modern masters volume 18: john romita jr

M O D E R N M A S T E R S V O L U M E E I G H T E E N :

By George Khoury andEric Nolen-WeathingtonBy George Khoury andEric Nolen-Weathington

JOHN ROMITA JR.JOHN ROMITA JR.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Mark Millar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Part One: Growing up the Marvel Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Part Two: Opportunity Knocks! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Part Three: Amazing Adventures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Part Four: Finding His Stride—Full Pencils at Last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Part Five: Artist Without Fear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Part Six: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Modern Masters Volume Eighteen:

JOHN ROMITA, JR.

MODERN MASTERS: When you were growing up,who was the boss in your family, your mom or your dad?

JOHN ROMITA, JR.: It was a great combination ofboth, because my father worked at home.

MM: Okay. Your mom was kind of stern, right? Or wereyour parents into the good cop/bad cop kind of parenting?

JOHN: It was never that way. They were perfect parents.They yelled when theywere supposed to, theydisciplined when theywere supposed to, theywere nice when they weresupposed to be. They didit just right. There was noshucking and jiving, nogood cop/bad cop. Whenthey got mad, it was very,very normal, and verywell done.

MM: I was an intern forRalph [Macchio], and theonly time I ever saw himstand up and be attentiveand really serious waswhen your mom used tocome in to the office.[laughter] She’d come inwith the publishingschedule on her bulletin.

JOHN: Yeah, well, shecommanded respect. That’sthe kind of woman she is.

MM: How would youdescribe your upbringingin Queens? Was it nice or was it tough? Did you everhave to deal with bullies when you were growing up?

JOHN: Oh, God, yes. I got beat up on a regular basis.

MM: Why?

JOHN: Because I didn’t know how to shut my mouthwhen they said obnoxious things, and they were picking

on me, and I would take a swing. But I didn’t get bloodiedand cut up and beat, I was just pushed around, beat up,sat on, smacked around. I would fight back, and mybrother would fight back and save me all the time. But myparents handled it very well. We were in a rough sectionof Queens, and then we moved when I was about eight,and everything worked out great. There was nothing real-ly super-spectacular in any direction, good or bad, when Iwas growing up. A prototypical New York neighborhood.

MM: So it’s not a placeyou miss a lot? You don’thave a lot of nostalgia forit?

JOHN: I have nostalgiafor the ages of my lateteens until I was about30, because I had such agreat growing-up period,that my parents preparedme so well for adult-hood. From the time thatI got a job—at 15, or 14,whatever I was when Igot my first job, and artbecame a major part ofmy life—that part of mylife was so wonderful.Things went well, I had alot of fun, good friends,great family, and I lookupon it fondly. Beforethat, when I was a kid,my parents didn’t havemuch money, but theytreated us like gold. Wedid not want for much.

MM: Were you and your brother competitive growingup?

JOHN: I was with him, but he never was with me,because he was always smarter, better looking, stronger.So I was competitive, and that’s good. It translates wellto now, because I always have competition as an artist,and the people that are better artists than me don’t

Part 1: Growing up the Marvel Way

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know that I’m always in competition withthem, but I never run out of inspiration.

MM: Do you see yourself being very dif-ferent from Victor, personality-wise?

JOHN: I see enough of my father and mymother in both of us to see the similarities,and that’s where it ends. He’s cool, calm,and collected, and I’m an angst-ridden,paranoid banana sometimes. I worry abouteverything, and he doesn’t.

MM: Those are some of your dad’s traits,aren’t they? He worries about everything.

JOHN: Well, he may worry, but he does-n’t show it.

MM: He does show it sometimes, becausehe’ll always tell people, “I’m never goodenough.” He’s always the first one to saythat his drawings aren’t good enough.

JOHN: But he’s not as much of a worrieras I am. I don’t know where that camefrom, I don’t know which part of the fami-ly it came from, but I am an innate worrier.And I sweat everything. [laughs]

MM: Growing up, did you and yourbrother always hear your parents talkabout how tight money was?

JOHN: No. No, they were really goodabout that, and they didn’t let us know.They were very close to the vest aboutthat kind of thing. We knew that myfather was an artist. When he got firedfrom DC and didn’t have work and wasdelivering newspapers before Stan [Lee]called him, we didn’t hear about that untillong after things had gotten better.

MM: You could tell he was working a lot,while you were growing up?

JOHN: Oh, yeah.

MM: He would work in the room aboveyou guys, right? The attic was above yourbedroom?

JOHN: Right above our bedroom, that’scorrect.

MM: So you could see the light on andknow that he was up there?

JOHN: That’s right. I slept well sometimesknowing he was up there to protect mefrom all the monsters that were comingout from underneath my bed.

MM: At the same time, were you con-cerned, “Wow, my dad’s working his tailoff”?

JOHN: Well, that wasn’t a concern on mypart. That was wonder and awe, and now,interestingly enough, it translates directlyto me and my son, because my son alwaysworries about me working unbelievablehours.

MM: Would he have his radio on or wouldhe just draw and keep very quiet?

Previous Page: 1960sphoto of (left to right)John Jr.; mother, Virginia;and brother, Victor.Above: John’s pencilsand his father’s inks fromAmazing Spider-Man #400.

Spider-Man ™ and ©2008Marvel Characters, Inc.

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JOHN: I think he had music on some-times. He had talk radio on, and he wouldlisten to a guy through the night. Butmusic, I don’t know when he would putmusic or talk radio on; I don’t know ifthere was any rhyme or reason, but, yes,he would keep the radio on all night longto keep him company.

MM: Would you have conversations, earlyon, with your dad, about movies and comics?

JOHN: He always spoke to us about moviesand stories. He wanted us to see certainmovies, or he would watch movies on televi-sion, and we would watch certain TVshows. But TV wasn’t as important, unless itwas a movie; TV wasn’t important to usbecause there wasn’t that much of it. Wewould be out playing sports. We learned tobe good athletes from my father. My broth-er and I were raised on sandlot sports, andwe got to be damn good at all the sportsbecause of it. And our father taught us howto play all the sports. It was great.

MM: Your dad is a big baseball fan, right?

JOHN: Oh, yeah, huge.

MM: Did some of that rub off on you guys?

JOHN: Absolutely. Baseball is my forte asa hobby. It’s what I love.

