Customer Reviews

JOHN ROMITA SKETCHBOOK PB

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Poorly designed and conceived this book does a disservice to the legendary comic book artist.

Severely lacking, It reads and looks like a "fanzine." It's all black and white which would have been ok, but the book confines what little art there is into the small comic-book trade paperback size, giving the book a very claustraphobic look.

For a hardcore fan it was a pleasant, light read, but as a "sketchbook" it is really disappointing. John Romita deserves a much more professional tribute.

The John Romita Sketchbook is another in the outstanding series of interview/sketchbooks from J. David Spurlock's Vanguard Productions. With all due respect for Steve Ditko, it is the Romita Spiderman that I most fondly recall. Perhaps it's because it's the one I grew up on or perhaps it's because I liked Romita's more modern look. Whatever the case, John has always been the artist I most associate with the webcrawler.

John begins by discussing his early career as an illustrator as well as his education and influences such as Roy Crane, Hal Foster, Noel Nickles and Alex Toth. The one revelation that I've had in reading many of these sketchbooks from Vanguard was that so many of these artists had been working in comics since the golden age. I just assumed that Romita was a young guy when he took over Spiderman because his art was so dynamic and so modern looking. I was surprised to find out that his career in comics started in the late 1940's doing ghost work on crime comics. John moved to DC in the 1950's where he was inking Mike Sekowsky's work on various romance titles and learning everything he could from Carmine Infantino. It was interesting to hear Romita discuss the DC art style of that period. They wanted everything to look uniform and generic. One wonders how good these artists could have been had they been afforded the opportunity to express their own unique art styles the way artists at Marvel were able to do.

John would get laid off at DC and was immediately hired by Stan Lee, who Romita considered a great editor. John lets fans in on a secret about how Marvel constantly recycled plots, changing names, etc, to churn material out at a faster pace. He covers, although a bit too briefly, taking over first for Wally Wood on Daredevil and then Ditko on Spiderman. Later, Romita relates how Jack Kirby had wanted John to go with him to DC when he left in the early 70's. John was flattered but remained at Marvel. Kirby himself would return just a few years later. Perhaps my favorite part of the interview was Romita discussing how books were plotted and taking the reader through several sample pages of panel art and explaining the hows and whys of comic art technique.

Throughout the book we are treated to hundreds of wonderful illustrations including those beautiful Romita women and their trademark dimples. John is an engrossing talent and confers his vast experience of the comic book business to the reader. A thorough, and thoroughly enjoyable interview. As with most of the fantastic books from Vanguard Productions (distributed by Watson-Guptill) it is available in both hard and softcover editions, as well as a signed hardcover edition.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

This book is a must have for any lover of great comic book art. John Romita is a legend.