not.
ROMITA: No.
RT: The two other panels on that page in the
printed book are by you. In fact, the only RT: Then you must have
“Captain America” work in 1953-54 that inked all of the last issue,
wasn’t by you was that first splash—one story because all three “Cap”
totally drawn (and signed) by Lawrence— stories in #78 are signed by
and I presume the first of the three covers of you! Besides the two stories
the Captain America title—#76, which has Lawrence worked on, there
that thin-line approach for backgrounds we are only four “Cap” stories
were discussing—and there’s a cartoony smile out of the 16 in that whole
on Cap’s face. Let A Smile Be Your... Shield revival that aren’t signed by
Les Daniels’ praiseworthy 1991 tome Marvel: Five Fabulous you: the first and last stories in
ROMITA: Stan probably had somebody touch Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics lists the cover artist of Captain America #76—the
it up. Whoever was out in his waiting room, C.A. #76 as Syd Shores, but we’ve still got our doubts. lead story in #77—and the

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.]

half a dozen issues of Rex by Gil Kane beautiful brown hair, I forget her
in front of me every time I had to do name but she was adorable—and she
that dog! I used Gil’s work for says, “John, I have to tell you that
animating him. Gil had this great Stan says to stop work on the
ability to twist his body— Western book because we’re going to
cut down on a lot of titles.”
RT: He was one of the best guys
around for drawing animals in I said to her, “Well, I spent three
action. So how did things go bad for days on it. I’d like to get $100 for the
you at Timely? work, to tide me over.” She said,
“Okay, I’ll mention it to Stan.” I
ROMITA: Around 1957 was when never heard another word about the
Stan and I were at our lowest ebb in money, and I told Virginia, “If Stan
our relationship. In the last year, he cut Lee ever calls, tell him to go to hell.”
my rate every time I turned in a story. [laughs] And that was the last work I
He was not even talking to me then. did for him until 1965.
He was embarrassed, because he had
given me raises for two years every RT: Stan told me that Goodman
time I went in, and then he took it all would give him the word to fire
away. I went from $44 a page to $24 a everybody, and then Goodman
page in a year. would go off to Florida and play
golf. [laughs]
RT: As Gil was fond of saying,
“Comics giveth and comics taketh ROMITA: Oh, I understand Stan’s
away.” pain, because I went through that,
The Man & The Jazzy One too, towards the end of working at
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 A late-’70s publicity photo, courtesy of JR. I remember I had just fought for and
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.]

and I wound up going to DC. bulk of my work.” She said,
“We’ll try to get you more work.”
RT: Hadn’t you done a little But I said, “I have to decide now
work for DC during that last because I can’t gamble. If you
year before Timely collapsed? can’t give me the work Stan is
ROMITA: Yeah. I did a couple of giving me, then I’ll be out.” And
romance stories for them, trying to then, six months later, he let me
supplement my income; but it was go through his secretary.
too much hard work, because I I was so mad, partly because he
was not fast enough to do two had kept me from making extra
stories at once. So that would money. Stan didn’t know that I
always cut into how much I did couldn’t really earn any extra
for Stan. Stan had me in once and money—[laughs]—although he
said, “I notice you’ve been doing had gotten an idea by then that I
some romance stuff for DC.” I was pretty slow. But that really
said, “Yeah, to get some extra tore me up, because I was
money.” And he said, “Well, I thinking, “Gee, I’ll never get into
gotta tell you, you know you’re on DC again.” And a little later I
my ‘A’ list, meaning if I got two walked in there and they
scripts, you’re gonna get one of welcomed me with open arms and
them. But I’m going to have to I went from $24 a page to $35-$38
take you off my ‘A’ list if you’re a page.
going to do work for DC.”
RT: If they’d made that offer
So I called up Zena Brody, the before, you’d probably have
romance editor at DC—she was a been there a year earlier.
nice girl and a pretty good editor,
too—and told her I couldn’t do ROMITA: No, because I was
any more for her, and she was very making over $40 a page at Timely
upset. She said, “Gee, I was before the cuts started. It’s funny,
counting on you.” She was talking too, because when I lost the work
about doing a steady series with from Stan, Virginia had run right
me. I told her, “I’m sorry, but Stan out and got a job!
Lee is giving me the
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.]

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 pork-
rendering 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.
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
“I Now Pronounce You—Pencil Layouts” do a lot of things. There was Werner Roth, who
JR’s rough pencils for a Marvel Age cover (we think) depicting the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. later did X-Men.
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! I inked Arthur Peddy a few times. The only
Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©Marvel Characters, Inc.] problem with him was, I had to shorten all the
arms. He had the habit of making people’s upper
RT: Was it you or she who once had a route delivering newspapers? arms so long and gorilla-like they would reach
their lap. I never asked the editor; I just corrected them. I couldn’t
ROMITA: I did that in ’56, but that was mostly for exercise. I was stand them. Sort of like Rob Liefeld, back in the ’90s. I had to shorten
getting fat. I almost got a job on the docks. Some longshoreman the legs and arms on everything he did.
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 I inked almost as much as I penciled, for a while; but maybe that
and make some extra money. was before I left Stan. When Phyllis Reed came, I did all pencils and
very little inking.
RT: You’d have had to watch out for all those Communist
octopuses! 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
ROMITA: More that that: I’d have had to watch out for gang bosses one, earlier—at least Gil told me he handed out assignments—
that would have you beaten up if you tried to get work. But then I Vince Fago was editor-in-chief while Stan was in the Army—and
saw this newspaper route for sale—$4000 to deliver 300 papers a Dorothy Woolfolk, or Roubicek, was there briefly in the mid-’40s.
day—so I borrowed the money and I got the route. I used to get up at But none of them was editing at Timely by ’49.
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. ROMITA: Don Rico wasn’t doing drawings then; I only knew him as
That was like a year and a half before Stan cut me off. Even though it a name on a script. Vince Fago—I remember the name, but I never
was a drag to get up seven days a week and deliver papers, it kept us dealt with anybody at Marvel except Stan until you took over. The
solvent for a while. But when Timely folded, Virginia said, “The paper only other editors I worked for were the romance editors at DC, and