MM: What are the Romitas, Mets fans?

JOHN: I am what my father taught mehow to be, which is a New York fan. I’m a

Yankees-first fan because I grew up beforethe Mets came around. But I root for theMets more than the Yankees because theMets need to be rooted for more than theYankees. [laughter]

MM: When did you start having an incli-nation towards art? When do you remem-ber starting to draw, and starting to doodle?

JOHN: I was doodling from the time I waseight or nine or ten, and then, when gram-mar school allowed us to expand our incli-nations... I think it all came to a head mid-way through high school when I realizedthat in a year or two I was going to haveto pick a major in college, and the onlything I was above average at was art. So itwas a slow process. I think as I got moreadulation, so to speak, from people, orcompliments from my father, and then I’dgo to the office and get a complimentoccasionally, it just perpetuated itself. Andsomewhere around my sophomore year ofhigh school, when I realized that soon Iwould have to pick a major, it all kind ofcame together.

MM: So your dad, he always encouragedyour art? He never told you, “Look whatI’m going through”?

JOHN: No. But if I told him I would loveto be what he is, he’d say, “Are you nuts?Look at this! I don’t get paid much, and I’mworking long hours.” He didn’t discourageme, but he didn’t encourage me. He told meI had to get an education, and so on.

Below: A panel frompage 2 of the father andson collaboration forAmazing Spider-Man #400.Next Page: Daredevilplayed two crucial roles inJohn’s career. 1) Seeing hisdad’s cover for Daredevil#12 as a child sparkedthe initial desire in him tobecome an artist. 2) Itwas during his 34-issuerun on Daredevil (fromwhich this panel comes)that he really began devel-oping his style and alreadystrong storytelling ability.The inks here are by thelegendary Al Williamson.

Daredevil, Spider-Man ™ and©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Part 2: OpportunityKnocks!

MM: So it was through Marie that you got into Marvel?

JOHN: Yeah, my father didn’t want to be that guy thatperpetuated the father/son thing with all the problemsthat that would entail. I don’t know if he discussed itwith Marie or not, but he told me, “I’m not going togive you a job. I’m not going to keep you from a job.”

MM: How did this come about? You just needed a sum-mer job or something?

JOHN: Yeah, I was up there inthe summer doing sketches andpin-ups. I would be a pest, andthey would allow me to do asketch or two here and there.And Marie said, “If you want todo sketches in your spare time,I’ll give you the work. I’ll giveyou five dollars a sketch.” Andthat allowed me to do workfor the British department[Marvel UK], under Marie’saegis, and it went from there.That was basically it. It wasjust a matter of Marie agree-ing to a formula. In otherwords, “Yeah, you do thesketches and I’ll pay you.”That was it. Going from alark of a thing to, “Hey,these sketches aren’t bad.You ought to do somesketches for us.” That wasit. And then, “Listen,there’s a British depart-ment that’ll give you reg-ular work on sketches, ifyou want to start doingfreelance work for them.”

MM: So you were doing work for the British depart-ment, for their black-&-white magazines, right?

JOHN: Right—in 1976. They would split the books intotwo parts, so they’d have to produce a new cover and anew splash page for the second part when they were print-ed over in England. That’s what I was doing. Back then

there was a definitive British department, and Larry Lieberwas the head of it. Bob Budiansky was also there, and hebecame another sketch artist. I don’t know how long I didwork for the British department, but one day Iron Manopened up, and Scott Edelman at the time was the editor.He said, “I don’t believe in nepotism, but I don’t believe inanti-nepotism, either. I don’t believe in that. So, if you cando the work, let’s see what you can do.”

Actually, I think I had done the six-page Spider-Manjob before that. Archie Goodwin

allowed me to do thissix-page fill-in backupstory, “Chaos at theCoffee Bean” first. Then,after doing that, and AlMilgrom saving it, theyoffered me Iron Man. AndI was also working on staffas a production assistant.

Let’s see if I get thiscorrect now. After work-ing in the British depart-ment, there was an open-ing as a production assis-tant, and I think I took thatright after the Britishdepartment. I continued todo little pin-ups and stuff. Idid that for 18 months. Ithink during that 18-monthperiod, I did the six-pageSpider-Man story, and thenwith that, they saw that Icould tell a story and theyoffered me Iron Man. And thatended my production assis-tant job. I think that was thechronology.

MM: I believe somewhere itsays you worked for Roy

Thomas. What did you do for Roy?

JOHN: As a production assistant, I was Roy’s liaisonbetween he and John Buscema for their work on Conan.Roy was out in Los Angeles, and John Buscema was herein New York. John Buscema would send the work to the

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office, and I would register it, I would set it up and get itready for Roy. I would photocopy it, and process it, soto speak.

MM: Were you comfortable there? I mean, these werepeople that were your dad’s friends and co-workers.

JOHN: Yeah, but I still had to be an artist.

MM: Was that one of the reasons you wanted to bethere, too? It was someplace that you were familiar with.You’d heard all the names, and your dad always talkedabout these people when you were young.

JOHN: Yeah, sure. And going up to the office andworking with them was interesting, especially withMarie and people like that. And meeting John Buscema,

Jack Kirby, and Don Heck, and DanAdkins, and all these great people. Theywere all wonderful to me.

MM: At the same time there was anexpansion going on in the mid-’70s atMarvel. A lot of new guys, guys thatwould be your editors and productionpeople, were all starting to come in.Ralph came in, Roger Stern, and someother familiar names.

JOHN: Right.

MM: So you got to see an interestingphase.

JOHN: Yeah! True.

MM: What sort of work did you do,production-wise? Did you have to dostats and all that kind of stuff?

JOHN: Yeah, photocopies. I was a gofer.I was doing everything and anything. Ilearned a lot of the process of the comicsindustry. I learned production work. Ilearned to register. When I say “register,”I don’t mean register things in words, Imean lining pages up to be photocopies.It was a very, very archaic process backthen, and there was a photostat roomwhere things were actually photocopiedfor print and for production. And we hadto register things with register marks,and clean things up of rubber cement,and touch up artwork, and make repairs.There were corrections. I did everything.I even washed windows, so I really dideverything. I mean, it was a great learningexperience for 18 months.

MM: Did it humble you? You had to start from the verybottom.

