Vince Colletta - Controversy

Controversy

Colletta, regarded as one of the American comics industry's fastest inkers and a reliable professional to call upon when a comic was in danger of missing a printing deadline, has remained a controversial figure even after his death. In essence, the controversy centers on Colletta's erasing various degrees of a penciler's work, both in order to lessen the inking burden and to help meet time constraints during an industry era when printers charged then-prohibitive thousands of dollars for missed deadlines, which resulted in idle presses. As comics artist Joe Sinnott told author Marc Flores, who writes under the pen name Ronin Ro, "When I penciled the romance stories, I used to tell myself, Vince wrecked what I did. ... He would eliminate people from the strip and use silhouettes, everything to cut corners and make the work easier for himself." Writer Len Wein told an interviewer what he enjoyed most about working on Luke Cage was, "Getting to work with the wonderful George Tuska, before Vinnie Colletta got his hands on the pencils and ruined them".

Jack Kirby partisans are particularly vocal. Mark Evanier said, "In 1970 when Steve Sherman and I met Steve Ditko, he asked us about the new Kirby books that were then about to debut at DC. When we told him Colletta was handling the inking, he winced and said that he would probably not look at the comics. Back when he was working for Marvel, Ditko said he'd pick up the latest issues in the office and always check the credits before taking the comics home. If he found Colletta's name — especially as Kirby's embellisher — he would make a point of putting the comic back, or even in a wastebasket. And he'd make sure Stan saw what he was doing and knew the reason why."

Conversely, Colletta's admirers point to the speed with which Colletta was often required to work, and the results he could produce when given time. Critic Tony Seybert wrote that "for tales set in the distant past of myth and legend, Colletta's soft delicate inks evoke the vapors of ancient times just as effective on Asgardian crags as on the sylvan glades of Olympus. The Kirby/Colletta Thor is a mighty blond deity with a hint of Norse faerie-dust. Hercules is a roughly hewn sculpture, almost incomplete, like one of the unfinished prisoners of Michelangelo."