John Romita Jr. Blasts The Modern Comic Industry: "Stick With The Entertainment And Stop With The Preaching!"
John Romita Jr. is one of the most respected creators in comics, co-creator of Kick-Ass with Mark Millar and a long-time veteran who’s worked on nearly every superhero, most notably The Amazing Spider-Man. He’s done a new interview telling comic creators, “stick with the entertainment and stop with the preaching.”
Fresh off of a wildly successful launch of a new Kickstarter project with Mark Millar, Psychic Sam, John Romita Jr. is going around doing interviews to promote the project. The son of the great John Romita Sr., whose work on The Amazing Spider-Man is legendary, he’s been a staple in the comic book industry for decades with his distinctive style of dynamic action leading to some of the most memorable comics of the last thirty years.
He went on the Word Balloon Podcast on Friday, June 13th, to talk about Psychic Sam and a myriad of other topics. Eventually, the conversation shifted to politics.
He spoke of New York and the condition it’s been in lately, saying, “Rudy Guiliani made the city safe for a while. And then the next mayor, the next mayor Bloomberg did a good job. The guy after that did a lousy job and now the city’s still struggling,” he said.
“There were days when you could walk Times Square with your family and your grandchildren, and it was wonderful. Same thing with California; my wife is from San Diego,” he continued. “You could walk the beach, and you can’t do that in San Diego, you can’t do that in New York City. Everything’s changed. Something’s gotta be done. I’m ashamed of New York, but I’m proud there’s improvement.”
From there, he was asked about the current state of the comic book industry where he issued a stern warning to creators. “I think if they stick to entertainment, you morons who make decisions,” he said. “Stick to entertainment, don’t preach to me, don’t tell me what side of the coin I should be on politically. I don’t care; I’m independent, make me smile with entertainment.
He continued, “You know what the biggest-selling R-rated Movie of all time is? Everyone knows it. It’s Wolverine and Deadpool because it was entertainment. It was the most funny, I see people on airplanes laughing out loud at watching that movie.”
He returned to stating how politics has ruined recent films, “Don’t preach. Entertain. The anger in me is there; it’s palpable because of the damage that’s been done to the industry.”
The damage has been terrible as the comic book industry has been declining in profits and sales in recent years because of an overabundance of politics driving the casual reader away from superhero books, and causing them to abandon comic book stores.
He then relates the industry to film, saying, "I think the film industry 25, 30 years ago should have done this. All of these brilliant writers with premises month to month to month are films or TV shows at the least. If I owned a studio, my hand to God, I would hire about ten of those writers in the comics industry, and I’d say here are a million dollars each. Give me a year’s worth of your premises, I’ll turn them into stories, TV shows, or films. Every comic book writer is brilliant-minded in that respect. Come on, it’s a film. And then I’d hire me to do storyboards for all of them. Comic creators are filmmakers, I don’t care what anyone says.
He concluded, reiterating his point, “…and stick with the entertainment stop with the preaching.”
His firey statement represents what a lot of comic book fans have been saying over recent years as Marvel and DC Comics don’t seem to be able to get the message that people don’t want the extreme leftist identity politics shoved in their faces every time they open a comic book. It’s insulting to the reader’s intelligence, and it’s caused its share of harm to comics.
What do you think of John Romita Jr.’s statements on the comic industry? Leave a comment and let us know.
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I wonder if there will someday be an ironic market for this era of comics like there is for Jack Chick comics. "Oh man you got the pregnant Joker issue? Haha let's go read it and make fun of it!"
I agree with John's statements. Personally it's way too late to get me back on board with them. Moved on to indie creators and never looked back, but on occasion I'll purchase a marvel epic collection on certain characters/ Creator's comic run. I will definitely be backing his new book since I enjoyed the duo's work with Kickass.