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The Thin Black Line: Perspectives on Vince Colletta, Comics’ Most Controversial Inker
In the history of comic book art, Vince Colletta is perhaps the most prolific inker ever, and certainly the most controversial. He jumped in at the last minute to rescue hundreds of comic books about to miss their printing deadline, often racing through the work of artists who fans say he should have worshiped. In the 1960s he gave Jack Kirby's Thor an atmospheric look many fans love even 40 years later, but got kicked off Kirby's Fourth World comics in the 1970s for omitting details. Whether you loved his work or hated it, this book will enlighten, entertain, and expose a life and career as colorful as the four-color comic books Colletta labored on for decades. Join Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Joe Sinnott, Mike Royer, Carmine Infantino, Mark Evanier, and dozens of other comics pros as they recall the Vince Colletta they knew and worked with, and pull no punches in their praise and criticism of the most notorious inker in the history of the medium. Did he save the Silver Age of comics - or ruin it?
128 pages, Paperback
First published August 18, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 28, 2021
This is a good deep dive into a niche subject and has quite a lot of supporting material and interview subjects to strengthen it. It does tend to repeatedly come back around to the same points though, regardless of what the chapter is purported about.
The biggest flaw though is that the text really should have engaged with the illustrations more. There are multiple points where pieces of Colletta's work is described in the text, only for completely different pieces of art to be displayed along side them. When Bryant is describing Colletta's strengths in creating different kinds of textures or his fondness for feathering inks rather than doing what most of his contemporaries would have done, it's crying out for comparisons and direct examples worked into the body of the text to illustrate his points, but that doesn't really happen. It creates an odd disconnect between the book's text and its supporting artwork, which there's no good reason for, especially given the flexibility of layout afford by using the comic book trim size.
The biggest flaw though is that the text really should have engaged with the illustrations more. There are multiple points where pieces of Colletta's work is described in the text, only for completely different pieces of art to be displayed along side them. When Bryant is describing Colletta's strengths in creating different kinds of textures or his fondness for feathering inks rather than doing what most of his contemporaries would have done, it's crying out for comparisons and direct examples worked into the body of the text to illustrate his points, but that doesn't really happen. It creates an odd disconnect between the book's text and its supporting artwork, which there's no good reason for, especially given the flexibility of layout afford by using the comic book trim size.
June 22, 2020
‘The Mystery of Vince Colletta! Hero or Villain? You decide!’ So says a dramatic, comic-style black box at the start of ‘Chapter 1: The Controversy.’ Other chapters are titled ‘Inking Asgard’, ‘Rivets And Trees’, ‘The Fourth World’ and ‘The Guy On The Assembly Line’. There’s an introduction with quotes from various debaters in an online chat about Vince Colletta which was curtailed when his grand-daughter posted to say he was a very good family man and it wasn’t nice to say bad things about him.
Which is true, so I won’t. But as a dedicated Jack Kirby fan, I can see why the really, really dedicated Kirby fans are bitter and twisted. Colletta treated all pencil artists the same way. He inked the pages as fast as he could and sometimes rubbed out stuff that would have taken too long. For most artists this was annoying and for fans of Kirby, who discovered the sins years later by virtue of ‘The Jack Kirby Collector’, it was blasphemy. For to some of them, it seems, Kirby is a god.
The funny thing is, Jack understood Colletta’s motivation better than they did. When Kirby was asked about inkers, he usually said that they were all men trying to earn a buck to feed their families and that was fair enough. Kirby and Colletta grew up in 1930s depression era America and knew about poverty. Neither had any notion that the comic books they were turning out would one day be regarded as ‘art’ and both worked hard to do as many pages per day as possible because they were paid by the page.
That said, there is the integrity of the craftsman. Kirby and many other pencillers genuinely tried to do the best work possible in the circumstances and, sometimes, to stretch the medium a little. Colletta was really only in it for the money. He had bought a large house in New Jersey in 1960 and had to cover the costs of paying for it and keeping a wife and children. To that end, he worked. Usually, like Kirby actually, he worked late at night. Sometimes he would work for days at a time, catnapping next to his drawing board then starting again. Unlike Kirby, he liked a bit of socialising in the day. He was fond of hinting at Mafia connections and liked to hang around in bars, gamble on horses and so forth. Through his photography, he knew many models and actors. He was apparently very affable and got on well with nearly everyone.
