The Thin Black Line A rough and scratchy defense of Vince Colletta by Robert L. Bryant Jr. e swooped in to save comics publishers on deadline hundreds of times. He trashed the work of artists he should have worshiped. He was loved. He was hated. If he had been a character in a Marvel comic, the cover would have screamed, “The MYSTERY of VINCE COLLETTA! HERO or VILLAIN? YOU DECIDE!” This is the paradox of the late Vince Colletta. He was Jack Kirby’s frequent collaborator during the ten most amazingly fruitful years of Kirby’s career, the early 1960s to the early 1970s. Fantastic Four, Thor, New Gods, Mister Miracle, Forever People— all passed
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under Colletta’s fine-tipped pen, which he preferred to the traditional inkers’ brush. Yet many, perhaps most, Kirby fans revile Colletta’s work, and comics histories either ignore him (Duin and Richardson’s Comics Between the Panels) or dismiss him (“Ignored most of the line work of the pencilers he worked over,” says Jones and Jacobs’ The Comic Book Heroes). “He’s become a favorite whipping boy.... The fan attitude toward Vince Colletta has totally crossed the line,” says comics writer and editor Tony Isabella, who became friends with Colletta in the 1970s. “Half the time, they’re not discussing the work, they’re discussing the man personally—and they don’t have the information to do that. They didn’t walk in his shoes.” Colletta was a product of the comics system, the New York assembly line that printed both gems and junk with once-amonth efficiency, says Mark Evanier, who was a Kirby assistant in the 1970s and who helped kick Colletta off Kirby’s Fourth World books. Colletta made everything look “average,” Evanier says, whether he was inking Grade A art or Grade D art. “He delivered a consistent product to editors, and they kept hiring him.” Over and over, for three decades: Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who of American Comic Books lists at least 50 titles that Colletta worked on for Charlton, at least 90 for the DC line, and nearly 100 for Marvel/Timely/Atlas. Colletta was a classic “utility player,” Isabella says— always pinch-hitting, jumping into books that were about to miss dead-
(right) Splash page from the “Tales of Asgard” story in Journey Into Mystery #125, showing Colletta’s ability to capture an antiquated feel.
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