JOHN: Oh, yeah! I started from the bottom. That wasthe agreement. They weren’t going to let this punkbecome anything unless he earned it. I got crap. I gottreated like crap from the majority of people my age ora little bit older. The adults treated me with respectbecause they loved my father, but the younger peoplethat were slightly older than me were rough on me. Andeven artists, some of my age, were rough on me.

MM: A lot of people in comics are like that. You’ve beendoing this for a while. Nobody knows how to say a niceword or a compliment.

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JOHN: I got treated like crap by somepeople. I still get comments, 25 years afterthe fact, from people saying, “You stillwouldn’t have been anywhere without yourfather’s last name, ha ha ha ha.”

MM: Early on, did your father tell you notto worry about that kind of stuff? I mean,even though he was worried about all thatnepotism stuff, he told you not to worry.

JOHN: No, no. What he told me was, “Tellthem to blow it out their asses.” He said,“Pay no attention. Ignore people. Just doyour work, and let the work speak for itself.”

MM: Did you ever heard the story of JoeDiMaggio, Jr.? How being in his dad’sshadow sort of crushed him?

JOHN: Yeah, I’ve read stories about it, yes,but I knew my place, and I knew who wasgood and who wasn’t. I wasn’t that good,but I was a hard worker, and if I saw a littlebit of progress, it negated any of the nega-tivity. I also was the pugnacious type. Ifsomebody said something to me, I wasready to take a swing. I wanted to lay peo-ple out who were just obnoxious to me,and up until my 30s, I wanted to punchsome people, because a lot of peopledeserved it. There were some boneheadsthat worked as editors and assistant editorsup there, and they wouldn’t like me forvarious reasons, and so on. And I learned alot from my father about being patient andjust when to shut my mouth, and when tofold my hands and sit on them.

MM: It seems to me some editors just wantto control somebody, namely their artists.There’s a lot of politics that goes on thatdoesn’t necessarily help the art form, itself.

JOHN: Right.

MM: You said you would also do art cor-rections?

JOHN: Oh, yeah. I did corrections onanything and everything, sure. Any timethey wanted a figure fixed, whatever theyneeded me to do, I was doing everything,and I learned a lot of stuff.

MM: Did it take your dad some time toget used to you being there?

JOHN: You’ll have to ask him that. I don’tknow. He may have been enjoying it,while at the same time being a little bitworried about it.

MM: You tried to work more with Marieand some of the other people?

JOHN: I tried not to bother him. I wouldgo and have lunch with him, and thenwhen my mother started working up at theoffice, we would have breakfast togetherand go in together, and it worked greatthat way. But I tried not to bother him.

MM: So when you did the “Chaos at theCoffee Bean” story, that was a big deal foryou at that point?

JOHN: Oh, God, yes. It was Spider-Man!I was doing Spider-Man! Not long after myfather was working on Spider-Man, I wasdoing a six-page story.

Previous Page: WhileJohn served as a liaisonbetween Roy Thomasand John Buscema forpart of their long run onConan, John would get topencil a tale of theCimmerian about tenyears later. This page isfrom the black-&-whiteConan Saga magazine—issue #14 to be specific.Inks by Armando Gil.Below: A photo of Johnat his table in the MarvelBullpen taken some timein the late ’70s.

Conan ™ and ©2008 ConanProperties International, LLC.

Part 3: AmazingAdventures

MM: How did you end up being on Amazing Spider-Man?

JOHN: I don’t remember how it happened.

MM: Was it Denny O’Neil who was the editor?

JOHN: I think so, yeah. I think he wrote some of theissues. Or did he write some of the Iron Man? I don’tremember. I think there was a certain novelty in havinganother Romita on it, and that I was more thancapable, they felt, to do the book, so they said,why not.

MM: Did you think it was going to happen thatfast? I think it only took you four years to getthere. It didn’t take very long.

JOHN: No, it didn’t take very long. Instead ofworrying about what people thought, I thought,“I’m very flattered.”

MM: How did your dad feel about you comingon that title?

JOHN: He was thrilled. He was thrilled.

MM: The first go-round on Spider-Man, did youhave a specific approach that you wanted to tryout? Did you have an idea of what you weregoing to do on that book when you started?

JOHN: No. I didn’t have an idea what I wasgoing to do for many, many, many years. Ijust went along with the best I could do andwhatever came out on time.

MM: To me, it always felt that you andRoger Stern worked perfectly together. Didyou like working with him?

JOHN: Yeah, I did, because he’s a goodfriend. But I wasn’t good enough to be insuch control other than storytelling. I knewwhat I was doing, but I was also just flyingby the seat of my pants and trying to get asmuch done as possible, and get the stuffpresentable, and base it on what I hadlearned for years before, and what I felt myfather would do. That was all I could thinkof, because I wasn’t that good.

MM: What did you think of his Spider-Man work? It hasthat quirkiness, like everything that your dad has doneand what Ditko and Stan Lee had done, all mixedtogether. What you and Rog were able to do sort ofbrought back the character to the classic roots.

JOHN: Sure, sure. I think we both were trying that,because we both needed to base it on something greatinstead of relying on our own wiles.

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Previous Page: Coverart for John’s first issue ofhis first run on AmazingSpider-Man as the regularpenciler. Inks by AlMilgrom.Above: More of John’searly Amazing Spider-Manbreakdowns. The pencilsare all there, but it’s left upto the inker/finisher as tohow to spot the blacks.

Spider-Man and all related char-acters ™ and ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

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MM: Did that stuff appeal to you? Theway he brought back Spider-Man, he madehim feel like a human being again, wherehe struggled with paying the rent. It reallyfelt like he lived in New York, and that theguys that were doing the book knew whatthe experience was like of living in NewYork.

JOHN: Yes, that’s very good. That’s veryaccurate.

MM: There’s a quote Rog told me that Ithought you might like to hear. I askedhim how you two worked together, and hesaid, “Our differences were mainly cultural.J.R.’s a hip, young guy from the city, andI’m a schlub from the Midwest. Now that Ithink of it, he’s Spider-Man and I’m PeterParker, and together it all worked out.”[John laughs]

JOHN: I don’t know about “hip.” If hefeels that way, that’s fine. I think that wasjust Roger’s way of being funny. We wereboth relatively young and inexperienced inthe business, but with enough experienceto get by.

