Having forgotten to pick up Rick Vietch’s Army @ Love on Wednesday, I returned to a comic shop this weekend to correct that oversight, and ended up walking out with more and I’d intended, including John Romita Jr. 30th Anniversary Special.

I usually pass up these Marvel Spotlight-type things, which tend to be advertorial in nature, but after the first half of J. Michael Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Manrun, Black Panther #1-#6 and Wolverine: Enemy of the State, JRJR’s stuff is pretty much buy on sight for me. And this is nothing but JRJR work, right?

I regretted the purchase almost immediately. There’s some worthwhile stuff in here, but I’m not sure it was worth $3.99, nor was it what I would have wanted, if I were allowed to design my own JRJR 30th anniversary special (I think I would have preferred something like a collection of covers and splashes, unencumbered by text like logos and UPC symbols and the like).

What’s inside is a jokey short story entitled “Romita—Space Knight” by Neil Gaiman and Hilary Barta, a long and surprisingly frank interview (given the source) chockfull of typos, a timeline of JRJR’s career, a guide to what one can buy of it in trade, his first Spidey story, plenty of sketches, lots of testimonials from other creators (the intro by his dad is probably the best), and that goddam annoying Old Spice ad.

I found two tidbits of information contained in the interview portion to be exceptionally interesting, however.

Exceptionally Interesting Tidbit #1:Romita talks to “Spotlight” about some advice from one of the artists who inspired him the most over the years: “John Buscema made a couple of comments after I became established in the industry that helped me out…And I remember Frank Miller, when we were in the offices of Marvel, and John told us, ‘Throw away your erasers. If you don’t do more than a page a day, you’re not really doing your job.’”More than a page a day? Hell, say you’re doing a whole page plus just one extra panel a day. That’s a twenty-two page comic book a month right there.

Or, in other words, that would make you the regular artist on a monthly comic.

Now, how many people at Marvel are currently, according to Buscema’s definition there, doing their jobs at the moment? Romita, Mark Bagley, Phil Hester, Rick Burchett… that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more, but, Jesus, more than a page a day. Who’s actually doing that in comics anymore?

The familiar argument for missed deadlines is, of course, “Do you want it monthly, or do you want it good?” Which Romita’s speed puts to the lie.

Art is, of course, subjective, but if you asked me who the best artist at Marvel at the moment, I’d say Romita without hesitation. Bryan Hitch and Steve McNiven, to choose two notorious deadline-missers at random, are fine pencil artists, but so much of the hyper-detail of their art, the gloss that fans so often site, comes in large part form the inkers and colorists working with them.

Exceptionally Interesting Tidbit #2:Romita talks about the “audacity” of his 12-part Wolverine story with Mark Millar, saying: “It was as difficult to draw as any run because what was asked for in some of those vignettes…fighting a thousand ninjas. That’s what Mark Miller [sic] would say: W‘olverine fights a thousand ninjas.’ (Laughter.) ‘Every second tier villain in the Marvel Universe descends from the sky.’ (Laughter). ‘The SHIELD Heliport carrier falls from the sky and crashes.’ ‘300 crew members get swept into the ocean and get eaten by sharks.’”Hearing this not only reminded me of what an entertaining read Wolverine: Enemy of the State was, but, more importantly, of the wild imagination of Mark Millar, and his skills when it comes to big idea-oriented, blockbuster-style action comics.

After slogging through the written-by-committee, increasingly-poorly-illustrated, incompetently delivered Civil War and the buried under the worst art in the industry Ultimate Fantastic Four, I’d actually started to forget that Mark Millar really can write good superhero comics when he’s inspired and has a decent collaborator.

Ha! Romita Space Knight. I just got it. Ha ha ha ha! Good one, Gaiman.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Comics, J. Caleb Mozzocco. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.