One of the many things I've been working on lately has been an honest-to-goodness, legitimate article for an honest-to-goodness, legitimate print magazine. In the course of this piece I'm expected to interview a group of comics professionals, one of which is John Romita Sr. You may have heard the name. I spoke with him on the phone for 45 minutes Tuesday night, and it was a thrill, let me tell you. I promise I'll write more about this whole experience, including the name of the magazine, when I get through it...this piece is on a bigger scale than anything I've ever done before (remember- non journalism scholar here), so I'm very apprehensive about my ability to get it all together and submit something readable. But- I gotta try it, 'cause if I don't, I'll always wonder "what if"...and I've got far too many of those in my life as it is.
ANYWAY-the reason I post the cover above, which is of course by Romita Sr. and is one of my all-time favorite comics covers, is because it was one which I mentioned to him as we were winding up our conversation. It grabbed me hard when I was a kid, especially because of the cliff-hanger of the previous issue in which Spidey had found himself shrunk to six inches high and at the mercy of Mysterio...the mood and the perspective of the cover made a strong impression on eight-year-old me. When I expressed my admiration for it, he laughed, thanked me and recalled that that particular storyline was one that he had plotted, and he had to talk Stan into letting him reduce Spidey like that. Stan was afraid the kids wouldn't understand that the Web-slinger wasn't going to be the new Ant-Man, or something like that. Since I believe it one of the better (in my opinion) later-60s Marvel Spidey stories, I'm glad he did.
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