Steph Deschamps / June 15, 2023
John Romita Senior, Marvel comics artist best known for his work on "The Amazing Spider-Man", has died aged 93, his son announced on Tuesday.
My father, John Romita, died peacefully in his sleep this Monday morning," wrote his son, John Romita Junior, also a comic book artist, on Instagram. "He is a legend in the art world and it would be an honor for me to follow in his footsteps (...). He was the greatest man I've ever known," he wrote.
Born in Brooklyn in 1930, Romita Senior worked with Stan Lee (1922-2018), the co-creator of many Marvel superheroes including Spider-Man and Wolwerine. Stan Lee had also co-created Daredevil --the first superhero Romita Senor drew on for Marvel, according to this interview. Stan Lee died at the age of 95 in 2018, the same year as Spider-Man's other co-creator, Stephen Ditko, who died at 90.
Like his father, Romita Junior, 66, also worked on "The Amazing Spider-Man" and Daredevil. Superheroes first came to public attention in 1938 with the birth of Superman in the first issue of Action Comics, joined the following year by Batman.
The genre had lost popularity in the pre-war period, but regained public favor in the late 1950s and early 1960s, thanks in particular to Stan Lee, who launched The Fantastic Four series for Marvel Comics in 1961. A host of other characters followed, including the Hulk, Thor, Spider-Man, the X-Men and Black Panther.