He was also a godsend to editors who were up against a deadline. If a comic was late to the publishers there were heavy penalties and if one month’s issue didn’t make the stands it would mean a severe decline in sales. Colletta was the go-to guy in a crisis as he could turn out pages faster than anyone else. They might not have been the best pages but they were delivered on time. Alas, Kirby was never, ever late with his pages but Colletta would have other stuff to do at the same time, so Jack’s work got skimped, too. A great shame, as the chapter ‘Inking Asgard’ shows.
In assessing Colletta, it’s important to understand Italians or Sicilians in his case. Family is everything. A father’s job is to provide for his wife and kids. Nothing is more important than that. If being a good provider meant rubbing out a few excess Asgardians in a panel or making a detailed figure into a silhouette, so be it. They were, after all, ten cent comic books, not the Sistine Chapel. Oddly enough, Colletta could do excellent work and sometimes did. His style didn’t suit Kirby particularly well but he did a pretty good job on a lot of stuff. There’s a panel on page 88 here, from ‘In The Days Of The Mob’, that shows his talent. On other artists, he often did even better. I was reading Essential Daredevil # 5 recently and was very impressed with his inks on Bob Brown in the Deathstalker story.
Hero or villain? Far too dramatic a choice. Dedicated artist or dedicated family man? That’s more realistic and he was indubitably the latter. I imagine he is resting in peace. This book is a fair assessment of Vince Colletta with many interesting anecdotes from his colleagues and it’s nicely illustrated too. Worth a look.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
Which is true, so I won’t. But as a dedicated Jack Kirby fan, I can see why the really, really dedicated Kirby fans are bitter and twisted. Colletta treated all pencil artists the same way. He inked the pages as fast as he could and sometimes rubbed out stuff that would have taken too long. For most artists this was annoying and for fans of Kirby, who discovered the sins years later by virtue of ‘The Jack Kirby Collector’, it was blasphemy. For to some of them, it seems, Kirby is a god.
The funny thing is, Jack understood Colletta’s motivation better than they did. When Kirby was asked about inkers, he usually said that they were all men trying to earn a buck to feed their families and that was fair enough. Kirby and Colletta grew up in 1930s depression era America and knew about poverty. Neither had any notion that the comic books they were turning out would one day be regarded as ‘art’ and both worked hard to do as many pages per day as possible because they were paid by the page.
That said, there is the integrity of the craftsman. Kirby and many other pencillers genuinely tried to do the best work possible in the circumstances and, sometimes, to stretch the medium a little. Colletta was really only in it for the money. He had bought a large house in New Jersey in 1960 and had to cover the costs of paying for it and keeping a wife and children. To that end, he worked. Usually, like Kirby actually, he worked late at night. Sometimes he would work for days at a time, catnapping next to his drawing board then starting again. Unlike Kirby, he liked a bit of socialising in the day. He was fond of hinting at Mafia connections and liked to hang around in bars, gamble on horses and so forth. Through his photography, he knew many models and actors. He was apparently very affable and got on well with nearly everyone.
He was also a godsend to editors who were up against a deadline. If a comic was late to the publishers there were heavy penalties and if one month’s issue didn’t make the stands it would mean a severe decline in sales. Colletta was the go-to guy in a crisis as he could turn out pages faster than anyone else. They might not have been the best pages but they were delivered on time. Alas, Kirby was never, ever late with his pages but Colletta would have other stuff to do at the same time, so Jack’s work got skimped, too. A great shame, as the chapter ‘Inking Asgard’ shows.
In assessing Colletta, it’s important to understand Italians or Sicilians in his case. Family is everything. A father’s job is to provide for his wife and kids. Nothing is more important than that. If being a good provider meant rubbing out a few excess Asgardians in a panel or making a detailed figure into a silhouette, so be it. They were, after all, ten cent comic books, not the Sistine Chapel. Oddly enough, Colletta could do excellent work and sometimes did. His style didn’t suit Kirby particularly well but he did a pretty good job on a lot of stuff. There’s a panel on page 88 here, from ‘In The Days Of The Mob’, that shows his talent. On other artists, he often did even better. I was reading Essential Daredevil # 5 recently and was very impressed with his inks on Bob Brown in the Deathstalker story.
