John Romita Sr., born January 24, 1930, was an American comic book artist best known for his work on Marvel Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man. He passed away peacefully at the age of 93 on June 12, 2023.

Romita graduated from Manhattan's School of Industrial Art. He began his career in comics in 1949 working on the series Famous Funnies before moving on to work as a ghost artist for Marvel's Timely Comics.

Eventually, Timely Comics evolved into Atlas Comics, and Romita was working on horror comics, war comics, and romance comics, among others.

Next, Romita worked for DC comics as a romance-comics artist, but soon after he began work there, Marvel editor Stan Lee offered him a job with a higher salary and more flexibility. An offer he couldn't turn down, Romita began working for Marvel.

At Marvel, Romita was assigned to drawing Daredevil comics, but was soon put on Spider-Man, where he co-created the characters Mary Jane Watson, the Punisher, Kingpin, Wolverine, and Luke Cage. He brought a new romance style to Spiderman that soon became the new house style for the character.

Romita was promoted to Marvel's art director in 1973 and heavily influenced the look of Marvel comics throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Romita received an Inkpot Award in 1979, was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2002, and was inducted into the Inkwell Awards Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame in 2020.

John Romita Sr. was married to Virginia Bruno, who also worked for Marvel as a traffic manager. Together they had two sons, one of which, John Jr. followed in his footsteps and is now a successful comic book artist himself.