John Romita Jr. is jazzed about his father being honored during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The son of fellow famed Amazing Spider-Man artist “Jazzy” John Romita Sr. took to the rainy streets of New York on Thursday to thwip a picture with the new Spider-Man balloon based on his father’s work, which marked the wall-crawler’s first appearance at the parade in a decade.
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“It was amazing to see my father’s work displayed as a balloon in the Macy’s day parade,” Romita Jr. wrote in an Instagram post. “Hearing his name mentioned during the show was a honor to him and our family.”
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Romita Sr. replaced co-creator Steve Ditko as series artist on the Stan Lee-penned Amazing Spider-Man starting with issue #39 in 1966 and remained on Marvel’s best-selling book through issue #95 in 1971. In addition to serving as Marvel’s art director, Romita Sr. penciled The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper comic strip from 1977 to 1980. He returned to the character infrequently over the next few decades — including inking Romita Jr.’s pencils on 1982’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16 and penciling the four-page ending of The Amazing Spider-Man #500 in 2003, when Romita Jr. served as series artist.
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One of the most influential comic artists in history, Romita Sr. romanticized the look of Peter Parker and his supporting cast in Amazing Spider-Man and co-created villains like the Rhino, Shocker, and Kingpin, and the superheroes Luke Cage and Wolverine. He died in 2023 at the age of 93. Romita Jr. is best known for his multiple runs on Amazing Spider-Man with writers Roger Stern, J. Michael Stracyznski, and most recently, Zeb Wells, as well as runs on Daredevil, Uncanny X-Men, and Peter Parker: Spider-Man.
“It was John the whole way through,” Will Coss, Vice President and Executive Producer of Macy’s Studios, told Polygon about the newly-redesigned balloon inspired by Romita Sr.’s iconic style. “I think we knew early on that this was the approach, the style. Once we had an opportunity to confirm that we were going to be fortunate enough to have Spider-Man return to the parade, we keyed in on it early.”
The 34-foot wide, 44-foot tall balloon is the longest of the 17 featured character helium balloons at 77.5 feet long, and depicts Spider-Man in a Romita-inspired web-swinging pose (rather than a wall-crawling one). The balloon, which is the first Spider-Man since 2014, appears to be based on Romita’s classic cover for the 1972 Amazing Spider-Man album Rockomic.
Marvel Comics recently celebrated Romita Sr.’s work in The Art of the Amazing Spider-Man, an oversized hardcover gallery collection of iconic original art from The Amazing Spider-Man #39–122 and pencils and inks by Romita Sr. The book from Bullpen Books is available now.