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, notwith-
standing 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 artist-
editors 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-in-

chief 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.
RT: Bob Kanigher edited mostly

Here Comes Romita... Man Without Peer war stuff. Did you do any work for him?
John’s hand-lettered comments on this historic pencil drawing say it all!
Courtesy of Mike Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] ROMITA: I drew some of his romance stories. Phyllis Reed gave me
her two main titles, Young Love and Young Romance. She had
had a close call with Kirby in the ’70s, of course.... 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
Just a day or two after Kirby left Marvel, he called me up and said,
brunette airline stewardess and a blonde nurse. The blonde nurse was
“John, here’s the story—you know I’m going to DC.” I said, “Yeah.”
based on Kathy Tucker from Terry and the Pirates. [laughs] I
And he said, “Here’s what I’d like you to do: I would like you to
couldn’t help that.
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 All the captions were done longhand, as if out of the nurse’s diary.
books, like Stan, and he wanted to get me to draw some of his main I did the longhand, and Ira Schnapp, the letterer, would follow my
characters. I might have worked on New Gods or Mister Miracle... lettering on it. I used to letter every word in pencil and outline every
probably Mr. Miracle. He said he’d love to have me do the pencils for caption and every balloon. In fact, after a while, I was in such a hurry
his stuff, and we could set up some kind of a stable. He said, “I got that I used to outline the balloons in ink and Ira would fit the copy
some great inkers ready to work on your stuff. It would be great for

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 Spider-
Man #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

And I knew that they’d started to
sell, because DC used to have confer-
ences 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 Green Grow The Goblins
on a horse from the wrong side. Kirby said, “You’re out of your
When John began drawing Spider-Man with issue #39 (Aug. 1966),
mind. You think the kids care about that?” You know, he would never
he started right out with The Green Goblin. This 1970s convention
put Cavalry buttons on the right way. He would rather invent a new pencil sketch is courtesy of—you guessed it—Mike Burkey.
uniform. [Green Goblin TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
RT: So Stan would offer you work, but I guess the money was less?
kept telling him no. But I didn’t tell him to go to hell, like I’d
ROMITA: He would say, “John, we’re really starting to roll. It would threatened. [laughs]
be great if you could come back.” And I’d say, “Stan, I’m making $45
RT: Did you feel a secret glee that you were able to say no, after
a page. What are you paying?” He’d say, “Twenty-five a page.” And
that other period?
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 ROMITA: Actually, I felt vindicated. It helped that DC had wanted
I’ve got it, you know.” He called me three or four times, and I just me, too, and that I was making more money there. Besides, I didn’t

somewhere as Spider-Man, we had to show how he transported his guy, or that guy, and get him to do something.” I used to ask Stan,
clothes. It drove me nuts, and I drove Stan nuts with it, but sometimes “How come I come in to you with one problem, and I walk out with
it led to some interesting storylines. two?”
RT: When you were drawing Spidey, Stan was always trying to RT: That’s because Stan knew there were guys he could trust to
find ways to get more out of you—like with those Tuska thumb- take the burden off his shoulders—in those days, it was you, Sol
nails. Then there was that “Spider-Man” story penciled by Ross Brodsky, and me... Marie Severin, too. I’ve got to ask you this:
Andru that wound up in Marvel Super-Heroes #14 [May 1968]. I You’ve said that, when you found out Kirby had quit, you thought
don’t recall much about it, but I’ve always figured it was meant to at first that Marvel would have to drop Fantastic Four. Did you
be a fill-in issue of Spider-Man, but that Stan didn’t like it much, really feel that? Carmine Infantino supposedly said the same thing
and that’s why it got sidetracked into another mag. to people over at DC at the time....
ROMITA: Or maybe it had to do with the fact that the story was ROMITA: Yeah, because I didn’t think there was anybody else who
about voodoo. It was a good story, but a little different for the way could do it. I asked Stan who was going to draw it, and he said, “You
Spider-Man was being done at that time. are!” I thought he was out of his mind. He took me off Spider-
Man—which had become our #1 book—to do Fantastic Four, which
RT: Yet Stan had at least co-plotted it. I don’t think he was ever as was our #2 book.
much an admirer of Ross’ art as you were, as I was, as a lot of the
other guys at the time were. 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
ROMITA: I think the thing that showed how good Ross was, was Magazine!”—so Stan felt
that Superman vs. Spider-Man book. Do you remember that two- an obligation to try to live
page spread at the start of the book? That was terrific! up to that. Hey, John, you
RT: As Gil used to say, Ross was one of the few comics artists who ought to know as well as
had a real “sense of space.” When he drew a city seen from the air, anybody—“With great
you could get vertigo staring into the pencils! But somehow some of power, there must
his penciling strengths never quite translated when the work was come great
inked. Ross clearly wasn’t the answer for what Stan wanted with responsibility!”
Spider-Man. [laughs]
ROMITA: Stan was always trying to speed me up. He had Don Heck ROMITA:
penciling over my breakdowns for a while. Stan would have me lay But I didn’t
out the story. Then, when Don had finished the pencils, he’d call me think I was
in to fix up anything Don had done that he didn’t like. Even after it the guy to
was inked, he’d have me changing what the inker had done. I told do the FF.
him, “This was supposed to save me time, but it isn’t!” If you look
at those
He tried Dick Ayers at it, too. In fact, there’s one splash page that four issues I
was used, based on what Dick did—it was a splash that was mostly did, you’ll
just webbing. But Stan didn’t like the way Dick drew Peter Parker, so
we settled on John Buscema.
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.]