Hero or villain? Far too dramatic a choice. Dedicated artist or dedicated family man? That’s more realistic and he was indubitably the latter. I imagine he is resting in peace. This book is a fair assessment of Vince Colletta with many interesting anecdotes from his colleagues and it’s nicely illustrated too. Worth a look.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
December 19, 2021
Vince Colletta was an inker, most famous today for his collaborations with Jack Kirby. He was reliable, hard-working, and extremely fast--there's no doubt that many comics only made it to the stands because of him. However, his hard work took the form of quantity rather than quality, and he is often reviled for the shortcuts he took to maintain his output--he simplified the art, sometimes to the point of completely removing background characters he didn't feel were necessary for the panel.
In this book, Bryant outlines Colletta's career, and gives the perspectives of industry figures and historians on various aspects of the man's career. He wisely avoids turning his book into a polemic in either direction. He doesn't hide his own views (which are that Colletta's style worked well in romance comics and again on Thor, but poorly in some other titles), but he includes quotations from a wide range of viewpoints--professionals who regard Colletta as having been an industry great, from people who view him as having "ruined" Kirby, and all views in-between. Of course in the grand scheme of things none of this matters--Colletta died three decades ago, and is unlikely to do any more inking--but it's an interesting piece of micro-history.
Where I think this book falls short is in its choices of illustrations. It has illustrations, many of them, but they are chosen haphazardly and don't seem to complement the text. For example, Bryant talks about a certain issue of Journey Into Mystery. It has two stories in it, both drawn by Kirby, but inked by different people--one of them Colletta. Bryant assures us that looking at these stories side-by-side illustrate the differences an inker can make. No doubt it would, except that Bryant does not include any illustrations from the stories for us to look at. This is not an isolated incident, and it's always frustrating when it occurs.
In this book, Bryant outlines Colletta's career, and gives the perspectives of industry figures and historians on various aspects of the man's career. He wisely avoids turning his book into a polemic in either direction. He doesn't hide his own views (which are that Colletta's style worked well in romance comics and again on Thor, but poorly in some other titles), but he includes quotations from a wide range of viewpoints--professionals who regard Colletta as having been an industry great, from people who view him as having "ruined" Kirby, and all views in-between. Of course in the grand scheme of things none of this matters--Colletta died three decades ago, and is unlikely to do any more inking--but it's an interesting piece of micro-history.
Where I think this book falls short is in its choices of illustrations. It has illustrations, many of them, but they are chosen haphazardly and don't seem to complement the text. For example, Bryant talks about a certain issue of Journey Into Mystery. It has two stories in it, both drawn by Kirby, but inked by different people--one of them Colletta. Bryant assures us that looking at these stories side-by-side illustrate the differences an inker can make. No doubt it would, except that Bryant does not include any illustrations from the stories for us to look at. This is not an isolated incident, and it's always frustrating when it occurs.
October 13, 2022
This book takes a look at the life and career of Comic Book inker Vince Colletta, utilizing interviews with family and colleagues to provide perspective on the man often reviled as the worst inker in comics.
Having read comics most of my life, I did buy a lot of books which Vince Colletta had a hand in. My own opinion was that he wasn't one of my favorites, but in retrospect the books I was most likely judging him on were ones where the penciller wasn't amongst my favorites either.
This book does a solid job of offering different points of view on the man and his work. Some pencillers, with a vested interest in seeing inker religiously adhere to their pencils, view his work negatively for erasing or simplifying things in the inking. A reader, however, not having seen the original pencils, might have a different view. And an editor might have just been thankful to have someone who could meet a deadline by getting the work done fast.
The book is full of examples of Colletta's work, as well as comparisons with the original pencils. Yes, he would often erase figures and objects, simplify backgrounds, or shade out a character drawn with detail, but it wasn't always for the worst. And getting context on the business of his time and financial demands on him, one can better understand why working fast and taking shortcuts could be seen as a virtue.
While well-researched, sometimes the necessity of third person accounts (due to the passing of certain individuals) does make one wonder about bias in some accounts, but, for the most part, this comes off as a relatively even-handed analysis of the man, his work, and his place in comic book history.
Having read comics most of my life, I did buy a lot of books which Vince Colletta had a hand in. My own opinion was that he wasn't one of my favorites, but in retrospect the books I was most likely judging him on were ones where the penciller wasn't amongst my favorites either.
