New York Comic Con 2010 First Guest of Honors

JOHN ROMITA AND JOHN ROMITA JR. TO APPEAR AT
NEW YORK COMIC CON IN 2010

First Guests of Honor are Revealed at Party
Celebrating New Dates and Expanded Venue

Norwalk, CT, October 8, 2009: Organizers of New York Comic Con (NYCC) have revealed that celebrated father/son artists and creators John Romita and John Romita, Jr. will both be Keystone Guests of Honor at the next NYCC. The Romitas are the first guests to be announced for the 2010 convention which will now be co-located with the New York Anime Festival (NYAF) and will occupy the entire Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City. The two shows, both of which are organized by the Reed Exhibitions Pop Culture Group, will take place October 8 – 10, 2010. The announcement about the Romitas was made public at a special “One Year Out” bowling party at Bowlmor Lanes in New York City in honor of the fans, exhibitors, press, artists, creators and other loyal participants of NYCC who have helped make the convention a success since its debut in 2006. The announcement of their role as Keystone Guests of Honor comes exactly one year to the day before NYCC is set to open its doors on the occasion of its 5th Anniversary in 2010.

“I am incredibly pleased to be able to announce that the Romitas will be our first Guests of Honor,” notes Lance Fensterman, Vice President and Show Manager for NYCC. “This early commitment, a full year before the next New York Comic Con, is a nice vote of confidence and it says a lot about the quality of our guests and what we can expect in terms of future guest announcements. The Romitas are wildly popular and respected creators and we are honored that they have agreed to appear together at our show. New York Comic Con is the second largest pop culture event in America and our guest appearances will certainly reflect the stature and prominence of our show.”

JOHN ROMITA SR.

John Romita is a celebrated artist best known for his work on Marvel Comics’ The Amazing Spider-Man. His first jobs were for Stan Lee’s Atlas group in 1949, where he drew mostly horror and romance stories, but also several war, western and crime features for Western Publishing. Romita re-joined Stan Lee several years later at Marvel where his first notable efforts included inking Avengers and penciling Daredevil comics.

Romita’s most notable work began in 1966 with his efforts on The Amazing Spider-Man comic. Under Romita's and Lee's guidance, Spider-Man became the quintessential antihero of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He left the Spider-Man comic in the early 1970s to become Art Director at Marvel. In 1977, he briefly did the artwork of the syndicated Spider-Man newspaper comic. Following his retirement from day-to-day comics work, Romita has returned to drawing, including work on his signature character Spider-Man on latter-day occasions. Romita was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2002.

JOHN ROMITA JR.

John Salvatore Romita, Jr. was born in New York City in 1956 and wanted to be an artist just like his father. He is best known for his extensive work for Marvel Comics from the 1970s to the 2000s. He began his career at Marvel UK doing sketches for covers of reprints. Romita Jr's first published comic was a six-page backup, which appeared in a late 1970s Spider-Man Annual #4. He became a Marvel mainstay and had his professional breakthrough with a three-and-a-half year run on Iron Man, starting in 1976. He is one of the most prominent artists of the Amazing Spider-Man title since the 1980s. His first run on the title lasted three years, and after that, he took over The Uncanny X-Men. He then worked on Star Brand under the New Universe imprint, before he began a longtime run on the Daredevil comic. He later came back to Iron Man, and contributed to several other titles, including Punisher War Zone, the Cable mini-series, the Punisher/Batman crossover and the Spider-Man: The Lost Years limited series.

After working on the regular Spider-Man title as well as Peter Parker: Spider-Man in the 1990s, Romita Jr. returned to Amazing Spider-Man in 2000. Together with famous TV writer J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5, etc.), he restyled the comic for the new millennium by introducing mystical elements, new characters and major plot developments. At the same time, he has worked on The Incredible Hulk with writer Bruce Jones and on Wolverine with Mark Millar. In 2006 Romita collaborated with writer Neil Gaiman on the reinterpretation of Jack Kirby’s The Eternals in the form of a seven issue miniseries. He has also collaborated once more with Mark Millar for a creator-owned series, Kick-Ass, published by Marvel’s Icon imprint.

ABOUT REED EXHIBITIONS POP CULTURE GROUP:

The Pop Culture Group at Reed Exhibitions owns and operates the New York Comic Con (NYCC), the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2), and the New York Anime Festival (NYAF). New York Comic Con was launched in 2006 and quickly became a dominant presence in the pop culture world of public events. In 2009, 452 companies exhibited at NYCC for a total of 84,000 square feet of paid exhibit space, and it has been ranked by Crain's New York Business as the second-largest annual event in NYC. C2E2, which will debut April 16 – 18 at Chicago's McCormick Place Convention Center, is modeled after NYCC and will provide fans the opportunity to meet and greet their favorite writers, creators, and artists, as well as to see, hear and learn about the latest and greatest in comics, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, toys, movies, and television. The Pop Culture Group also operates the recently-launched UFC Fan Expo in partnership with the UFC – the world's leading professional mixed martial arts organization – and it formed a strategic partnership with Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in 2008 and will work closely with PAX on the launch of PAX East in Boston in 2010.

~~~

New York Comic Con Press Release