Gijón (EFE).- John Romita Jr. (New York, 1956), one of the leading cartoonists in the history of Marvel Comics and who has just spent three days of talks, signatures and photos at the Gijón Comic Con, has assured that he doesn’t feel big yet, but that one day he will be.
“I want to be great and I haven’t achieved it yet, but one day I will,” he modestly pointed out in reference to his well-known desire to stay relevant in an extraordinarily changing business.
The son of Virginia and John Romita Sr., one of the cartoonists who helped define the classic image of “The House of Ideas,” Romita Jr. grew up watching a parade of superheroes pass by his father’s drawing board and a host of other cartoonists and scriptwriters who are now comic history in their living room.
After studying art and design, he immediately made his debut at a publishing house that had already given home to some of his creations, since the Marauder was born from his mind, when he was only thirteen years old.
The beginnings
His career began in 1977 with the six pages of “Chaos at the Coffee Bean!” (“Chaos at the Coffee Bean!”), but it was the following year that he gained momentum by accompanying David Michelinie and Bob Layton in one of the classic Iron Man stages, in which characters like Bethany Cabe or Justin Hammer emerged.
“When I began to be interested in working at Marvel, my father thought that they were not going to treat me well for his mere presence and the truth is that he was right,” he admitted.
In all these years, he considers that his style “has evolved through pure improvement” as he has grown older, “because if you do something twelve hours a day for more than forty years you have to evolve by force because, if you can’t do it, maybe the problem is that your ego doesn’t allow it”, he reflected.
From 1988 to 1990 Romita Jr. was in charge of giving life to Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil.
In this period he was able to “be part of the construction of history” and even today he considers that “the best decision” he has made in his career, since, suddenly, the fans and the industry in general began to lend attention to his abilities “as a storyteller”.
The jump to D.C.
In 2014, the artist shocked the world of comics with his move to DC, where he drew Geoff Johns’ Superman, “All-Star Batman” with Scott Snyder, or “Superman: Year One”, once again alongside Frank Miller.
His departure from La Casa de las Ideas “was not because of a desire to be in DC, but because of a break, for lack of a better term,” since he “felt that after so many years he deserved an upgrade” to his contract.
“I was upset, regardless of whether I was right or not, and my wife was too”, and this was combined with the desire to “do something different”, he pointed out.
Return to Marvel
However, in early 2021 he decided to return to Marvel just in time for the Fantastic Four’s 60th anniversary celebration.
John Romita Jr. is currently working on “Amazing Spider-Man” as well as a series of personal projects that he hopes can become a “series of novels and hopefully movies.”
EFE