MM: But you and [he] were on the samepage; you were in sync for the first time[with your writer], basically?

JOHN: Yes.

MM: Why didn’t you guys ever collabo-rate again?

JOHN: That, I don’t know. That’s a greatquestion, and nobody seems to know why.I don’t know why that has happened. Imoved on to other jobs, he moved on toother jobs, and then we never crossedpaths again professionally. I don’t knowwhy.

MM: During that book you went througha lot of inkers. Was there a particular rea-son why they were trying out so manyguys with you?

JOHN: No, I don’t know. [laughs] First, itwas a long time ago. Second, what Ialways thought were the reasons for thingschanged recently when I found out whatcertain people were really like. I found outthe truth about a lot of people. A lot of the

people from back then were phonies,which I didn’t realize until many, manyyears later, and it disappointed me to findout that people were that way. But whatthat did to me was make me realize thatthe way things went back then was doneeither for the wrong reasons, or for disin-genuous reasons, and that’s a shame.

MM: But that’s the thing. When I was atMarvel, that’s the only thing I learned.Everything’s political.

JOHN: Well, I think that’s true of anyoffice full of people.

MM: Well, when you’re working with artists, you’dthink it would be a creative environment. And that’s theone thing I was thrown off by—“This is no differentthan working in some business office.”

JOHN: Yeah, but if you think about it, artists and writ-ers are flaky, andthey’re creative,and I think allthat does is exag-gerate theirduplicity, ampli-fy theirduplicity,becausethey’re cre-ative.

MM: Towards theend of that runthey pairedyou up withKlaus [Janson],and I felt thathe was the firstinker that reallymatched what you weredoing. He reallybrought the moodthat you had in yourpencils. Did you feelthat was the case?

JOHN: I was so happythat Klaus was work-ing with me,because I wassuch a fan of hisstuff. And wedidn’t get achance to worktogether againuntil aboutseven years lateron the Punisher.But, yeah, I wasthrilled to havehim work on anissue of Spider-Man.And now here we are,again, working on Spider-Man.

MM: It always seemed to me that everyone theybrought in before Klaus was trying to bring out yourdad in your artwork.

JOHN: Everybody was, because my father and JohnBuscema and Jack Kirby were still very prominent inpeople’s minds.

MM: You dad and John Buscema had set the house styleat Marvel. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, that was thestyle—until the Image guys came along.

JOHN: Sure. So we werejust trying to do our

best, and everybodywas basically emu-lating the guysthat were betterthan they were,and that wasthem.

MM: Were thereany particular sto-ries that you likedfrom that firstrun?

JOHN: Yeah,theJuggernaut

two-parter.

MM: That’s thefirst story afteryou took overthe title, right? It’s

the one wherepeople started notic-

ing your work.

JOHN: I think I startedfeeling some control in my

stuff. Yeah, that’s possible.

MM: I think everything cametogether here. You had the humor,

you had the action. You didn’t haveall the soap opera elements going yet.

JOHN: Right, right.

MM: When you were design-ing the Hobgoblin, did youwant it to be something differ-ent from the Green Goblin?

JOHN: They told me to base it loosely on the GreenGoblin, but be a little bit different. Those were myinstructions.

MM: You wanted to make him more evil-looking?

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MM: How did the offer come to do Uncanny? Did thatcome from Louise Simonson?

JOHN: I don’t remember whocame up to me.

MM: It might have beenShooter?

JOHN: I don’t remem-ber who came to mefirst. I know Louisewas the editor on thatbook, but I don’tknow whose sugges-tion it was first.Maybe it was Shooter,I don’t know.

MM: Did you feel likeyou were thrown intothis thing with enoughtime to prepare?

JOHN: Uhhh.... Well,they might have felt Ihad enough time, but Iwasn’t prepared com-pletely. And yet I gotbetter. I improved leapsand bounds because ofworking on that title.

MM: Who decided to putyou, right away, in that firstissue, X-Men #175? It was astrange how they passed the arttorch from Paul Smith to youmid-issue.

JOHN: Oh, that was because Paulran out of time. He had a schedulingproblem, so they asked me to do eightpages over a weekend. [laughter]

MM: You didn’t think that was a strange wayof starting?

JOHN: Well, it was an emergency, so it wasn’t

strange. They said, “Listen, it’s got to be done. Can youget it done by Monday?” I said, “Yeah.”

MM: Did you have Paul’s pages to look at?

JOHN: Yes, and I tried to make it look likehis stuff, since it was the middle of the

book. I believed in doing a slow grad-ing into the next artist. I didn’t wantto just shock everybody. At least,that’s what I said, when I couldhave just done my own stuff. SoI did a little bit of Paul Smith-esque stuff the first issue or so.

MM: Right from the start, itwas a difficult book. Also,you hadn’t done a teambook before.

JOHN: Right. Yeah, Ididn’t realize it wouldbe that tough.

MM: Did you feelthe pressure of,“Oh, people aregoing to expectPaul Smith”?

JOHN: Oh, yeah.I got nasty lettersand everything. Oh,

sure. Absolutely.

MM: Was this the firsttime you had to deal

with a lot of criticism?

JOHN: Yeah, that was thefirst time I felt the wrath ofthe fans.

MM: Did you read theComics Journal issue where, I

think, Heidi McDonald wrote apiece, “What’s wrong with the X-Men?” I

couldn’t believe she was so harsh on you. Some ofthe issues she criticizes are my favorite ones that you did.

Part 4: Finding His Stride—Full Pencils at Last

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Previous Page: 1983sketch of Wolverine.Above: Cover art forUncanny X-Men #196.Inks by Terry Austin.

Wolverine, X-Men ™ and©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

JOHN: What, this is a recent article?

MM: No, it’s an old article. This isfrom 1985.

JOHN: Oh, okay.

MM: She had some issues with someof your art and the writing on X-Menat that time.

JOHN: Oh, okay. So it was an arti-cle about my run that she did backwhen my run was ongoing?

MM: Yeah, back in 1985 or so.

JOHN: Well, that’s fine. [laughter]You can only imagine what it’s like tohave the Internet so prevalent now.

MM: Oh, it’s so much worse.

JOHN: Yeah, there are a lot of nastypeople out there. What are you goingto do?

