[rousing heroic music] ♪ [rousing heroic music continues] ♪ [rousing heroic music continues] ♪ [rousing heroic music continues] ♪ [rousing heroic music ends] - Hello and welcome to "Comic Culture," I'm Terrence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is a legend in the world of comics.

It is John Romita Jr. John, welcome to "Comic Culture".

- Thank you very much.

Pleasure to be here.

And don't bring, don't bring the L word into it too often.

I still, I only know one legend and he's in Queens with my mother.

- Well, you know, that's a great place to start.

You are the son of the great John Romita Sr., who was for many years, the influential Spider-Man artist, the de facto art director at Marvel.

So how do you sort of get your foot in the door at Marvel and make sure that you are able to be respected as an artist on your own?

- You go 20 years before that happens because people will dislike you due to the fact that you have a father in the business figuring that you're getting your job cause of your father.

And in his words, "Shut your mouth, Keep your hands in your pocket and do your job and outlast them in that respect."

It was intimidating, but it was brought upon myself by myself.

I didn't listen to the outside noise because I had a great coach who was telling me to shut up and just do your job.

And that was it.

The derisive term Junior came from that period of time because everybody who looked at me just said, you know, "Go away, junior."

Those are the older artists who became friends faster than my own contemporaries.

However, it was of just a matter of doing my job.

And if I could not have done the job, I would not have been in the business.

Simple as that.

Supply and demand.

- And you know, your career goes back to, hard to believe, the 1970s, 'cause you're about 25 now, so- [John laughs] The thing is, you know, you are known as an artist's artist.

When I've talked to guests over the years, they rave about your ability to tell a story sequentially.

So when you are looking at a script, when you are looking at the assignment, you know, how do you sort of approach it so that you can tell a story from page one, that by page, you know, 20, 22 is just fantastic?

- The formula, my process is take the script or the plot or the combination of both and just paste it out in stop action film form is what I call it in my own head.

I try to connect the scenes and connect the panels and design the panels within that.

It's just a process that I came up with through years of watching film with my father as a kid and then reading comics and then being told about being a storyteller by my father, in that it's not all flash.

You have to explain where you are.

And then he would show me that thought while we were watching films together, 'cause there were no internet when I was a young guy.

And we would watch films and he would explain that Marlon Brando's gonna walk onto this scene, watch what happens after this, and remember what happened this few minutes ago.

Watch what happens in 10 minutes when this happened.

And all of that coalesced when I got to reading comics because he told a stop action film.

And that's the way my process works.

So I pace it out and I write notes to myself in the script with notes that would remind me of what I was thinking at the moment.

And then as I'm telling the story, I sometimes sacrifice the big money shots for an explanation shot, so to speak, establishing shot.

And that allows me to do more money shots and it makes sense because of the establishing shot, if this makes any sense, I'm amazed.

It's just something over time became a forte of mine and I'm a better storyteller than I'm an artist.

However, the storytelling made me a better artist, if that's possible.

- Well, you know, you have a unique style to your figures and I think of your work on Spider-Man where, you know, over the years it's evolved.

You started out maybe closer to the Marvel style and then sort of became your own style.

And your Peter Parker, your Spider-Man is a very limber, very angular figure.

So I'm just wondering, you know, when you're thinking about, I guess storytelling versus the rendering of a character or, you know, if it's Mary Jane or something like that, I'm thinking to those nineties artists who might have thought it was really great to do a cheesecake shot for a half a page and then, you know, put the rest of the action in a couple of small panels.

So how do you kind of balance the storytelling need with, you know, that desire to show off a little bit?

- The storytelling is, it's preeminent in my mind.

And the trick is to at least accommodate the image, the imagery along with the storytelling.

It's hard for me to explain with the exception that I know what I want and what I want is to tell the story, and at the end of, when the book is printed and somebody reads it and says, "This was a really good story."

Then I know I've done my job.

"And oh, by the way, some of those shots you did were pretty good too."

So within the frame of storytelling of having this play out sequentially and it makes sense, that it could have done the same job without dialogue, then I know I've done my job and oh, by the way, a couple of the shots came out pretty good.

I'm not as intricately detailed with with line work as some guys are.

I'm not as nearly a good a draftsman, drafts person, so to speak, as some of my contemporaries are.

