Captain America Artist Romita: I Never Would Have Attempted Zola

During our recent conversation with veteran comics artist John Romita, Jr. about the upcoming film [...]

By Russ Burlingame

During our recent conversation with veteran comics artist John Romita, Jr. about the upcoming film adaptation of his creator-owned comic Kick-Ass 2, we took a few moments out to grill him on his run on Captain America. In the course of our interview, he noted that technology has moved so fast that just about any comic book story ever told can now be successfully adapted to film. That's right, we said--but what about the Captain America story he's currently doing with writer Rick Remender? After all, it still seems like we're a few iterations away from film being able to easily translate characters like Arnim Zola and M.O.D.O.K. in a way that doesn't look preposterous on the screen. The question we asked was a simple one: What's the most bizarre, hardest-to-translate character he's ever drawn in his decades of comics work? His answer was thoughtful, and surprisingly detailed. Turns out that in his long career, Romita has drawn a number of fairly oddball characters. "There's the Spider Slayer and there's M.O.D.O.K. and there's Zola. That's a great question. It's a brutally honest question and it's a great question at the same time," Romita told ComicBook.com. "I always cringe at silly characters. I did one of the worst, when I first started on Spider-Man a million years ago--which was twin midget nuclear scientists that were a threat to the world. Then it was also the Rocket Racer. Then I did the Mud Monster. I did Squid Man. I have lost my pride in comics a long time ago, but what that does is also make you appreciate the brilliance of everything else. Now, Jack Kirby created Zola and M.O.D.O.K. And Stan Lee created the Spider Slayer. Once you buy the premise, you're in and nothing is out of the ordinary. Nothing is out of the realm of possibility."

Arnim Zola in Captain America's belly by John Romita, Jr.

He went on to praise series writer Rick Remender, saying that even he wasn't totally sold on the idea of Arnim Zola as the debut villain for Marvel NOW!, until he heard what Remender was doing with the character. Then, he says, he was hooked. "Rick Remender did with Zola--and listen, when I heard it was Zola, I cringed a little bit too, because it wasn't my favorite part of Captain America's lore. But what Rick Remender did is what Stan Lee did with M.O.D.O.K. and what Stan Lee did with the other characters: You give it credence and you make it a great character. The backstory of Zola makes Zola  a great character. We've redesigned it slightly and it's not without possibilities. It's a robot! With an entity inside of it. So Remender has done an amazing job with this character and the whole story is so wild and he made it great," Romita said. The artist added, "My hat is off to Rick Remender because this is another one of those things that I wouldn't have expected to try. Here I am hip-deep in it, and somebody told me this is what it is, is the deconstruction of Captain America. We have beaten the snot out of Captain America in this--torn him apart, nearly torn him into pieces and there's a great backstory in it. It goes back to when Steve Rogers was a child back in the '20s. It's so wide-ranging, it's so huge and Rick Remender pulled it off. I'm damn impressed with the work and even with Arnim Zola! I get what you're saying--sometimes they can be borderline silly. You talk about it maybe as silly and then when you see it fleshed out into the series, it's brilliant. That's Rick Remender because I would never have attempted Zola. I would never have attempted M.O.D.O.K. There are so many character that have been done by Jack Kirby that when done by somebody else they look silly but when Jack Kirby did them, when Stan Lee did them, they look brilliant. Same thing with this with Rick. That's what he did with Zola and we managed to pull it off. And I'm very proud of it. "So you can't ask me because my first impressions aren't always correct. I was wrong about a lot of things that I've done that ended up being good stuff. So I didn't know that I would be doing Kick-Ass. And here I am doing it and very proud of it. I didn't know that I would do Arnim Zola and now I'm doing it and I'm very proud of it. So I'm a good artist, I'm a good storyteller but I'm a lousy judge of future projects."

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