MM: This scenario happens withevery X-Men artist. When John Byrneleft, who could ever replace him?

JOHN: Right, everybody gets theirown backlash, absolutely.

MM: And then, once you left, I’msure the same thing happened.“Yeah, he’s no John Romita.”

JOHN: Ennnnh, I don’t know aboutthat. [laughter]

MM: Working with ChrisClaremont, were you able to collab-orate with him, or did you just workfrom full scripts?

JOHN: Basically, he just gave verytight plots. They weren’t reallyscripts, they were plots, but his werevery tight.

MM: Were you able to discuss with himwhat you were going to do in the script?

JOHN: No. I was a young artist, and hewas an experienced writer. It was basically“do what he writes.”

MM: He never invited ideas from you?

Most of the X-Men artists that I’ve spokenwith said that was the way they workedwith him. They talked about what theywanted to do, and pitched in ideas....

JOHN: No. I just did exactly what theyasked.

MM: So you never expressed to him, “Oh,I wouldn’t mind doing more Wolverine ormore Colossus?”

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JOHN: Nope. Never got into that conver-sation.

MM: How would you approach thoseplots? How would you break them down?

JOHN: I would just start thumbnailing, dolittle notes and little doodles to pace outthe whole book, and then start from thefirst page.

MM: Did you feel like there was some-times way too much in there for 22 pages?

JOHN: Yeah, it was very dense, absolutely.

MM: One of the things I liked hearingyou say,

for World War Hulk’s last issue, you thoughtthere was too much going on, and you need-ed more pages.

JOHN: Absolutely. That book should havebeen done in 60 pages.

MM: Reading some of those ChrisClaremont issues, I thought there were acouple issues there you could havestretched out more.

JOHN: Yes. That’s very true. They werevery crowded.

MM: There was nothing you could tellChris? Like, “Can we cut this?”

JOHN: No. That wasn’t done back then.You didn’t do that to any writer.

MM: Is that something you gain withexperience? That from now on, you’re justnot going to do nine panels on a pagewith action?

JOHN: Like I said, I was a young guy,and I just followed orders.

Right: Kitten with asoulsword! Panel fromUncanny X-Men #203.Below: Page 6 ofUncanny X-Men #203.Inks by Al Williamson.Next Page: Cover artfor Uncanny X-Men #183.Inks by Dan Green.

Juggernaut, X-Men ™ and©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

you able to do things you weren’t able todo the first time?

JOHN: Yes, absolutely. I was completelyin control of the storytelling, and that wasas much of a turning point for me asDaredevil was. I loved that. That run on IronMan was as much fun as I’ve ever had on abook.

MM: Was it your idea to bring in Fin FangFoom and all that stuff?

JOHN: Oh, no, it was John’s idea to bringit in. But the redesign of the Living Laserand a couple other villains was fun, too.

MM: Why haven’t you ever done theAvengers? You’ve done practically every-thing at Marvel except that.

JOHN: I have done an issue of theAvengers, a fill-in.

MM: Just an issue, but not a run.

JOHN: Right, correct. They haven’t askedme. If they asked me, I would consider it.

MM: Was there a particular reason you didthe Cable mini-series?

JOHN: Again, they asked me.

MM: What did you think of those twoissues? Because that sort of brought youback into the thick of things. That wasduring the height of the Jim Lee era of X-Men.

JOHN: Right, right.

MM: You’ve got these two books—two48-page issues—that basically don’t reallytell you anything. It was supposed to tellyou the origin of Cable, but it doesn’t real-ly tell you much.

JOHN: That’s true. I don’t know, otherthan them asking me to do it, and I agreed.I don’t have a very good grasp of the rea-sons why things happened back then.

39

Previous Page: SilverSurfer lends Daredevil ahelping hand (along withsome cosmic power)against Mephisto.Daredevil #282, pages 24and 25. Inks by AlWilliamson.Below: Action from the“Armor Wars II” story-line—from Iron Man#262 and #266, respectively. Inks by BobWiacek.

Daredevil, Iron Man, Jim Rhodes,Mephisto, Silver Surfer ™ and©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

JOHN: They asked me to do thePunisher/Batman crossover, so I asked forone month off of X-Men to do thePunisher/Batman. They gave it to me, andthen they wouldn’t let me back onbecause Joe Madureira was discovered.That was the time that I was very upsetwith the editor-in-chief, who didn’t backme up on that. That was another pointwhere I was tempted to leave.

MM: I’ve seen you mention that you foundout later on that he didn’t like your art-work very much, either.

JOHN: Yes. I found out that Bob Harraswas a phony, that’s correct.

MM: Oddly, he probably needed youmore than you needed him.

JOHN: He was pleasant to me up front,and then didn’t like my work behind my

back. But listen, people are that way. Hedidn’t want to cause trouble at the compa-ny, so he let me work without telling mehe wasn’t thrilled with my work, and I waskept off of a lot of books, and I wasscrewed out of doing the X-Men by KellyCorvese when Bob Harras should havedone the right thing, and he didn’t.

MM: Kelly was one of his guys.

JOHN: He was his assistant editor; he stuckby his assistant editor. And that was proba-bly the time where I was very disenchantedwith people who I felt were my friends.

MM: So the whole time you were workingthere, you never got those kind of vibes?

JOHN: I never got that feeling. The factthat I couldn’t get to a certain point oncertain books bothered me, but I alwaysthought it was because of other reasons,

Previous Page Top:Joker and Jigsaw enjoy aday on the beach. John’spencils for a two-pagespread for Punisher/Batman #2, the projecthe left (he thought onlytemporarily) Uncanny X-Men to do.Previous Page Top: ThePunisher on the move,from Punisher War Zone#2. Inks by Klaus Janson.Previous PageBottom: A quiet pagefrom Uncanny X-Men#309. Inks by Dan Green.

Charles Xavier, Jigsaw, Punisher™ and ©2008 Michael Allred.

42

MM: When did you feel that your talent and your com-mitment to Marvel were finally appreciated? You wentthrough some problems in the early ’90s. When did youfeel like you were part of the team?