I just think I'm a better storyteller and that makes me a better artist because it's all encompassed to me, storytelling and art, it's all part of it.

- And it's fascinating because, you know, as a storyteller, you have the ability to do the simple and the extraordinary on a page.

And I think back to something, the first time I came across your art, I picked up an issue of "The X-Men" and Aurora is walking out of a building and she throws a garbage can through a plate glass window to get out.

And I just remember being just stupefied by how simple and yet how powerful that was and how it served the story, because I was completely, you know, I think she's running away from some monster or whatnot.

So when you look at some of your earlier work, that again, the storytelling is solid and you look at your work that you do now, where your storytelling is more than solid.

You know, how do you see that progression?

- Progression is, "Oh crap, how am I gonna do something different that I haven't done before?"

And "Oh crap, I may not be able to."

And now with the advent of social media, I hear that, "Oh, this is the same old stuff for the last 10 years.

You're getting boring, Romita."

And I say things like, "Mom, you can't talk to your son like that.

That's not, you can't do that."

My first point is, I am constantly trying to come up with something different or do a panel that's different.

Design sense, you can always do something different.

The moment calls for a different design in within the panel, but a figure of Spider-Man to have been done, to do differently that hasn't been done before?

That's like coming up with a brand new melody for a song that's been done, a billion songs.

How do you come up with a new melody?

It might be derivative.

Well, Spider-Man has been done by much better artists than me before me, so I have to try and do something different, albeit derivative, and my father's work, Steve Ditko's work, there's no better people to be derivative of.

So I accept that as guilty, but it's still a way of doing it slightly different.

And at least my style will hold that true.

But the storytelling, I think I can come up with something different most of the time.

I just did a couple of panels in the issue I'm working on, and I remember thinking distinctly, I haven't done this type of angle before related to this conversation.

Having more trouble with a conversation than choreographing a fight.

How do you do something relatively interesting with a conversation, albeit an important conversation, how do you do something different?

Angles.

Just the acting, because the writer will say, "This is the conversation that's going on."

And I have to put up expressions and I have to put angles of mood.

So that in and of itself allows something different in the storytelling.

- So when you have a quiet moment like that, I think back to John Buscema, the example that he had in "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way", where there's two gentlemen talking and the first one is perfectly serviceable, but the second one features a lot more dynamic angles and the guy, you know, with the cigar points towards the door and now you know that there's a lot of trouble going on there.

So when you're looking at these quiet moments, which, in many cases, are more rewarding than the big punch, is it just the camera angles or are you thinking about, you know, in this scene, Peter better be looking or thinking about this because that's the underlying thread?

- That's a good segue.

The best thing about having a new writer to work with, so to speak, as in Zeb Wells, he and I have been together for a short time, well, a year and a half, two years, whatever it is, is that they'll ask for conversations in their own way.

And it allows me to show the acting in my own, in that own way, my own way towards their dialogue.

So the writer's coming up with something different, and that's wonderful, but the acting has to be authentic.

The expressions, when somebody is upset about something, there's a scene here that Mary Jane's husband has to say something very heavy, and then you have to show the expression for that moment.

That's why it's great to have a new writer, number one.

Number two is have a mirror near your desk and get expressions.

And my wife will walk in on me and I'll have my face plastered in a mirror.

I'm looking at an expression and then I'm drawing it.

And she says, "What are you doing?"

And I, "I'm acting."

And listen, you have to be a little bit of a ham to be an artist in the first place, especially as a storyteller.

And you need the dialogue to lean you towards that.

And there is the answer to the question earlier about how do you come up with something new?

You work with a new brilliant writer and Zeb Wells is that.

- Well, you've worked with a number of brilliant writers throughout your career, whether it was Chris Claremont or Howard Mackie or your current writer.

So when you are getting that bond and sort of figuring out each other's strengths and how to play into them and make two ideas better than one, how do you kind of come to that consensus?

- Ooh, good question.

I think it's a feel you out kind of thing.

First, I'm older than all the writers I work with.

That's the first thing that sucks.

But there's a little bit of respect that goes along with my storytelling.

They'll say to me, "I know what you can do.

Don't feel restricted by what I'm giving you.