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 art-
directing during those several months, before you officially
became art director?
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
The Satana Verses more money.
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 RT: Frank was an excellent inker, but he was never secure in his
here from the Italian edition of The Art of John Romita. And, before anybody penciling, so his job designing the covers didn’t work out for long. I
mentions it—yeah, Roy swiped the opening, and even some of the sound think he held it against you—and probably against Stan and me, as
effects, from Harvey Kurtzman’s “V-V-Vampires!” in Mad #3 well. Which is a shame, because we were really all in his corner.
(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 Spider-

Man 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

“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!

“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” Frankly, in the 1950s, I was sure comics were only going to last
from the beginning? 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
ROMITA: No. Mort Lawrence started the story, and either he or page, which he inked with a number five brush. I pinned it to my
Stan was disappointed by the results. I happened to be in the office, drawing table and used it for inspiration for about a year. I used a
and Stan said, “How would you like to be the artist on ‘Captain number 5 brush and was doing all this fine detail work with a fat
America’?” I almost jumped out of my skin, because I was a Jack brush and a sharp point, and as long as I wasn’t tired, the lines came
Kirby freak. Stan showed me the finished page, and I even think a out just fine. As soon as I got tired, the lines came out ugly and thick.
cover was done.
JA: What made you think that comics weren’t going to last?
JA: Could that have been the cover to Captain America #76, where
Cap has that cartoony smile on his face? ROMITA: I was under that impression when I started in 1949, ghost-
penciling for Les Zakarin, who was working for Timely and other
ROMITA: It was either that or the cover to Young Men #24. places. I figured I’d just do these stories to make a few extra bucks. I
Lawrence didn’t do any covers after the Captain America title had no plans to stay in comics. Everyone I spoke to thought we were
started. treading water. Even Stan said he was waiting for comics to get so
JA: So Mort Lawrence had already done a splash of his own? 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
ROMITA: I think so. Far as I recall, Stan took the two bottom panels temporary basis, including Davey Berg, who was doing mystery
from my first page and put them under the Lawrence splash. But it stories and then war stories for Timely. He hadn’t started at Mad yet.
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 As people like Dave, Jack Abel, and myself sat in the Timely
many mistakes of omission and gave away so many wonderful things waiting room for scripts or art approval, we would talk. We all had
over the years that I should have kept. the feeling that comics were a dying industry and wondered what

ROMITA: Well, at the time, it Jack came back to Cap in 1976. It
seemed like it [the Torch book] went was the cover of issue #193, and it
on for a while. looked very three-dimensional.
JA: Maybe you’re just remem- ROMITA: You know, there’s a