JOHN: [chuckles] I never felt safe enough. I probably stilldon’t feel content enough, because I’m always worriedthat my work isn’t good enough. Always felt that way,always will. I’ve just always been my own

worst critic. So even when they showed me apprecia-tion, I didn’t feel good enough about the work. It was aconflict trying to get better, always working hard. But Iwould say the mid-’80s was when I started feeling like Iwas doing something, and then the early ’90s, when Istarted working with Frank Miller, kind of secured it. Istarted getting some nice reactions from my fellowartists.

MM: Have there ever been times for you thatthis was just a job? What do you do to staymotivated, to not think like that?

JOHN: I hate to say money, but to survive,you’ve got to make a good living, a decent liv-ing, and I always want to have a nice roof overmy wife’s head, that kind of thing. So I’malways... I guess I’m greedy. [laughter] Greed isgood, bordering on being paranoid about it,but I have the urge to be the best. And I don’tknow when I’ll know that I’m the best. I don’tknow if it’ll come in the form of a big sign outon Times Square, or if it will ever occur tome. I hope it never occurs to me, becausethen I’ll stop getting better. But it’s the designto be the best, and the need for money, likeanybody else.

MM: There haven’t been any times when youfelt like the work was beneath you a little bit?

JOHN: As an artist, you mean?

MM: Yeah, as an artist; a time you weren’tinto what you were doing. In 30 years, Ithink, once in a while everybody hits abump.

JOHN: Yeah, there were times that I was-n’t too happy with the industry, but thathad nothing to do with the industry, perse, it was because of some of the people.

MM: But you never let it affect your work?I mean, say there was a book that didn’tturn out the way they promised you, aftera while you don’t go, “Whatever,” and justget it out of the way?

46

Part 5: Artist Without Fear

47

JOHN: No, I don’t think I ever felt that. Inever got complacent, never got cocky,never got to the point where I wasn’tenjoying the work.

MM: Star Brand, for example, that waspromised to be one thing, and right awayit just fell apart.

JOHN: Well, that was, first of all, a badcareer move on my part. And, second, itfell apart because of various and sundryreasons that I’m not going to go into.

MM: But you never felt like it affectedyour art, though? No matter what hap-pened, you did the best you could, always?

JOHN: Yeah, I always did the best I could.I don’t think there ever was a point where Islacked, honestly. And I don’t think I ever,ever slacked and said, “Let me get this overwith.” Because there were days when, ifyou didn’t do a good job, you weren’tgoing to get work the next day. I don’tknow if I’ve been in that situation in a longtime, but before royalties were sure things,you worked for every dime you made, andyou also worked to get your next dime. So Ialways had that feeling in my gut that,“Gotta do my best, because I have toplease everybody, and then I have toplease the fans.”

MM: Redesigning Mephisto. Why did youfeel like you had to do that, sort of makinghim into Blackheart?

JOHN: I didn’t make him into Blackheart.I made him look like a disgusting demon,and then Blackheart kind of morphed onhis own into what he is. It always botheredme that Mephisto looked like a guy in acostume. The devil doesn’t wear tights anda cape, that’s all. So I just thought of some-thing demonic. That’s all. Why I did it isbecause it bothered me that Mephistowore a cape and shorts and boots.

MM: For years they stuck to your designup until recently, right?

JOHN: Yeah! What does he look like in“One More Day”?

MM: He looks like the old Mephisto, theone John Buscema drew.

JOHN: Okay. I didn’t say my idea wasgreat. But, as the devil, you can morphinto any shape you want.

MM: What was your thinking going intoMan Without Fear?

JOHN: Originally I wanted to do a graph-ic novel with Frank, a Wolverine graphicnovel. But he said, “Nah, everybody’sdoing Wolverine. Let’s try a Daredevil job.”Then he said, “I have this script for a tele-play, a screenplay that didn’t pan out, and Ican adjust it into a comics plot, so let’s dothat.” Kind of a “Daredevil: Year One,” wasthe conversation, and that’s the way it was.

Previous Page: Likemost of Ann Nocenti’sDaredevil stories, this wasas much a psychologicaldrama as anything else.Daredevil #268, page 22.Inks by Al Williamson.Above : Cover art forDaredevil #280, featuringMephisto.

Daredevil, Mephisto ™ and©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Trading card artfor the Marvel Universe IIIcard set.Next Page: MattMurdock, meet ElektraNatchios. Daredevil: TheMan Without Fear #2,page 28. Inks by KlausJanson.

Daredevil, Elektra, Spider-Man,Wolverine ™ and ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

48

MM: Was everything there in the script?

JOHN: Well, it was not—he filled a lot ofstuff in that he wanted to say. And then,after I started it, it became even bigger,because he threw an addendum in thatended up being 80-something pages extra.But he said from the get-go that he had tochange it slightly from its first state, fromthe rejected screenplay.

MM: Did you break up your story from hisscript, or from what he was giving you, thenew notes?

JOHN: No, it got broken up into five partsby the editors. They thought 140 pages ofgraphic novel would be too cost-ineffective,and they felt they had to break it up first,sell as much as they could as the five-partseries, and then anything it sold as a hard-cover or a graphic novel would be cake.

MM: Yet, the majority of the time youwere working on it, you thought it wasgoing to be a graphic novel, right?

JOHN: I knew towards the end. Close tothe end they were telling me they were

considering five parts.

MM: Was that a little disappointing for you?

JOHN: Ennnh, a little bit. I wanted it tobe a graphic novel first, but it workedokay. It worked fine.

MM: With Miller, was it a close relation-ship while you were working on that?

JOHN: Not at all. He gave me a plot, dis-appeared to work on one of the Robocopmovies, then appeared later to add theaddendum, and then disappeared again todo another movie. He was not around a lotbecause he was so busy. No problem.

MM: So you were pretty free to do whatyou could do with the storytelling. Mostof the time you could think up what youwanted to do in a scene, right?

JOHN: It was a lot like working with JohnByrne. Frank knew what I could do, andallowed me to do whatever I wanted.

MM: Is that one of the few times you basi-cally lobbied for a writer, that you wantedto work with him directly?

63

because they know what they like, visually,and they always lend a hand as far as com-ing up with nice scenarios, and then theylet you carry it where it should be.

MM: It felt like you never got tired ofworking on that book. Did you?

JOHN: No, not tired of it, but I think Ihad done enough when I stopped.

MM: But I thought you were just gettingstarted. [laughs]

JOHN: No, I was ready to try some otherstuff. I got a chance to do other stuff, and Iwas ready to go.