As much as I'd like you to go with what I'm giving you and play towards your strength."

Neil Gaiman even said that.

"I know you could tell a story.

So don't feel like this is a script per se.

This is a plot with dialogue.

If you're gonna make any changes, drastic changes, editorially, you gotta contact me."

I never did make a drastic editorial change in as much as I will add a couple of panels for beats, for moments.

I like to pull back and show scenes and then get closeups within those scenes.

It depends on the writer and if they allow for me to have freedom, that's wonderful, but I will discuss it with them.

It's no, there's no great shakes here.

Nothing I'm doing out of the ordinary.

I'm sure every writer and artist tandem has the same thing.

But I'm fortunate enough that my storytelling allows the writer to show off their muscles, so to speak.

And then, at the same time, I had come up with some money shots and then the artwork is okay, but the storytelling makes it.

Listen, my artwork is, to me it's a B, but the storytelling that I can add to it allows the artwork to improve depending on the scene.

And I'm proud of that because it makes, listen, express the digitation.

Look over here while I'm giving you this over here.

Look at the storytelling, but the artwork is only so, so.

Eh, I'll get better.

Listen, I got plenty of time to improve.

- [chuckles] Well, first off, I would probably disagree.

I'd probably rank you a little bit higher than a B, but.

- [mutters bashfully] Sorry, sorry.

- The one thing I do know, we did a panel together at HeroesCon this past year, and you are modest about your achievements, you're modest about your abilities.

And I think in some cases, you don't need to be because you're John Romita Jr.

Your career has spanned centuries, apparently.

Um, but... [both chuckle] - I started when I was two, what can I say?

- But you know, the question I have is, you mentioned before that now you are older than some of your collaborators, whereas, you know, previously you might have been the new kid on the block.

So as you are- - Good, good point.

- Changing those roles, is there an intimidation when you are the new artist who's, you know, joining the most successful comic, like "The X-Men"?

Or is there a different expectation with a writer who might feel intimidated because you are, you know, John Romita Jr.?

- I don't know if I intimidate anybody.

I really don't.

And that's only because speaking to them at the outset it's important to get to know them.

Or if they don't know me or know what I do, then I have to familiarize them.

However, it's a personality thing.

Get to know this person and make them feel comfortable.

You know, this is, this is fun more than it's anything else.

But I don't want a writer to think anything of me other than storytelling.

And then, "Oh, by the way, you can draw decently too."

Working with guys as a young artist, working with great writers like Chris, you mentioned Chris Claremont.

He and I weren't friends at first 'cause we didn't know each other.

We became friends and now we are friends.

He wasn't familiar with what I could do.

In a short amount of time, he liked what I was doing.

You can't stop that process.

The modesty part comes from having a brilliant artist as a father.

And if he doesn't have an ego, how the bleep am I supposed to have an ego?

As simple as that.

He said, and I'll repeat this till the day I die, I have a brilliant artist father who told me "There's always somebody better than you somewhere.

Get used to it."

And if you get used to that, then you'll be a better artist because you'll understand there's somebody better than you.

If you think you're great, you're never gonna get any better.

How do you, how can I put myself into an ego situation when I get that kind of brilliance from a man who's of 10 times better?

He's LeBron James, I'm the water boy.

Let's just put it that way.

- Well I was gonna say, you know, you talked about your father and you talked about about meeting other legendary artists.

And I know you don't like the L word.

In your early days at Marvel, you talked about Jack Kirby or John Buscema and how they would give you, you know, pieces of advice to get you through your career.

So when you are meeting some of these contemporaries of your father, you know, how are you sort of approaching them and how are you, you know, ingesting what they have to say?

- I was very young when I first met them, and then when I met them as a professional, they were a little bit of "Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Yeah, you're really gonna try this, kid?"

And the the breaking of the ice was, my father will say, "He's looking to get faster and more proficient.

What can you help him with?"

And then the two of them, Kirby and Buscema in almost near verbatim, said, "How many pages can you do a day?"

And I'd say one.

And the both of them chuckled, and they both in their foul ways, said, "Throw away your effing eraser."

[Terrence chuckles] And that was kind of a microcosm of their idea, which is what you first come up with, generally is a better version.

If you keep on erasing and doing it over, it's not gonna get better.