bering that the Sub-Mariner book story about that cover that nobody
lasted a year longer. Dick Ayers knows about. That cover was never
told me that Stan told him that meant to be printed as it was. That
the Human Torch was cancelled cover was drawn as an experiment
because of complaints from in 3-D. I inked it on six layers of
parental groups. acetate. I did his fist on one layer,
his arm on another layer, his torso
ROMITA: They were afraid that on another layer, his legs on another
kids would set fire to themselves, layer, and the backgrounds on
imitating the Torch. In fact, that another layer. It was meant to be
kept The Human Torch off the published in 3-D, with the illusion
animated television show, Spider- of his fist coming out of the panel.
Man and His Amazing Friends. We When you see it without 3-D, the
came up with another character in fist looks like a gargantuan’s
his place, Firestar. Firestar was my oversized fist and Captain America
idea. The network would not let us looks like some kind of freak with
use The Human Torch in that series. tiny legs.
Later on, Stan told me Captain JA: Yeah, but it’s still a powerful
America was cancelled [in 1954] image. So where was this drawing
because of its politics. Timely got a supposed to be published?
lot of mail complaining about
chauvinism. The American flag was ROMITA: It was supposed to be a
a dirty word in those days, because demonstration piece. What they did
of the backlash of the Korean War. was to make a red-and-green Xerox
We had gone to war seemingly of each of the parts. It was a test to
unnecessarily. It was a “police see if we could do 3-D stuff, like a
action” and people died. People 3-D Captain America comic. I
were saying that America was remember seeing the acetate version
putting the American flag over of it, and when you viewed it with
human safety, and that they weren’t 3-D glasses, the illusion worked
going to buy Captain America, Now It Can Be Told, Part II very well. But they abandoned the
because it’s an excuse for people to The Kirby/Romita cover for Captain America #193 (Jan. 1976)—the first idea. Lots of times, Stan would start
kill other people in the world for issue in which Jack returned to write and pencil the comic he and Joe projects and Martin Goodman—or
America’s sake. You remember how Simon had co-created in 1940—was originally intended as a someone else—would say, “The hell
they burned American flags in the 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.]
1960s? For a while, Captain America just drop it. We did 3-D photo-
was a dirty name! That’s the reason graphic stuff where I would do
they dropped it. 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
ROMITA: Sales probably weren’t that good, but there was a flurry look that we were planning on doing. I did original drawings and
of interest at first. It’s too bad it died too soon. It would have been sometimes I inked someone else’s version on this project.
nice to see if we could have built some momentum. Stan was doing I used to spend weeks and weeks on projects like that, which no
short stories, and they weren’t like the human interest stories Marvel one ever knew about. Being in the office, it’s a wonder I ever got any
did later. We knocked those stories out just like we did the westerns. work done at all. I worked on a 3-D box, where I had to do cut-out
JA: When you did Captain America in the 1970s, you were locked figures and color them... it was like a shadowbox, where they’d light it
into your style and weren’t thinking about Jack Kirby by then. 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
ROMITA: I wasn’t. By then, I was doing it my own way and was background. If I had saved all this stuff, I could have made a fortune
doing it like a cross between Caniff and Kirby. One of the fun things I on them, but it would have been a museum piece.
did in those years had to do with a new character in Captain
America. Remember when we had Steve Rogers become a policeman? I also did toy designs which sometimes got made and sometimes
Stan introduced a new character that was basically an update of Cap’s didn’t. I spent a couple of years doing toy designs. I also designed the
wartime sergeant, Sgt. Duffy. This sergeant was called Muldoon, for Spider-Man balloon in the Macy’s parade with Manny Bass, who was
whom I used Jack Kirby as a model… though Stan had his hair the engineer in charge of balloons. He was a genius! He explained the
colored red in order to look like an Irishman. That was a labor of aerodynamics of balloons, so I could design it to work. Manny gave
love, which I did for fun. It was a cartoony version of Jack; I put a me a great compliment when he said, “It’s one of the best balloons we
cigar in his mouth and gave him sort-of a crewcut like Jack had. have.”
JA: You inked one of my favorite Captain America covers when I spent a lot of time doing things that weren’t comics. I did
70 | CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS A DIRTY NAME!

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 proof-
reading 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, unfortu-
nately. 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.
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.
Willing & Abel He used to tell us stories about working in the old Timely bullpen
Jack Abel inked at least two of John’s three stories in Captain America #76, the with John Severin and Joe Maneely. Can you imagine those three in
first revival issue, such as this lead-off tale. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JOHN ROMITA –
The 2006-2007 Interview
One Of Comics’ Major Talents Talks About His Years
At Marvel, DC, & Elsewhere
Conducted by Jim Amash Transcribed by Brian K. Morris
Wonderful Women
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
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
conscious effort to avoid covering ground Thingvall—only giving her Mary Jane’s face
that had been walked in the two Romita and hair! Below is a drawing of earlier
interviews he and I had done earlier… and ladyfriend Gwen Stacy, with Spider-Man on
her arm. Spidey and portrait pencils
to talk with John not only about his own work,
courtesy of Aaron Sultan. [Portrait ©2007
and to a certain extent about that of his wife John Romita; Wonder Woman TM & ©2007
Virginia and his son John, Jr., but also about the DC Comics; Gwen & Spider-Man TM & ©2007
many artists, writers, editors, letterers, and others Marvel Characters, Inc.]
he has known in the course of a career which
spans well over half a century. —Roy.
“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-to-
5. What he did to keep me in the
business was to say, “Suppose I pay you
a salary and you come into the office?

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.
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
Once An Avengers Artist… my neck.”
Splash of Romita’s inking of Don Heck’s pencils on The Avengers #23 (Dec. 1965). JA: The first person you inked was Kirby, wasn’t it?
Repro’d from The Essential Avengers, Vol. 1. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
ROMITA: It was a Kirby Avengers #23 cover. [NOTE: See p. 39.]
You don’t have to come in every day if you don’t want, but the office
Then I inked the story over Don Heck, which was a natural for me,
is here. If you want to come in every day, fine. But if you want to
because I had worked with Heck a couple of times in the romance
work at home one day and come into the office the next day, it’s okay,
department at DC. In fact, Heck, ironically enough, helped bail me
and I’ll guarantee you $250 a week.” At that time, that’s what I
out during one of those dry [DC] periods when I couldn’t pencil. I
needed to make my payments on my mortgage and things. I was
called Don Heck and begged him to help me out, and he penciled a 7-
going to take an entry-level job at BBD&O, and I think the job was
pager in about two days. I told him he didn’t have to spot any blacks,
going to pay two-fifty. A neighbor of mine was an art director there;
just draw some outlines. He saved my life, because I wouldn’t have
he told me to come up there and get work. And I was going to work
gotten any money for about two weeks there, and I remembered it
with Mort Meskin. So I told Stan, “Okay, one of the things that I
fondly. When I went to ink his Avengers, it was like, wow, this is
think screwed me up was the fact that I couldn’t be disciplined when I
amazing. It’s payback time. I had such a ball inking that Avengers
worked at home. If I take the job, I’ll come into the office as often as I
story.
can get myself out of the house, depending on if I work late at home.”
JA: Don Heck’s pencils were normally very complete, weren’t they?
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 ROMITA: Yes, but very stylized. He’d have three-quarters views that
the afternoon to beat the rush, because I wasn’t on any clock. had a certain similarity. Everybody had the same three-quarter view.
Sometimes I worked late at night. I would get home and get rolling, Everybody sort-of had a short nose. He was very stylized, to the
and work until two or three in the morning, so I wouldn’t go to the point where he would not change features on a lot of people. But by
office the next day. But I realized I was better off going into the office the time he was doing The Avengers, his stuff was terrific. It was
every day, so I did, and I got more work done. Pretty soon, I was better than his romance stuff.
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 JA: He probably felt freer and probably was more challenged. Like
March 30th of ’96. I was in the office every day! you said, you get bored drawing romance stories all day long.
JA: You didn’t have a page rate—you just had a salary, right? ROMITA: Absolutely. Don was a very good penciler and drew
beautiful women. The shapes weren’t always the same as my natural
74 | JOHN ROMITA: THE 2006-2007 INTERVIEW