MM: There’s a comment Jurgens made,where he said that you were born to drawThor. [John laughs] It came easy to you,doing all that crackle and power?

JOHN: Yeah, that was alot of fun, because I wasa big fan of Kirby’s Thor.

MM: I remember yourcomment about want-ing to make him a god,not just a super-hero.

JOHN: I liked the more godly aspect of it,yes.

MM: What was wrong with him before?

JOHN: Nothing was wrong, I just felt thathe’s supposed to be a god, and let’s treat itmore that way. I like Odin. I don’t like theEarth, per se, when it comes to Thor. Iwanted to see a lot of stuff up in Asgard.

MM: It was all the things you couldn’t dowith Spidey, right? You could do cloudsand landscapes and all sorts of locations.

JOHN: Right.

MM: And you had never done anythinglike that before, had you?

JOHN: No, I guess not. I can’t think ofanything else before that. No.

Previous Page: Actionon an Asgardian scale.The arc of Thor’s ham-mer and the radiatingexplosion focus yourattention to the point ofimpact—the money shotof the page. The creaturealmost seems to befalling into the secondpanel, which naturallyleads the eyes there andonto the rest of thestory. Thor #12, page 27.Inks by Klaus Janson.Above: John’s pencilsand Klaus’ inks for page1 of Thor #18.

Thor and all related characters™ and ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

Above: A quiet momentfrom Incredible Hulk #27.John has staggered thepanels to help differenti-ate the switches in thephone conversation.Next Page: Promo artfor the creator-ownedGray Area series, thoughyou may notice it was atone time called GrayWatch.

Bruce Banner, Hulk and all relatedcharacters ™ and ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc. Gray Area ™ and©2008 John Romita, Jr. and GlenBrunswick.

64

MM: So was it weird being out of the city?[laughter]

JOHN: Yeah, so to speak.

MM: How did the whole Bruce Jones Hulkthing come about?

JOHN: Again, I guess they saw me doingthe [Thor] stuff and the big, bulky, kick-asshuge characters, and they felt like theHulk would be a great follow-up becausethey liked the way I handled Kirby’s char-acters.

MM: When you were doing Hulk, was itsupposed to feel a little bit more like theTV show—more of a loner-on-the-runbook?

JOHN: No, the TV show wasn’t men-tioned. It was more or less just Bruce’s story,and the loner/wandering character was nota play off of the TV show. No, not at all.

MM: Did you embrace the quiet story-telling it had at the beginning?

JOHN: Sure. Sure.

MM: There was a lot of mystery to thattitle. We didn’t know if Banner was still theHulk, or what was going on.

JOHN: Right, we were not sure. I enjoyedthat aspect.

MM: How did your first creator-ownedseries, Gray Area, come about?

JOHN: It was my idea from the beginning,and I ran into Glen Brunswick, and Glencame up with a nice combination of thetwo of our ideas. He liked my idea, then heexpanded on it, and it became what it is, sowe’re co-creators. It would take severalhours to explain where I got the idea from.

MM: Was the original intention to pitchthis as a film, with the comic acting as partof the pitch?

JOHN: It was a creator-owned story. Westill hope it becomes a film, and we’re stillworking on that. Yeah, I had higher hopesfor that than the standard comic book.

MM: It came out after the boom periodwas over.

JOHN: No, it didn’t come out during aboom period, but it served its purpose. Itwasn’t meant to make a lot of money asmuch as it was meant to get it out for thefilm’s sake.

MM: What made you think taking yourproperty to Image was the right thing?Why didn’t you just take it to Marvel?

JOHN: I did take it to Marvel. Marvelaccepted it, but they didn’t have a creator-owned template available at that moment,so they gave me the opportunity to go toImage under the idea that it was only threeissues. They gave me a waiver. “Go toImage, and when the creator-owned tem-plate is up and running, we’ll deal with that

66

a couple years down the road.” So it wasMarvel’s idea.

MM: Were these themes that always inter-ested you? That sort of, Heaven and Helland Limbo, that gray area, I guess?

JOHN: Yes. That’s correct.

MM: How did you meet Glen Brunswick?

JOHN: I just ran into him, believe it ornot, at the opening of a movie. There wasa party afterwards that I had gotten invitedto, and Glen was there, and he said, “Hey,I know you. You work for Marvel Comics.John Romita.” We just ran into each otherat a party, that’s all.

MM: When you were thinking of thestory, did you think thatfans might not expectsomething like this fromyou? That this was comingout of left field somewhat?

JOHN: I didn’t think it wasso much of a foreign ideathat it wouldn’t be accepted.I was curious as to what thereaction would be to a storythat I had created, myself. Ididn’t have any precon-ceived notions about it. Ijust was hoping that itwouldn’t fall upon deaf ears,and that someday somebodywould turn it into a movie,and that’s still my ambition.

MM: In essence, it’s basi-cally a love story, right?

JOHN: It’s got some reli-gious overtones, it’s gotsome supernatural over-tones, of course, and it’s gota lot of love story in it, yeah.

MM: Is the story over? Oris there still more to tell?

JOHN: There’s plentymore. We’re going to workon getting some of that out.

MM: Tom Brevoort seemsto be one of your main edi-tors at [Marvel]. Is there areason why it’s usually himthat you work with?

JOHN: I like working withhim. He’s a good man andhe’s a quality editor, andI’ve worked with him manytimes, and I’ll work withhim again.

Below: John’s pencils forGray Area #1, page 18.Next Page: The variantcover to Gray Area #1,and the cover to GrayArea #2, both inked byKlaus Janson.

Gray Area ™ and ©2008 JohnRomita, Jr. and Glen Brunswick.

78

MM: What’s a typical working day for you? When doyou start in the day?

JOHN: I start around nine or ten in the morning andwork until eleven o’clock at night, so I put in ten,eleven, twelve hours a day each day, six days a week.

MM: What do you do tokeep yourself focused?Do you listen to music?

JOHN: Talk radio. I’m apolitical junkie. And I lis-ten to a lot of music onweekends, and comedies,actually, British comedies.

MM: Do you have anysecurity blankets thatyou keep around? Arethere things you likehaving by you as youwork?

JOHN: The rest of myfamily over the place.

MM: Is there anythingelse, like toys?

