Spider-Man artist John Romita Sr, who was instrumental in the creation of Marvel characters including Wolverine and Mary Jane Watson, has died at the age of 93.
Romita died of natural causes in his sleep. His son, John Romita Jr, also a successful graphic novelist, confirmed the death in a Twitter post on Tuesday night.
“I say this with a heavy heart,” Romita Jr wrote. “My father … is a legend in the art world and it would be my honor to follow in his footsteps. Please keep your thoughts and condolences here out of respect for my family.
“He was the greatest man I ever met.”
Born in 1930 in Brooklyn to a family of five children, Romita Sr found early success in the comics industry. Two years after graduating from Manhattan’s School of Industrial Art, he began contributing to the series Famous Funnies, at age 19.
A chance encounter with a high school friend led to Romita Sr working as an uncredited ghost artist for Timely Comics – the company that would later become Marvel.
After a brief stint in the US army, Romita Sr returned to comics in the 1950s, splitting his time between Marvel and DC, where he made his name on romance work.
It wasn’t until 1966 that he began drawing for Marvel’s The Amazing Spider-Man – a gig that would last five years and become his most well-known work.
He replaced the artist Steve Ditko, and started working with the late Marvel stalwart Stan Lee on the series. Within a year, the comic had become Marvel’s top seller, overtaking Fantastic Four.
Romita Sr’s tenure saw the introduction of several memorable characters in the Spider-Man universe, including Peter Parker’s love interest Mary Jane Watson, as well as the shadowy underworld figure Kingpin and outsized supervillain the Rhino.
He also had a hand in the story The Night Gwen Stacy Died, widely remembered as a seminal Spider-Man arc featuring the death of Peter Parker’s girlfriend.
Eventually, Romita Sr’s role morphed into an unofficial art director position at Marvel, a title that was made official in 1973.
He served for more than two decades in the role, where he oversaw the design and introduction of Wolverine; the bloodthirsty antihero The Punisher; and Luke Cage – one of the first Black superheroes to gain protagonist status at Marvel.
He left Marvel in 1996 to go into semi-retirement, though he continued working on numerous Marvel projects late into his career, including the 30th anniversary of The Amazing Spider-Man in 1992.
Despite its eventual significance in his career, Romita Sr initially resisted working on Spider-Man.
“I was hoping against it, believe it or not,” he told American comics magazine Alter Ego in 2001. “The only reason I did Spider-Man was because Stan asked me and I felt that I should help out, like a good soldier.”
Romita Sr was inducted into the Eisner Awards hall of fame in 2002 and the Inkwell Awards hall of fame in 2020. He is survived by his wife, Virginia, and his sons Romita Jr and Victor.