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 correc-
tions 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

“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
to California, I might have done it, because I really admired him. I that DC had this mindset that they were doing comics like history
would have loved to work with him. books. And the editors had nothing else to do but to criticize. Almost
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

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 Taking Up A Collection
lines and drew big slashing lines through the middle John’s pencils for an unused Amazing Spider-Man cover that would’ve showed that acquisitive
of an arm, and he would ask me to show the bicep alien, The Collector, about to collect nothing less than Abraham Lincoln! Thanks to Mike Burkey.
more, or to show the muscles in the forearm more. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
So I would add a few extra little lines in there to try
and make it look a little bit rounder in places. 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
“I Thought The Way [Jack Kirby] Did Things what I was supposed to be doing was always much more—I had much
Was The Way To Do Everything” 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
JA: Of course, your line was more organic than Jack’s, too.
with, and nobody knew what I wanted it to look like.
ROMITA: Yeah, actually, sometimes it would be good. I remember
JA: I saw some pencil Xeroxes of a “Captain America” story Kirby
when I did that Daredevil #13 cover—you know, with the manhole,
had done, where you had redrawn Sharon Carter, Agent 13.
and Ka-Zar coming out? I loved that. I had so much fun doing that
[NOTE: See next page.] Did Stan ask you to do that? Did he just
cover, I was like a kid at a toyshop. I would have done that for
not like the way Jack drew women, or did he want them prettier?
nothing. And sometimes, everything clicked. That Daredevil figure
just clicked. Everything Jack penciled, I knew how to ink it and I felt ROMITA: Stan told me to do that. I would never do that on my own.
like it was right. Some of the stuff with Ka-Zar, I think I got lost a Sometimes Jack would make them too wide-faced. Stan would ask me

Hangin’ Around
If John R. sometimes found working with Stan Lee “nerve-
the work, he would say, wracking,” he should’ve taken his cue from Spidey.
“No, that’s not what we Nothing like being able to spin your own hammock out of
agreed on.” And I’d say, webbing anytime you want it! These pencils were done for
a design for the Marvel Company Picnic t-shirt in 1993.
“Yeah, don’t you
Courtesy of JR. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
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 remem-
bered what he suggested and which ones sounded
more convincing to me, and which ones were more
important to him than others.
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 Romita Fits Spidey To A “T”!
felt was the most pedantic way to do it. I put the face A T-shirt design by Jazzy Johnny. Thanks to Mike
in the rhino’s open mouth, that kind of stuff. I Burkey. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Kirby was doing more than artwork; he was bringing all sorts of One of the reasons
things to the table. He was bringing characters, plots, and inspiration that Stan took back
to Stan. He was making Stan ten times a better writer, and there’s no the title “Art
way to limit what you could give a guy like Jack. I would have given Director” for a while
him whatever he wanted. But businessmen don’t see that. For a couple was just to justify a
of years, after I’d been doing Spider-Man, I was in the office, and I raise.
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 Martin Goodman
things like covers and sketches, and ask Stan and Sol, “What does was absolutely
John Romita do around here?” [Jim chuckles] And when I asked for a without any kind of
raise one time, he didn’t want to give it to me, so I told Stan, “I’m compass. He had no Like Father…
going to have to walk.” I had gone a couple years with no raise, and I direction in his
Martin Goodman (on right) and son Charles “Chip”
just thought I had to stand up and get it. 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
“Martin Goodman Was Absolutely Without thinking, “Preserve
Goodman’s company Magazine Management to pursue
a (successful) career as a freelance writer, playwright,
Any Kind Of Compass” my small profits and and novelist. Chip served as publisher of Marvel for a
margins, don’t try to year or so circa 1971. Photo courtesy of
JA: Whom did you talk to about the raise? get too big, don’t get Bruce Jay Friedman.
ROMITA: I asked Sol, I think, because I probably asked Stan and he bigger than my
told me to ask Sol. Sol would tell Martin Goodman, and Martin britches. We’re making good money, let’s not make any waves.”
Goodman would say, “Well, what does he do around here?” He had a He didn’t want to do the Spectacular Spider-Man magazine; he
terrible habit. If Stan wanted a raise, Stan would have to justify it. In didn’t want to do any expensive comics, he didn’t want to do adult
other words, “What are you bringing in that’s special? Are you doing comics, he didn’t want to do anything that was going to make waves.
anything different than what you’ve already brought to the table?” 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 Spider-
Man 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.]

