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Why Lee hired John Romita
Patrick Ford
18 August 2016
In some interviews John Romita says he was burned out on comics in 1965 and left to do storyboard work. In other interviews Romita says he was "let go" by DC in June of 1965 and sought the storyboard work. In July of 1965 Romita began accepting freelance assignments from Lee. Romita was freelance and working out of his home when he produced the DAREDEVIL issues featuring Spider-Man. Romita was hired as an employee of Marvel in Jan. 1966, the same month the New York Herald Tribune published an article by Nat Freedland where Lee sarcastically says that Ditko "thinks he's the genius of the world" and says that he will "leave him alone until sales begin to slip." In fact Lee already knew Ditko had quit and was probably planning to pull Ditko off Spider-Man even before Ditko quit.
Romita joined in disparaging Ditko in a 1966 issue of THE WEB SPINNER a fanzine read by Stan Lee and which had published letters by Flo Steinberg and Roy Thomas. Thomas even wrote to complain about criticism of Romita's DAREDEVIL stories after the fanzine had compared them unfavorably to the issues created by Wally Wood.
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