Happy Birthday John Romita Sr.

Ok so I am a day early with this one too. As I write this in my time zone it is Jan. 23rd and his birthday is Jan. 24th. I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget to shout out Happy Birthday for John Romita Sr. He had the one task that no artist would want. He had to follow up Steve Ditko on the Amazing Spider-Man. To make his debut on Spider-Man even harder he took over with issue #39. The unmasking of his arch enemy the Green Goblin. It is reported that is one reason why Steve Ditko left the book. Steve and Stan didn't agree with who the Green Goblin should be. With issue #41 Mr. Romita created his first super villan. The Rhino. Later he was the first artist to show us what Mary Jane Watson looked like. Face it tiger Spider-Man fans had hit the jackpot with John Romita Sr.
As much as I like Steve Ditko's art, I like Mr. Romita's more. One reason is that he was the first artist I every saw on Spider-man. I was too young to read when the book first came out. It was years later when I saw reprints of the first 38 issues when I started to like Mr. Ditko. Another reason is that Mr. Romita had just come over to Marvel from another company where he did romance comics. His fresh, clean style from those comics carried over into Spider-Man. It's is a good thing that it did too. At it's heart Spider-Man is a romantic soap opera. The main character just happens to have super powers. Saddly his art has rarely been seen as he went to
work behind the scenes as Marvel's art director. Here he has been able to influence upcomming artist. While his influence is still felt I would still love to see him back on a regular basis on a book. For now this is a Happy Birthday to my favorite artist John Romita Sr. Thanks for making the world a more fun place to be.