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. What A “Marooned”!
Stu Schwartzberg (seen at top center in a photo from the 1969 Fantastic
JA: To get off Spider-Man for a minute, for about a year or so, you Four Annual) had the respect of his Marvel peers for the humor work he
went back and did Captain America in the 1970s. 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
ROMITA: Stan used to do that to me all the time. He was always
were right on target—and so was his script. When he wrote and did story
trying to find a way for me to do more stuff. He’d say, “Could you breakdowns for a parody of the Ray Millard horror movie Frogs for Spoof
add Captain America to your schedule?” I told him I was barely #2 (with finished art by Marie Severin & Herb Trimpe), he had Bullpenners
getting Spider-Man in on time. And so he started to scheme up ways: rolling on the floor laughing. Stu also did fine work for Crazy magazine.
“Suppose we plot the story and somebody else pencils it.” [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
JA: Did he put you on Captain America, thinking you would help it, it takes me just as long as penciling it. I spend most of the time
the sales? breaking down the story, then I finish it up quickly. But if I break it
down, it doesn’t save me much time.
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 “When I Got There…” [Marvel 1965]
doing Avengers, anything that Stan could have gotten me time to do.
JA: When you started working on staff, how many people were
The same thing when I did the Spider-Man newspaper strip. When I
working in the office and who were they?
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 ROMITA: When I got there, Marie Severin had just been hired to do
looked at him like he was crazy. “I can’t get any sleep now. How am I production work. Sol Brodsky was sort of an office manager and had
going to do another strip?” He always said he used to forget how long been doing production work before Marie came in. It was only Stan,
it took me to draw a week’s worth of strips, because he could write it Sol Brodsky, and Stan’s secretary Flo Steinberg. In fact, Flo acted as a
in a day. He never let it sink in that I couldn’t do my part in a day. secretary for both Stan and Sol. Roy Thomas started almost exactly
[laughs] 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
JA: Maybe Kirby spoiled Stan because he was so fast.
came in to do production work. Marie was also doing a lot of
ROMITA: Kirby and John Buscema both spoiled him. He used to call coloring, especially cover coloring.
them up and ask, “Can you just throw in another book this month?”
That was it for a while, and then we got a stat [= Photostat] man. I
And they’d say, “Sure, send it over.” I couldn’t do that. I’d say,
think it was Herb Trimpe, believe it or not. The first job Herb Trimpe
“Listen, Stan, when I break down a story, I put so much thought into
did in the Bullpen was stat work, which he did for about six months,

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 hard, and when we lost him, it was terrible. One of those sad
one of the boys. When he became vice-president, we were very proud moments.
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
“National Lampoon Got A Package And
were opposed to it. They were opposed to it because he had left us, They Suspected It Was Dangerous”
and been in competition with us. They felt like, why reward a guy
JA: Tell me about the time there was a bomb threat at Marvel.
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 ROMITA: We had a couple of evacuations, I remember. We had one
do reprints—no new material. When Skywald started doing original scare—our offices happened to be under National Lampoon, I think.
stuff, he turned off some of the people that he had known at Marvel. National Lampoon got a package and they suspected it was
But Stan was willing to forgive and forget. Believe it or not, dangerous, so we had to empty out the building. They were one floor
everybody went in and told Stan in no uncertain terms, “No, no, we above us, and sure enough, there was, I think, a package with six
don’t want Sol Brodsky as editor-in-chief.” 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
We had a lot of laughs. The only thing was, they would give him
who did my backgrounds at times. He wouldn’t leave. He said, “Aah,
budgets to run projects. For instance, when we were together in
it’s probably a false alarm.” I had to go in and pull him out. I said,
Marvel Books and they gave him a budget, his first philosophy was to
“You can’t take a chance. Suppose there’s something wrong.” He says,
save the company money. And no matter how much I wanted to do
“There’s never anything wrong.” I said, “Listen, you gotta get out of
the quality stuff, he was always lowballing the budget, so we always
here. Otherwise, the firemen are going to come and drag you out.” So
had disagreements. He wanted to bring projects in at such a low price
I finally got him down on the street. Thank God it was a warm day. It
that they would always make money, because that would be a feather
was a nice spring day, and when we got down on the street... First of
in his cap, you know? Meanwhile, I was trying to do the best stuff we
all, we took our pages with us. I don’t know if Mike Esposito was
could, but we couldn’t afford any good artists. Suddenly, because of
there or not, but Frank Giacoia and I were inking on some pages that
our budget, we would end up with the guy who didn’t have any work
we had to finish up that day. We grabbed the pages, mostly because
from anybody else, the second-line artists. So I used to have disagree-
we figured if there’s a fire or something, or if there’s any damage from
ments with him. And then he got cancer, and for the last year it was
the firemen, they’re going to mess up the pages, so we took them with
terrible. I felt so guilty that I was always disagreeing with him. It was
us. Frank said, “I’m bringing along some ink and some pens and some

