Vince Colletta

Vincente Colletta was born in Casteldaccia, Sicily, the son of Rosa and Francesco "Frank" Colletta, the latter "a pretty high-level Mafioso", according to family lore. Colletta Sr emigrated from Sicily to escape local law enforcement and settled in Brooklyn, New York City, where his wife and child joined him 10 years later. The family then moved to New Jersey and opened an Italian market, severing any ties to the Mafia. Vince Colletta served in the Army Air Corps during World War II; he served in the South Pacific and Guam, and according to his son "his art graced the side of many USAF bombers." After he was discharged, he attended the New Jersey Academy of Fine Arts. ==Career==

' Secret Story #7 (June 1954). Cover art by Colletta (signed) Colletta entered comics in 1952, freelancing first as a penciler, inking his own work, for the publisher Better Publications, on the titles Intimate Love and Out of the Shadows, During an Atlas retrenchment in the late 1950s, Colletta freelanced as a penciler on the DC Comics romance titles Falling in Love, ''Girls' Love Stories, and Heart Throbs'', and Charlton Comics' Love Diary and Teen Confessions. His last confirmed pencil work for decades was "I Can't Marry Now" in Love Diary #6 (Sept. 1959). Artists who assisted or ghosted through Colletta's own studio included Maurice Whitman in 1964, Hy Eisman from 1960 to 1964, and at various times Matt Baker, Dick Giordano, and Joe Sinnott, as well as Kyle Baker. Marvel Comics #126 (March 1966), the debut after its retitling from Journey into Mystery''. Art by Jack Kirby and Colletta As an inker for Marvel in the 1960s, Colletta worked on nearly every title, including some of the earliest issues of Daredevil. He inked Kirby's Fantastic Four #40–44, as well as Fantastic Four Annual #3, featuring the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm and guest-starring virtually all the major Marvel Comics characters of the time. Author and Silver Age of Comic Books historian Pierre Comtois wrote that, Colletta would also pencil stories in many 1960s issues of Charlton Comics' Teen-Age Love and First Kiss (at least some of which has been credited in reprints as by "Vince Colletta Studio"). He occasionally inked romance stories penciled by Joe Sinnott, and other pencilers on such titles as Charlton's Gunmaster, and Dell Comics' Guerrilla War, Jungle War Stories, and Western series Idaho. Kirby assistant Mark Evanier and inker Wally Wood eventually convinced a reluctant Kirby to ask DC Publisher Carmine Infantino to remove Colletta from inking Kirby's titles. Colletta went on to ink a large array at DC, including a variety of Batman, Superman and Green Lantern titles; the TV tie-in series Isis and Super Friends; and nearly every issue of Wonder Woman from #206 (July 1973) to #270 (Aug. 1980), over pencilers including Don Heck, Dick Dillin, Curt Swan, José Delbo and Michael Netzer (Nasser). His time there included discovering future industry star Frank Miller. As one-time Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter described, Miller had broken in with "a small job from Western Publishing, I think. Thus emboldened, he went to DC, and after getting savaged by Joe Orlando, got in to see art director Vinnie Colletta, who recognized talent and arranged for him to get a one-page war-comic job". Before and after his tenure, Colletta continued to do a small amount of inking for Marvel, as well as for Skywald Publications' black-and-white horror magazine Psycho. Well into the 1980s, Colletta continued to ink a wide assortment of comics for both DC and Marvel. His last known credit is a Marvel humor one-shot, Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe (July 1989). ==Analysis==

Colletta was 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. He nonetheless has been criticized by a range of fellow professionals and comic historians for erasing various details in 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." Colletta was reassigned from inking The Tomb of Dracula when publisher Stan Lee determined Colletta had taken unacceptable shortcuts on issue #9. Gene Colan, penciler on the series (and on several earlier projects inked by Colletta), remarked many years later that "when he wanted to he could do very good work, but he didn't take his time with my stuff." 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 [Lee] 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 [and are] 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." Colletta himself described his methods as a necessity of the industry. When asked to describe his philosophy of inking, he said, "Well, first of all, some inkers like to pick and choose... and they'll take their time, no matter what the deadline is, even if the editor is in a jam, or a colorist is waiting for pages to come in so they can earn a living, too. I can't be that way." ==Personal life==

By the early 1950s, Colletta was married to his wife, Viola. The couple had a son, Franklin, and two daughters, Roseannette and Cynthia. Some time after having recovered from a heart attack, Colletta was diagnosed with cancer; three weeks later, on June 3, 1991, aged 67, he died at Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood, New Jersey. At least one obituary, in The Comics Journal, erroneously stated he died at age 65 and in "late June", and claimed the cause was heart disease. ==Awards==

Colletta was posthumously awarded the Inkwell Awards Special Recognition Award in 2016. His son, Frankie, extended his thanks on the awards' official site. ==References==