It will sometimes, but most of the time go with your first instinct.

And then Kirby and Buscema were notably, just amazingly fast.

Kirby did seven books a month at one point.

That's beyond genius as well as being brilliant artists.

So their advice was professional.

They were the nicest people in the world.

When you got into the professional conversation, then it became more strong and strict and less patient because they could only imagine somebody speaking on their level.

Not that they were being derisive in any way, but it was, "You have to understand what I'm talking about.

So don't make me speak down to you, you come up and understand what I'm saying."

They were great, they were great guys.

They were all great guys.

And again, that's where that "junior" conversation comes in.

"Hey, how are ya, junior?"

It just happens that the initials were JR, you know, and that's where JRJR came from.

- Yeah, well that is something you've embraced.

It's become sort of your, your, I guess, brand.

Everyone knows JRJR as, you know, one of the best artists, storytellers, let's put it that way, in comics today.

So when you meet a young artist, are you now kind of imparting that same sort of wisdom on them?

- No, unless they say to me, "I need your help doing something," or "I need some advice."

My father did not forward anything proactively to me unless I asked him a specific question.

And from that I learned I'm never gonna... First of all, the young artists have their, have so much that they can go by.

Now, if they ask me a storytelling question, I will jump at the chance and give them an hour of conversation that they don't need.

But they will get advice storytelling wise, You can say, "It's a stop action movie.

That's all.

Make sure everything makes sense, panel to panel and page to page."

But the, I don't, I don't offer up anything the way my father didn't offer up anything.

He would wait for me to ask questions.

Now, at the end of his time as art director, when he was heading towards retirement, I would bring full sets of photocopies of the the book I'd just finished and I would drop it in his lap on a Sunday.

After finishing all the sauce and all the pasta, he would look at the artwork and say, "I love this, I love this, oh, and by the way, you could have done this."

And that's all he would say, you know, small anecdote about what that panel could have been.

Minor stuff to him, momentous to me 'cause he was right every time.

And it was as simple as that.

He would love what I was doing.

"I love this.

This is fantastic.

I can't do this."

You know, he's full of #*#*#*#*, but he'd say it anyway.

I won't do that to anybody that's not related to me.

If my son were an artist, I would probably try and find this way, but not to young artists that I don't know.

And they have the internet and they have a million ways from Sunday to see how to do certain things.

- Let me ask you this, because the internet is a big equalizer for a lot of information out there.

I mean, you can find all sorts of reference material, you can find a lot of interviews, you can find...

There's software that will, you know, help you do poses and whatnot.

But when we are looking at somebody sitting in front of the drawing board versus all of that information, how do you sort of synthesize it and make it make sense if all you're doing is looking at it for the best rendering?

- Experience can thwart any other outside source.

And what I mean is you do something 12 hours a day for 45 years, you have to get better or you're a complete moron.

And I don't like the word moron at all, so I refuse to go there.

But if you practice something long enough, you're gonna get better at it, if you want to.

And I want to.

I see guys that are better than me and I wanna get better than them.

There's also an education that I was given, whether advertising illustration courses with anatomy.

There was anatomy books all over my house as a kid.

I watched my father, I watched great artists in his business.

I also was able to see the education department of my high school and I mean the art education department of the high school and the college to direct me towards brilliant illustrators.

JC Leyendecker, Gibson, the Wyeths, Norman Rockwell.

This was, and then it's far, it goes even further, LeRoy Neiman I loved, I love impressionism.

Those kind of things put you in your place.

Go into a gallery.

You have a good week as an artist in comics.

Go into a gallery and you come out feeling like this here.

It's just like my father said, "There's always somebody better than you."

All right.

Instead of feeling like this, get better.

And if you want work and if you want to continue to work, get better.

If you don't think you should get better, you're gonna get worse.

And it all comes into one overlying theme, is that you can, as an artist, short of being an athlete, 'cause time, age will affect you.

But as an artist you can always get better.

There's always room for improvement.

I can't wait to be a painter.

My wife says, "When you retire from deadline work, go back to painting.

You did it in college."

All right, I'm gonna do that.

So I can get... [scoffs] Here we go after 45 years or 50 years of comics and then start over and be this small in painting and then have to run improvement.

But that's something I'll look forward to and I embrace it 'cause I can always get better.

