By various & John Romita Jr (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-905239-73-3 (A BRITISH EDITION BY PANINI UK LTD)
The latest in Marvel’s line of laudatory collections featuring the work of a star creator focuses on the career of a legend who is the son of a legend. John Jr was working as an in-house junior when he got his first chance to draw a story. The six-page ‘Chaos at the Coffee Bean’ is actually a rather bland filler from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #11 (1977), written by Scott Edelman and inked by Al Milgrom and instantly highlights the twin problems of books like this.
Firstly, the early efforts of many creators, although perhaps instructive, are simply not that good, and doubly so in a case like the junior Romita’s, where the artist experienced such a radical stylistic epiphany that “then†and “now†look like the work of two completely different people. Secondly, as revealed in ‘Betrayal’, his first full length tale, from Iron Man #115 (1978 – scripted by Bill Mantlo and inked by Dan Green), despite the high quality of this tale and immensely improved artwork only the first part is by our subject, so the latter parts are excluded, leaving readers with an incomplete story.
Amazing Spider-Man #208 is reprinted next. Denny O’Neil wrote ‘Fusion’, which Romita Jr only laid out (very rough preliminary drawings) with the majority of the art completed by Al Milgrom and Brett Breeding. In that same year (1980) the artist drew ‘Nightcrawler’s Inferno’ for X-Men Annual # 4, from a Chris Claremont script, and Bob McLeod was a much more sympathetic inker for this pan-dimensional epic guest-starring Dr. Strange.
Inexplicably the editors have chosen Dazzler #1 and 2 to follow. The Disco Sensation premiered as Marvel’s first Direct Sales Only title and was by most lights pretty appalling. You can judge for yourself or take a hint from the fact that ‘So Bright This Star’ was “conceived by Alice Donenfeld, John Romita Jr and Jim Shooter with some help from Stan Lee, Al Milgrom, Roger Stern and Tom DeFalcoâ€, scripted by DeFalco, and the pencils were swamped by the lush but inappropriate inks of Alfredo Alcala. The second part ‘Where Demons Fear to Dwell’ had less cooks stirring the broth but was still an inept use of all the creator’s abilities.
In 1986 Romita Jr drew the first issue of Starbrand, the flagship New Universe title written by Jim Shooter as part of the company’s attempt to develop a continuity more relevant to its modern readership. (There are a million stories as to why Marvel actually instituted the New Universe project but that’s a debate for another time and place). With it he developed a more individualistic, raw yet streamlined graphic style that would evolve into his current grandly monolithic manner of storytelling. ‘The Starbrand’ is a compelling and thoroughly readable origin tale, sparse and gripping, moodily inked by comics legend Al Williamson. As is ‘Typhoid’, originally released in Daredevil #254, (1988), this is a powerful, visceral psychodrama scripted by Anne Nocenti, and taken from their groundbreaking run on The Man Without Fear.
This volume concludes with a superb two-part epic from Incredible Hulk #24-25 (Volume III, 2001) that fully displays the brutal power of Romita Jr’s drawing. Paul Jenkins scripted the brooding and poignant ‘Dear Betty…’ (inked by Dick Giordano) and ‘Always on My Mind’ (inked by Tom Palmer) which perfectly display the artist’s contemporary style and inevitably leads to the question, “why is there so little of his later output?â€
Despite these qualms and queries this is still an instructive compendium of the artist’s output, and if the early work is not as representative or effective as it could be it is at least composed of rare and less known material. And that just means that there’s lots of great stuff left for a second volume…
© 1977, 1978, 1981, 1986, 1988, 2001, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.