John V. Romita (; born January 24, 1930) is an American comic book artist best known for his work on Marvel Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man and for co-creating characters including the Punisher and Wolverine. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2002. Romita is the father of John Romita Jr., also a comic book artist and husband of Virginia Romita, for many years Marvel's traffic manager. Career Early life and career Romita was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Marie and Victor Romita, a baker, with three sisters and a brother. He is of Italian descent, from Sicily. He graduated from Manhattan's School of Industrial Art in 1947, having attended for three years after spending ninth grade at a Brooklyn junior high school. Among his instructors were book illustrator Howard Simon and magazine illustrator Ben Clements, and his influences included comics artists Noel Sickles, Roy Crane, Milton Caniff, and later, Alex Toth and Carmine Infantino, as well as commercial illustrators Jon Whitcomb, Coby Whitmore, and Al Parker. Romita entered the comics industry in 1949 on the series Famous Funnies. "Steven Douglas up there was a benefactor to all young artists", Romita recalled. "The first story he gave me was a love story. It was terrible. All the women looked like emaciated men and he bought it, never criticized, and told me to keep working. He paid me two hundred dollars for it and never published it — and rightfully so". Romita was working at the New York City company Forbes Lithograph in 1949, earning $30 a week, when comic-book inker Lester Zakarin, a friend from high school whom he ran into on a subway train, offered him either $17 or $20 a page to pencil a 10-page story for him as uncredited ghost artist. "I thought, this is ridiculous! In two pages I can make more money than I usually make all week! So I ghosted it and then kept on ghosting for him", Romita recalled. "I think it was a 1920s mobster crime story". The work was for Marvel's 1940s forerunner, Timely Comics, which helped give Romita an opportunity to meet editor-in-chief and art director Stan Lee. Romita ghost-penciled for Zakarin on Trojan Comics' Crime-Smashers and other titles, eventually signing some "Zakarin and Romita". Atlas Comics The collaboration ended in early 1951, when Romita was drafted into the