Mike Grell (Former DC Artist): When I was first assigned Vince Colletta as inker on the Warlord, I was excited to be working with an industry legend. I had seen his portfolio -a collection of the best of his best work – and it was impressive to say the least.
So, it was with much anticipation that I began my association with him. In time, however, I found that Vinnie’s speed (a great asset to publishers bucking a deadline) often came at the sacrifice of quality and in many cases the finished product bore little resemblance to the pencils.
Vince Colletta was, at that time, very well entrenched at DC. I was a relative newcomer. That’s a tough nut to crack. Deadlines were not and never were an issue – I was always on time (I wish I could say that held over the past 36 years). The two issue lead criteria in order to replace Colletta as inker on The Warlord was, I thought, pretty much an arbitrary number established by Joe Orlando, then editor on the book. I kind of figured he never expected me to make it.
Lead time for inks was one month. That doesn’t mean Vince took a month or even a week to ink the book. In point of fact, he told me that he had once inked an entire book over the weekend and hadn’t a clue what title he had been working on – but -again I stress that Vince Colletta was the go-to guy when the chips were down and a book absolutely had to be done in extremely short order.
Was it his best work? I doubt it. Certainly nothing I saw matched the quality of work in his portfolio.
Was it done to suitable professional quality? No doubt, or he wouldn’t have continued to get work.
Was it on time? You bet. That’s what Vince Colletta did better than anyone.
And that’s the bottom line.
With the clarity of hindsight, I still say that, despite our turbulent personal relationship, Vince Colletta was a great artist whose true talent was seldom seen by the public and his contribution to the industry during one of the greatest periods in the history of comics cannot be denied.