JOHN: No, not reallytoys, but there’s a lot ofcomedy to be gotten to,and what I mean is, I lis-ten to comedy on satel-lite radio, I listen tocomedy on cable, rerunsof British comedies.Those are my toys, basi-cally—a lot of comedies.

MM: Do you have any favorite art books that you keepnearby?

JOHN: Yeah, I keep a lot of anatomy books—illustra-tive anatomy, and not a lot of photographic anatomy.And books of some of my favorite illustrators, andthings of that nature, but it would take forever for me tolist all the guys that I have.

MM: Which are the main ones? Andrew Loomis?

JOHN: Oh, yes, of course. Loomis and Bridgman’sanatomy, but they go way back to college. And then Ihave books on the illustrator, Gibson; Moebius; J.C.Leyendecker—those kinds of things.

MM: When you startworking, do you loosenup? Do you sketch?

JOHN: I work out. Iexercise every day.

MM: But, drawing-wise,do you—

JOHN: Oh, drawing-wise. Nope, I go rightto what I was doing.

MM: And you canalways remember whereyou were? Don’t youusually try to finish whatyou’ve got before you?

JOHN: No, not neces-sarily. I can pick upright where I left off.

MM: What kind of pen-cil do you use? Do youuse a mechanical pencil?

JOHN: I use a mechan-ical 2H lead to layout,and then I use amechanical HB lead totighten up.

MM: And I’m guessing you like a certain kind of paper,too, right? Nothing too glossy?

JOHN: That’s correct. I don’t like it too glossy, so thepaper I use is this 2-ply Bristol board paper.

MM: Do you pencil differently depending who theinker is? Do you think differently if you know who’sgoing to ink it beforehand?

Part 6: Storytelling andthe Creative Process

79

JOHN: Only if it’s somebody Ihaven’t worked with, but since I’veworked in the past with every-body that I’m working with now,it’s not necessary to be careful inany particular spot.

MM: You haven’t worked withTom Palmer a lot, from what I canremember.

JOHN: Yeah, about ten years ago,but intermittently he had donesome covers, and then he wouldhelp on The Eternals series, so he’sworked on my stuff quite a bit.

MM: Okay. So you don’t like itcompletely silent when you work?

JOHN: No, I don’t like it quiet. Idon’t like to hear my heartbeat.

MM: Do you get distracted a lotduring the day, with your wife andson?

JOHN: Yes, there are always dis-tractions, but I manage to over-come them.

MM: Do you ever ask how yourbooks are doing when talking toyour editors?

JOHN: Worry about them? Yes, Ialways worry, because if my stuffdoesn’t sell, then I won’t be giventhe amount of work that I’m usedto, and of course there’s always aconcern with sales.

MM: But you don’t go online look-ing for the top 200 books, do you?

JOHN: No, the only thing I lookat occasionally are a couple ofmessage boards that I get links tofrom people who I’ve told to send themto me.

MM: Who’s sending you these links?Why do you want to know? You knowthese people online are often hidingbehind fake names and false identities,and I don’t know if I would consider amessage board proper criticism. To me,it’s not.

JOHN: No. As a matter of fact, half of thepeople who say the nasty things are doingit just to be nasty. I actually read the criti-cisms, because no matter how silly or fool-ish some of them can be... some of themhave merit, but the silly ones I read, itactually keeps me on my toes.

MM: How have fans changed, in yourview, from the day you started until now?Is it different interacting with fans?

Previous Page andAbove: John’s pencil-and-marker rough alongwith his finished pencilsfor the cover of Spider-Man: The Lost Years #3.

Spider-Man ™ and ©2008Marvel Characters, Inc.

JOHN: Interacting, personally, at conven-tions hasn’t changed. The people are justas wonderful as they were before. The dif-ference is the Internet and the anonymityand the ability to be nasty and overtly crit-ical. Being critical is not bad, but I meanreally nasty, and foul, and obnoxious.Those people seem to thrive on being ableto say whatever they want anonymously.But the people at conventions are fantastic.They’re still just as wonderful. They’reprobably all related to the wonderful peo-ple I met the first time I ever went.

MM: I was reading some of the commentswhen you were on that World War Hulkthread. Some of the fans don’t even know

what they’re talking about. They thinkthat you’re pretty much phoning it in orsomething.

JOHN: Right, yeah.

MM: But they’re just trying to be jerks.

JOHN: You can’t say that, because peopleare free to voice their opinions. Why Icontinue to read those criticisms, no mat-ter how ridiculous they are, is it keeps meon my toes. It really does. Because, nomatter how you try, you still rememberthat there are a lot of people that don’t likeyour stuff very much. But what are yougoing to do? Instead of ignoring the factthat there are a lot of people that don’t likeit, I pay attention to the fact that there arepeople who don’t like it, and try to getbetter. I always get it, and I always will.

MM: But they might not even be buyingthe book, that’s what might be the worstthing. They just flipped through it in thestore and they’re going to criticize it?

JOHN: Yeah. There are a couple of peoplethat are especially nasty, and I try to playwith them, but they don’t want to evenjoke around. They just want to hate.

MM: They don’t have a sense of humor.

80

Below: A clash of titans.John’s pencils and KlausJanson’s inks for WorldWar Hulk #1.Next Page: Who couldpossibly think John was“phoning it in” on WorldWar Hulk with pencilslike this?

Black Bolt, Dr. Strange, Hulk,Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic ™ and©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Modern Masters:John Romita Jr.Over the past thirty years, no otherartist has had a more profound impacton the entire Marvel Comics franchisethan John Romita, Jr. From teenageprodigy to full blown superstar illustra-tor, his impeccable storytelling andhardcore professionalism have madehim a fan favorite. His gritty visuals andpowerful tenacity for illustrating actionhave graced the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, Uncanny X-Men, Dare-devil, and most of the company's othertop-tier books over the course of hiscareer. Like his father before him, nothing can stop this Modern Masterfrom striving for the artistic perfectionthat makes the name Romita one of true royalty in the comics industry. This new bookpresents a career-spanning interview and discussion of JRJR’s creative process, com-plete with both rare and unseen art, including an enormous gallery of commissionedwork by one of the Modern Masters of comics! By George Khoury and Eric Nolen-Weathington.

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modern masters volume 18: john romita jr

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