This book does a solid job of offering different points of view on the man and his work. Some pencillers, with a vested interest in seeing inker religiously adhere to their pencils, view his work negatively for erasing or simplifying things in the inking. A reader, however, not having seen the original pencils, might have a different view. And an editor might have just been thankful to have someone who could meet a deadline by getting the work done fast.
The book is full of examples of Colletta's work, as well as comparisons with the original pencils. Yes, he would often erase figures and objects, simplify backgrounds, or shade out a character drawn with detail, but it wasn't always for the worst. And getting context on the business of his time and financial demands on him, one can better understand why working fast and taking shortcuts could be seen as a virtue.
While well-researched, sometimes the necessity of third person accounts (due to the passing of certain individuals) does make one wonder about bias in some accounts, but, for the most part, this comes off as a relatively even-handed analysis of the man, his work, and his place in comic book history.
April 4, 2018
This book is really good. Bryant interviews over two dozen people for their perspective on Colletta, including Colletta's son. Everyone who is quoted has met Colletta and usually worked with him in some capacity, so they know what they're talking about and they've witnessed the good and the bad. It's a fairly balanced book, as Bryant lets the interviewees speak for the most part. He also includes some choice pages of artwork, showing the shortcuts Colletta took - including erasing whole figures and backgrounds. It's very compelling and worth a read.
April 2, 2020
Fantastic book. Gives you exactly what the title suggests:perspectives. It attempts to cover all the bases and interviews nearly all the key players still living and willing to talk. Doesn’t seem too biased and allows you to form your own opinion.
August 5, 2020
It's always interesting to get glimpses of creative artists as human beings living their lives, rather than simply as names in the credits. Colletta seems to have been a very unusual character among comics illustrators, not just because he was an extremely hard worker and unbelievably fast, but because comics were only one part of a life that reminds me more of The Sopranos than Superman. You don't see a lot of flamboyant extraverts in the bullpens, but Vinnie seems to have been flashy, outgoing, and endlessly entrepreneurial.
I also was not, frankly, familiar with all the criticisms leveled at Colletta and his inking. His style was never my cup of tea-- I think Joe Sinnott was Kirby's very best inker, and Tom Palmer was my favorite inkslinger, back in the day-- but it seemed to work on Thor, giving that feature a suitably antiquarian look. But I had no idea, back then, how much erasing and inking-over Colletta was doing. As an illustrator myself, I think he treated Kirby's work with an unbecoming lack of respect-- but the fact that he could hack out the work, meet deadlines, and earn his paychecks certainly deserves its own measure of respect. Even the most idealistic artists have to pay the bills, after all.
I also was not, frankly, familiar with all the criticisms leveled at Colletta and his inking. His style was never my cup of tea-- I think Joe Sinnott was Kirby's very best inker, and Tom Palmer was my favorite inkslinger, back in the day-- but it seemed to work on Thor, giving that feature a suitably antiquarian look. But I had no idea, back then, how much erasing and inking-over Colletta was doing. As an illustrator myself, I think he treated Kirby's work with an unbecoming lack of respect-- but the fact that he could hack out the work, meet deadlines, and earn his paychecks certainly deserves its own measure of respect. Even the most idealistic artists have to pay the bills, after all.
April 26, 2014
I like reading books about the history of comic books. I am a loser that way. They one was more interesting in concept than in execution. Its about Vince Colletta, who was an inker who was known for changing the art of the penciler, Like Jack Kirby, that he was embellishing. It is an interesting question, was comics art or a commercial entertainment, where making the book on deadline was more important than anything artistic. This is an important question and the book didn't answer it. The research was spotty and the writing was passable. With that said, I loved the question it brought up, and was happy to think on it, whether the book did a good job or not
July 17, 2011
Interesting and pretty well balanced.
I wouldn't go so far as "hack", but that there was other work to do, or that he 'had a family to support' are not valid excuses to rush through jobs; don't take the next project until the current one is finished. Finished properly.
Regardless, Al Milgrom will remain the 'worst inker ever'.
I wouldn't go so far as "hack", but that there was other work to do, or that he 'had a family to support' are not valid excuses to rush through jobs; don't take the next project until the current one is finished. Finished properly.
Regardless, Al Milgrom will remain the 'worst inker ever'.
January 30, 2014
Penciler Gil Kane once described Vince Colletta as his second-favorite inker. But who was his first favorite? "Anybody else," said Kane. A great little biography of "Comics' Most Controversial Inker."
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews