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Radiation Interrogation: John Romita Jr.
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Location: Blogs Atomic FalloutRadiation Interrogation |
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| Posted by: Jake Bell |
Thursday, May 17, 2007 2:08 PM |
Your edition of Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America, the Captain America issue is out this week. Since Cap is dead, this issue features someone else tossing around the shield. Right off the bat, can you save everyone a couple of bucks and just tell us who’s the new Captain America?
Uh, no. I can’t.
Understood. In that case, can you tell us five people who are not the new Captain America.
(Laughs) No, I really can’t.  Can you at least confirm it is not Jarvis or Willie Lumpkin?
I don’t want to get anyone in trouble and by “anyone,” I mean me.
Klaus Janson is inking you on this issue. You’ve worked with a lot of different inkers with different styles. Play favorites here and tell me who you most like working with.
The first thing I say I get a new project is “Klaus,” because we know each other so well, and I think our styles meld nicely. I’d like to work with my father on a regular basis, but that won’t happen. After working with Klaus, I’ve become such a fan of his, because he’s a brilliant artist aside from being an inker, and he’s got a great color sense, and a great shading sense. Klaus to me is the best that I’ve worked with, so I start with that. And after Klaus, the list is Al Williamson. It goes without saying what his influence was when he was working over me. He improved me head shoulders. And then it was Scott [Hanna] on Spider-man, so I’ve had a nice collection of artists. I worked with Danny Miki on The Eternals and Tom Palmer was along the lines of Klaus and Al Williamson, in that vein. So I have similarities, and consistencies in the guys that I’ve worked with, not all because of I’ve asked for them. Now I ask for Klaus, and if I weren’t to ask for Klaus, I would ask for Tom Palmer. If it wasn’t Tom Palmer, it would be Scott Hanna. So, I would put those three in that order.
Do you draw any differently depending on who’s going to be inking you?
Not so much the inker, but the story. It’s an effort to tell the story differently. I really don’t have a lot of control over my style. It just comes out… what the hell. If I have deadline, it comes out at two or three in the morning looking different than it does at two or three in the afternoon. I don’t have conscious control over the drawing. It’s hard to describe. If I wake up in the morning feeling Frazetta-ish, it looks different than if I wake up feeling Alex Toth-like.  You get your inspiration from various artists, and I have John Buscema stuff plastered all over my desk, right next to my father’s stuff and Jack Kirby stuff. Sometimes I use Frazetta stuff or Joe Kubert stuff. I grab stuff from various corners of the industry for inspiration.
It’s like if you’re going to play baseball, you watch game to get into the mood. You watch a guy bat, you watch a guy pitch. That’s the same thing I do. I’ll wake up and leaf through a couple of Kirby issues, or I’ll leaf through some Jim Lee stuff. And because I used reference from Leinel Yu when I was working on Fallen Son, I was able to look at some of Leinel Yu’s pencils. I get inspiration from various sources, but I can’t—I don’t even know if I’m capable of copying anybody’s style. I don’t think I’m that good!
You’re also drawing World War Hulk, this summer. On a scale of one to a billion, how much ass is Hulk going to kick?
 All right, one to a billion? (Thinks) I’d say 800 million. There’s quite a bit of knock-down, drag-out, but none of it is wasted. Greg has managed to bring it all into something. I’ve been in the business long enough to know there’s a cynical group of kids who are like “Oh, it’s just ‘Hulk smash’,” and those are the kids I’m trying to please. Through Greg’s efforts and mine, we probably legitimized 90% of the ass-kicking.
Without getting yourself in trouble—I know you can’t give us too many details—is it safe to say Hulk is going to get a piece of all the Illuminati who blasted him into space?
That’s safe to say.
What’s been your favorite thing to draw so far?
Right out of the gate, Greg Pak came up with a line that’s as good a line of dialogue as there has ever been in the history of comics. It’s five words. To me, because it’s Black Bolt and the Hulk, that line is probably as good a line as I have ever read in comics. That for me was a high point and we’d already reached it in the first issue. After that, I don’t think it goes down, but it’ll be tough for Greg to come up with dialogue as good as that throughout the rest of the series.
You’ve got a Fantastic Four: The End one-shot on your slate with Stan Lee, but we’ve already seen Fantastic Four: The End as a miniseries by Alan Davis. What’s the difference between the two?
For starters, he’s a much better artist than I am. His is a series that seems to be removed more from FF lore than this one is. This is Jack Kirby/Stan Lee stuff. Larger than life. There are some great scenes with Surfer and Galactus. [With Alan Davis’ version,] I didn’t read the story as deeply as I looked at the artwork. The only difference I can see is distinctly artwork, and secondly is Stan’s version of the end is a much more mainstream, classic version of the FF.