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 JA: I remember “Many Hands” had a brother:
Maybe to warn the Daily Bugle crew about a bomb scare? Funny, Roy T.’s always thought it “Diverse Hands.” [mutual laughter] Any other
was colorist/production man George Roussos (another reclusive type) rather than Tony Mortellaro kind of crazy Bullpen stories like that that come
who refused to leave the Marvel offices after the warning, but John’s probably right. How would to mind?
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 ROMITA: John Buscema did a couple of
promotional poster by JR is repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. “Warriors of the Shadow Realm” magazines. It
[©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] was a beautiful, very exotic thing, with all these
brushes.” Thank God he did, because we didn’t know how long it was wonderful characters. Peter Ledger painted the
going to take to get back there. We walked down to Third Avenue, covers. He was a very strange duck from Australia. A lot of times, he
which was a street and a half away, to a place that Frank liked. We sat walked around the office barefoot. I mean, he was a guy right out of
down at one of the tables, and ordered food and drink. 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
We’re looking at the pages, and Frank said, “You know, why don’t problem was, he didn’t always bathe. And people were starting to get
we fill in some blacks?” So we put the page between us on one of very nervous. They would come into the office and they would say, “I
those dark mahogany tables. I’m on one side of the table, Frank’s on think he’s still here,” because they could tell by the fumes coming out
the other, and I think Frank was doing the blacks in an upside down from under the doors. [mutual laughter]
panel, and I’m doing some finishing touches with technique, maybe
shrubbery or something on the other end of the page. We worked for He was a very talented guy, but a real loose cannon. But we’ve had
about an hour and a half, and we’re trying to eat without messing up a few episodes like that, where guys came up and slept in the office. If
the pages, [mutual laughter] and finally, somebody came over and you’re working through the night, I guess it’s one thing. But if you’re
told us that the building was cleared and we went back up there. But sleeping there because you don’t have a place to sleep, that’s
it was one of those days that was really a riot. We were laughing our something else.
heads off the whole time. Unfortunately, whenever we had guys with body odor in the

“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 sort-
of 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.
Forbush And Friends
There was nothing ever wrong about John except that he used to (Left:) “Jumbo John” Verpoorten circa the mid-1970s, and (above) his
bully some of the poor editors. He used to tell them, “Get out of my splash page for Not Brand Echh #8 (June 1968). Photo by Alan
office.” In those days, the editors were like just another part of the Kupperberg. [Page ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
chain, and the production manager called the shots because Sol
Brodsky used to assign the work when he was in charge. And so, 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,

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
My Love Does It Good songs because of the wide variety
John Romita’s drawings of Paul McCartney as Titanium Man—and of Linda McCartney as one of the singing group
of styles. They were lighthearted,
called The Stripes. [©2007 John Romita.] they were heavy, they were strong,
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 ace- you 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, “The Band You’ve Known For All These Years”
and a great laugh, and was very theatrical in the 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.]
John Makes A Bullseye
One of John’s many character designs: the Daredevil villain Bullseye.
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.
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
Axe Me No Questions… 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 illus-
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
trator, I was a romance artist, and Colan was a war expert and a
drawing “Conan” stories in Marvel’s three mags about the swashbuckling romance artist. When John Buscema started, his work was very mild,
Cimmerian, he was penciling (and often inking!) related sketches on the very illustrative and realistic. Stan steered him in the direction of
backs of pages of original art. That’s probably the source of this drawing, using Kirby’s extreme action and over-the-top characterization.
supplied by David G. Hamilton. [©2007 Estate of John Buscema.]

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 incorpo-
rated 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 recog-
nized 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.
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
I’ve Got You Covered! used made Dr. Doom look very ugly. I tried to
As a custodian and major proponent of the Marvel style, it was John Romita that Stan Lee (and make Dr. Doom a little more glamorous, even
Simon & Schuster Books) turned to in 1977 to design and paint the cover of the trade paperback though he was still doing ferocious things. I tried
collection Bring On the Bad Guys. Above is an unused version of the sketch; at top right, the to glamorize him a little bit to make him
finished cover. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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!
John slightly redesigned Dr.
Octopus’ glasses—giving
A Real Shocker! them more of a “goggles”
The Shocker makes his debut in Amazing Spider-Man #46 look—when he reintroduced
(March 1967)…and in black-&-white, years later, in the villain in ASM #53 (Oct.
The Essential Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 3. 1967). [©2007 Marvel
[©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Characters, Inc.]

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.
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?

just handle anything, but the thing is that he wanted more fun and the
ROMITA: They were just light pencils, no blacks—very, very light only fun he ever had was on Conan and Tarzan. When he was doing
and very sketchy, but everything was there. I mean, you didn’t have buildings and a lot of side characters and a lot of personal life stuff, he
all the fingernails on the hand, but when there was a hand, you saw was always a little squirmy and a little bit uncomfortable. He used to
five fingers. And he didn’t do circles with dots for eyes like Gil Kane say, “I can’t stand Spider-Man.” What he meant was he couldn’t stand
did. [mutual laughter] No, John did a very expressive kind of the super-hero in New York, which involved too much detail work
breakdown—it wasn’t layouts. Layouts were very rough. Layouts and not enough room in the panel, because the Spider-Man story
were like Jack Kirby gave me, which was just silhouettes and initials technique was to use a lot of panels and have a lot of dialogue
for who the characters were. And if a character was smiling, he’d between the personal life characters. Steve Ditko used to do 9 and 10
smile it and if it was a frown, it’d be a frown, but that’s about all. panels on a page. John was like me: he liked to do 4 or 5 panels on a
They were just layouts, but John’s breakdowns were a real storytelling page, and you can get some real movement and have people zooming
job; all that was missing was tightening up the lines and putting blacks through space then. It’s very hard to even get any action at all in a 12-
in. panel 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,
JA: Did John really hate it, or was he just saying that? 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
ROMITA: Well, my theory was that he really didn’t want to do it. So
doing Daredevil, I had plenty of room for what I wanted to do. I
what he was saying is he hated the characters; he didn’t like doing any
could do 4 or 5 panels when I needed it, and then get a little bit more
modern stories. I think he got tired of The Avengers, too, and I don’t
busy when there was personal life. It wasn’t as restrictive as Spider-
blame him for that because I wouldn’t have done The Avengers. You
Man. Spider-Man was always extra work for me, and I think if I had
had to draw a thousand characters coming and going.
worked on X-Men or something like that, I would have had a
JA: And you get no extra rate for that work. nervous breakdown. I don’t know how my son ever did it.
ROMITA: Oh, no, no. John never worried about anything. He could JA: Did you spend any time with John outside of a professional
relationship?