And this is all one large underlying theme for me is improvement.

You do something long enough, you're gonna get better at it.

- And you know, you're talking about improvement, you're talking about maybe switching into something when you do retire.

But let's talk about the fact that you, you have been doing this for 45 years or so.

You know, it's gotta be something where it's, it's second nature for you to schedule your month so that you can get your pages done so that you can, you know, spend time with your family, so you can go to the gym, so you can do all the stuff that's, you know, necessary to be a grownup in America these days.

So how do you sort of balance it all out so you hit those deadlines?

- Oh boy.

The, there's a certain amount of discipline to it.

There's also a certain amount of familiarity to it, to what I'm doing.

I have an angel for a wife who puts up with my garbage.

There's also the fact that I work at home and I'm allowed to, I can control what I do, and I'm healthy and I'm healthy because I do certain things so I continue to do those things.

The schedule is such that working with Zeb Wells, it's a challenge to meet deadlines because his work is challenging beyond challenging.

He asks for things that are challenging and I joke with him on the phone.

I'll say, "Don't start your car this morning, Zed.

Not after what you asked me to do last night."

But there's a discipline to it and there's an ego to it.

I want to be the best.

I want to be fast and the best.

If I'm not fast, I wanna pull back a little bit because I want to be the best.

There's a way of finding that happy medium.

But there's overall, it's just a discipline thing.

And I learned that from a man that grew up in the depression and a woman that grew up in the depression.

And they taught us discipline and they taught us the, the work ethic that I still have.

I have a great family.

I have a fantastic wife who's the strongest human being I have ever met on the face of the planet, physically, mentally, everything.

'Cause she's been through hell in her life, physically, with an awful car accident and is in pain all of her life.

And she's a wonderful woman.

And how am I supposed to accept anything less than that from me?

So I'm raised to a higher level.

It plays that way in art and family.

And then the personality part of it is, thank God I had wonderful parents and I have a wonderful wife and I also have wonderful sons who allow me to remember, "Hey, by the way, don't be an #*#*#*#*.

You know, we know it's all encompassing.

So the discipline is there.

It makes me want to be a better person and that affects my art.

It makes me want to be a better artist.

There are a couple of guys that are better than me and I'm gonna get them.

I'm gonna pass them one of these days.

I don't know when.

Health wise, there you go.

I exercise because I want to be healthy.

I'll outlast all of them.

And just like my father said a million years ago, "Shut up, put your hands in your pocket and outlast everybody."

All right, well... Now how much fit, I'll be 150 years old and I'll say, "See, I'm better than you guys."

And put the flowers on their tombstone.

- It is, it's kind of funny, you know, you're talking about staying in shape, but I do know for a lot of artists, at a certain point, whether it was Jack Kirby whose eyesight went, or you know, somebody who might have health problems because they were always sitting over the chair.

It seems that being in shape, and I know that my sister, her sensei is your personal trainer, which is kind of a small world.

So, you know, when you are finding the time to, to hit the gym or whatever it is that you do to stay in shape, how do you kind of make sure that you're doing the right things so that way you can still, you know, stay limber enough to stay at the drawing board all day?

- Because my sensei, excuse me, my trainer is a sensei, seventh degree black belt and won't allow for non limber.

And I should have been six foot tall, I'm only 5'8", So that means something, I have room for improvement, I can stretch.

I exaggerate but my wife was a bodybuilder when she was younger, which saved her life.

So she knows a lot of things.

And my trainer can always fill me in and I had him this morning and he beat the snot outta me.

But it's always the right kind of beating the snot outta me.

It's a discipline thing once again.

And it plays into, and I've spoken to a couple of artists, that if you feel good in the morning, you'll have a good day as an artist.

And it's simple as that.

And I feel that covers everything.

If you feel good, you're gonna be a good artist, if you wanna be a good artist.

And that's that.

- I do want to thank you so much, Johnny, for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

The time has flown by and I hope we can set something up again in the future.

- Trust me, it was my pleasure, it really was.

And you guys are great.

Thanks for putting up with my BS.

- I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching "Comic Culture".

We will see you again soon.

[rousing heroic music] ♪ [rousing heroic music continues] ♪ [rousing heroic music ends]