John Romita Sr's Spider-Man
[URL="http://comicsalliance.com/artists-spider-man-john-romita-sr/"]Matt Wilson of Comics Alliance continues his series on Spider-Man artists with John Romita Sr.[/URL]
[QUOTE]Yet Romita brought a very distinct style to the book; in may ways, it felt like a purposeful turn from Ditko’s idiosyncratic style. Spider-Man got more muscular and began to look more like a traditional superhero, and the handful of villains Romita co-created during his first run on the character — The Shocker, Rhino, Kingpin — were a little less weird than Ditko’s creations. (Ditko’s villain creations included a man with a fishbowl head and a man with a lightning bolt head.)
They were also, at least in the cases of Rhino and the Kingpin, huge. This was ostensibly to maintain the idea that Spider-Man was still the underdog, even though Peter Parker was looking more and more like a bodybuilder.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Undoubtedly the most important character Romita designed was Peter Parker’s eventual wife (until she wasn’t), Mary Jane Watson, whom Romita said he designed after Ann Margaret from the movie Bye-Bye Birdie.
The introduction of Mary Jane (who would become far more than just a love interest over the decades) led to the love triangle plots that would become a regular and expected part of the character’s comics. In general, Peter’s social life (including on campus at Empire State University, where protests raged) became a more important part of the book.
These elements were a huge hit with readers, and within a year of Romita’s initial run on the character, Amazing Spider-Man was the top-selling Marvel comic. That’s perhaps why the more muscular, notably more handsome Romita version of the character became the template artists would follow for decades to come.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://community.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?70225-The-Foundational-Weirdness-of-Steve-Ditko"]The first artist in the series was Steve Ditko.[/URL]