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.]

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 low-
key, 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 Spider-
Man 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.]

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.]

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 neigh-
borly 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 dressed in a Spider-Man outfit showed
been married 55 years now. people around. He’d go to each office and
We’re very proud of that. say, “This is the office of John Romita, the
JA: Was there ever any kind of Spider-Man artist. He’s our art director.”
weird feeling because you two And then he’d go down into the other
worked in the office together? offices. “This is the editor for The X-Men,
there’s the editor for Spider-Man.” And
ROMITA: No, no. But one he’d get down to the production office
time, she got overly efficient. I where Virginia was the traffic manager.
was trying to help her out with And the Spider-Man guide would say,
an emergency, and she was “This is John Romita’s wife.” [mutual
trying to handle the problem chuckling] And she wanted to hear them
herself. And I think I said one say, “This is Virginia Romita. She’s our
thing too many and she said, traffic manager.” All they kept saying was,
“Get out of my office!” [mutual “She’s John Romita’s wife.”
laughter] That was when I
realized, hey, I was not dealing The funny thing was, years later, I
with my wife, I was dealing with Two Romitas—And A RomitaMan wasn’t doing Spider-Man and the Spider-
the production manager. (Above:) John Sr. & John Jr., seated—with collector Mike Burkey, Man guy comes in and he goes down to the
a.k.a. RomitaMan. production department and he says, “This
Did I tell you the story about (Top right:) John Romita, Jr., does his own rendition of Spider- is Virginia Romita, production manager.”
whenever there was a tour in the Man and MJ, for Spider-Man #11 (June 1991); inks by Scott Hanna. And then he comes all the way down the
office? Down through the years, Repro’d from a photocopy of the (autographed) original art, other end of the floor to my office and
they had regular tours. A guy courtesy of Anthony Snyder. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] says, “And this is John Romita, Virginia

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

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE
JOHN ROMITA
LINK BELOW TO ORDER THIS BOOK!
Trading card art starring the original X-Men. Along
And All That Jazz

with preliminary color art for an alternate Beast card,
sent by Al Bigley. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
"Jazzy" John Romita—the artist who

made The Amazing Spider-Man Mar-
vel'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-cre-
ator Steve Ditko as artist on the strip,
and more! Plus, Roy Thomas shares
memories of working with Romita in
the 1960s-70s, and Jim Amash exam-
ines 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 ca-
reer overview of a comics master, and a firsthand history of the industry by one of its
leading artists!
(192-page trade paperback) $24.95
(208-page hardcover with bonus color pages) $44.95 • (Digital Edition) $10.95
http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=562
iv | JOHN ROMITA COLOR GALLERY

John Romita Jazz Preview

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

John Romita Jazz Preview

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

John Romita Jazz Preview

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

presents

...And All That Jazz!

Preface by Roy Thomas: Romita Revisited . . . . . . .6

Preface by Jim Amash:

John Romita: Fifty Years on the “A” List . . . . . . .12

“Captain America Was a Dirty Name!” . . . . . . . .64

John Romita: The 2006-2007 Interview . . . . . . . .73

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

Romita pencil art courtesy of Mike Burkey.

A Candid Conversation With

R OY THOMAS: Okay, John, just to get it out of the way—

12 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

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

I had to scrounge up old Famous Funnies comics to get all of

RT: Moving to the Kirby half of my Caniff-Kirby equation—you

ROMITA: I remember. Everything he touched

RT: Two of the comics artists most influential on your

ROMITA: No. Milton Caniff was my god. Before I got

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

ROMITA: Well, not a baker—but I was going to

ROMITA: The first one, a couple of months after the hospital

Well, designing those festoons and printing them in their litho

RT: Which brings us at last to comic books. You mentioned at the

18 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

These guys knocked

I did love stories for

28 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

ROMITA: I sold Stan a bill of goods on that one. Actually, I was

ROMITA: I don’t remember Stan telling me anything about it. I was

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

ROMITA: Maybe somebody else fixed

RT: Now that you mention it, the two

ROMITA: I remember the one with the

When Comics Went To The Dogs

RT: I don’t expect you to have total recall, but I’m

Not to start you feeling like a failure again, but do

ROMITA: I have no idea. Maybe Mort Lawrence had

A Real Dog-And-Pony Show

30 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

Did They Get A Discount?

34 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

Love That Romita!

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

Virginia had taken a job to fill in for

RT: When you went back to DC, was Zena

ROMITA: I believe she was just leaving, but she

They’d use the cover as the splash on one

RT: Several Timely people like Colan and

ROMITA: Jack Abel was there, too. I met Frank

36 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

I told Virginia, and she almost had a heart

RT: You’d also have been in line to be an

ROMITA: Imagine, you could have wound up editor-in-

RT: You never have done any

ROMITA: No, I never have.

RT: Bob Kanigher edited mostly

40 | FIFTY YEARS ON THE “A” LIST

A Pair Of Pencil Pushers

over my pencil copy inside the balloons. So I would put