John Romita, one of the most iconic Marvel Comics artists of all-time, has passed away at the age of 93

John Romita, one of the last great comic book artists from the Golden Age of Comics, who re-defined Spider-Man for multiple generations after succeeding Steve Ditko as the artist on Amazing Spider-Man, and who served as Marvel’s Art Director from 1973 until the mid-1990s, has passed away at the age of 93, according to his son, comic book superstar artist, John Romita, Jr.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Romita graduated from Manhattan’s School of Industrial Art in 1947. He broke into comics two years later doing some stories for Famous Funnies. Then, when working at a lithograph company, Romita met a friend of his from high school, Lester Zakarin. Zakarin was working for Martin Goodman’s comic book company (most typically referred to as Timely Comics at the time, but there was no set name for it), but was struggling with his penciling assignments. He offered Romita a deal where Romita would pencil Zakarin’s assignments, and he would then ink Romita’s pencils, splitting the fee he was receiving for penciling and inking the pages himself.

Romita was the original artist on the Spider-Man comic strip in the late 1970s, which he drew until 1980, as his last regular art assignment, chosing to concentrate mostly on his Art Director duties in the later years of his career (although he still drew many comics over the years, just not regular assignments).

His wife, Virginia, would also come to work at Marvel in 1975, remaining there until the mid-1990s, when both Romitas retired from Marvel during the period leading up to Marvel declaring bankruptcy.. And, of course, Romita’s son, John Jr., became one of Marvel’s most notable artists the past 40 plus years. Romita had another son named Victor, as well.

Romita was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2002.