Having grown up surrounded by and watching your dad working with Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, how do you think your perspective on the business is different from someone who’s just come in from art school without that background?
I don’t know if what I know from experience affects the present. Things have changed so radically in the business, but the one thing that maintains itself is the artwork and the writing. If you’re good, you’re good.
What’s it like being the son of a legend?
Andy and Adam Kubert and I chuckle to each other occasionally. We can compare notes about the fact that our fathers are brilliant artists and how difficult it is to live up to that. The fact that our paths have paralleled is no longer brought up in conversation. It’s just kind of known. We know each other very well. It’s not fun having a great artist as a father. It’s an honor, but it’s not easy. It’s like having Michael Jordan as a father and trying to play basketball in high school.
Why do you think it is that you’ll draw a regular series plus you’ll pick up miniseries and one-shots and fill-ins without missing deadlines, but other artists seem to struggle to put out eight issues in a year?
Truth is, that I’m greedy. (Laughs) It comes from the old school where you had to work and you put your pages in to get paid. That’s your paycheck, and the royalties—if they come—are wonderful. I am in a place right now, workwise, where I can put out a good amount of work. I just like working at a certain pace, because I came from an era where guys like Jack Kirby did four, five books a month, maybe more. And doing one a month or one every two months… it seems like you’re only scratching at the window of a delicatessen instead of going in and eating an actual sandwich.
Even when I do a monthly title I want to do something on the side. Maybe it legitimizes my stuff, I don’t know. I tell a story better than I draw, so maybe I like to spread my storytelling around. It might just all be self-serving, it might all be vanity, but I’d rather do four books a month. I wish I could.
I really don’t have a reason behind it, other than saving for the future and supporting my family, and having a comfortable life at the same time. That’s part of it. But there is a certain ego involved in it too.
You’ve worked with just about all the big names in the industry. Is there anyone left you’re itching to draw for?
 After working with [Neil] Gaiman—I don’t remember if I had a list of guys—but if I had a chance to work with one guy, out of all the guys that I’ve worked with before, it would be Frank Miller.
Somebody who I haven’t worked with? I’d like to get Alan Moore on a project. The first time we met, we got into a political debate, and I gathered that he hates my guts after that. It was in the middle of the 80’s, and he hated Ronald Reagan and was very insulting to the United States. My knee-jerk reaction was “I don’t like you either.” We didn’t exactly agree on politics.
I don’t even know if he remembers that conversation or that meal, but his hair was dangling in my food and I didn’t like him afterwards. But I’d like to work with him because I think he’s a brilliant talent.
Your decades-long career has been spent drawing almost exclusively for Marvel. Do you have any interest in doing a stint on Superman or any other iconic DC characters before you hang up your pencil?
I don’t know if I ever I really cared about drawing Superman. I’ve done a couple of pin-ups, but for me it’s Batman. I think Batman’s one of the best characters in history.
Superman to me always reminded me of going to the barber when I was a kid and seeing a cover ripped off of an old comic book with the inside looking the same as the cover.
Curt Swan’s version of Superman, which was fine, but Superman was just too perfect. He never lost! So there were some of these goofy stories about Lois Lane being his wife and not knowing that he was Superman because he had a pair of glasses on. I just thought the character was silly. Never thought Batman was silly; always thought Superman was silly. Even with the quality of stories that have been put together with Superman in the last several decades. To me, if I had a choice, it would be Batman, and that’s about it. I don’t know of any other DC characters that would attract me.
 So if you’re not jumping to DC any time soon, when will we finally see you back on Spider-Man?
Probably within a year, I hope. I have to finish up the Hulk, and there are plans for something at that point. But I’ve got [Mark Millar’s] Kick-Ass to do, and the Punisher job [written by Garth Ennis] to do. I’m hoping that those will be secondary work for me, and Spider-Man will be the monthly.
I’d like to do it again. I really would. I miss doing Spider-Man. It’s a great conversation piece.
You go to a party, and somebody asks you what you do for a living. You say “I draw The Eternals,” and they say “OK, I’ll talk to you later.”
You draw Spider-Man, oh, that’s a great conversation. “Wow, you draw Spider-Man?”
Aside from the silliness of that conversation, it’s still a part of me, doing Spider-Man, from the time I was growing up. I felt like I had a connection to the character because of my father doing it all those years, and I’ve done it for many many years, and some of the best work I’ve done has been doing Spider-Man. So, I miss doing it. As for what writer I’ll work with, and what condition the stories will be when I get to them, that remains to be seen. Whether or not they’ll want me in a year, who knows? I might just fall on my face in the next year.
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