The immense body of art work illustrated by Vince Colletta presents me with a marvelous window into the creativity of the man. From the 50s, during which time he penciled and exquisitely inked primarily romance stories, to the birth and successful emergence of superheroes that continues today. Here are a few examples from the book “DRAWN TO BEAUTY, VINCE COLLETTA – LIFE AND ART” which, by the way, is a must read not only for those who love comic book art and publishing lore, but also to examine the incredible tale of a life that, in ways that will surprise you, has become even more fascinating since he died in 1991. Vinnie’s women usually had sumptuous lips and that famously substantial mascara. Reader’s comments over the years have been…. interesting.
Andrew Wahl: Personally, I don’t put much of Vince Colletta’s inking in the “beauty” category. But I am trying to keep an open mind as I revisit my old comics for these reviews, and judge each book with a fresh set of eyes. That’s why I’ve been surprised to find Colletta’s work on Warlord better than I remember. This issue is a good example: I typically like Bruce Patterson’s inks, but didn’t find them to be an improvement over Colletta’s work on the title.
Ben Herman: For something that was inked by Vince Colletta (Warlord,) this actually looks pretty good. Maybe it was the fact that Shakira, a sexy lady clad in a fur bikini, was in pretty much every single panel of the story motivated Colletta to put in a little bit more effort that usual? Whenever there happened to be a beautiful woman in whatever he happened to be inking, suddenly Colletta always seemed inspired to do just a little bit more work than he usually would.
ROMANCE ART BY VINCE COLLETTA
Graduating diamond shapes created by cross-hatching at different angles, embellished with shadows and light contrast a glow radiating from the man’s cheeks. It is he who dominates the panel. The woman, of course, is beautiful with subtle accent lines in her lips.
Mike Browning: Hmmm … while we’re on the topic of artists who don’t make the hot list each month … Win Mortimer’s Spidey Super Stories art is classic and Vince Colletta’s romance stuff was beautiful.
Ken Allan: without starting any sort of a flame war, can anyone send me any articles, personal experiences, etc. with regards to Vince Colletta? I seriously want to just learn a bit more about him and have had little success. Even if some of you could point me towards any interviews he may have done,….ANYTHING,…it would be deeply appreciated.
David Edge: Vince Colletta would have best served Kirby in the 1950s, when he seemed to take greater care in his artwork. As I’ve said before, his romance art from this time was truly stunning.
Mark Yanko: Vinnie is a bit like Don Heck in that respect. If you look at early romance art by Heck and compare it to his ’70s superhero work, the difference is startling.
Mike Pascal: Right on, Mark. Thanks to John Lustig’s wonderful LAST KISS strips, Vinnie’s lovely romance work is on display almost weekly and will be preserved for a whole new audience.
Colleen: Vinnie Colletta used to freak me out because all the women he inked had the same gloppy mascara.
OKSNER AND COLLETTA
The central character in the panel is obviously the girl but she is rendered darkly with complex facial shading accompanying the simple shadowing of her neck and breast. The inversion of color in the girl’s left eye is interesting, almost seeming as if her eye is closed. I love how the inker featured luminescent highlights in the girl’s hair. Bob Oksner was an excellent plotter of all types of stories.
Droid714: As I’ve stated before, since I was a Marvel Zombie from the very early 60’s through the mid 70’s, I completely missed Vinnie’s work at DC in the 70’s. Now that I’m going back and collecting Wonder Woman and Supergirl from that era, I’m seeing much of his DC work for the first time. And the more I see of it, the more I like it. In my opinion, he was a much better technical artist than Kirby. His women actually looked like women, not men with long hair. And quite frankly, I’ve never been a big fan of Colan or Buscema.
Again, the more I see of Vinnie’s work, the more I start to wonder if a lot of the negativity that some of his peers allegedly felt for him wasn’t motivated a little bit by jealousy. He was good, he was fast and he occasionally erased a few lines of their precious pencils. Yet without Vinnie making sure the work got out the door on time, how many of them would have been whining about missing their paychecks?
HOUSE OF MYSTERY 270 ART BY ORLANDO AND COLLETTA
HOUSE OF MYSTERY 270 ART BY ORLANDO AND COLLETTA
The colorist Tatjana Wood helped to bring out the darkness of both the scene and the girl’s horrific situation with her vivid coloring of the damsel in distress. Joe Orlando was a terrific penciler for laying out macabre stories. Vinnie’s inks on the captive woman are incredible showing her virtually bursting out of her dress in an effort to escape.The druid in the foreground is ominously inked with a bold brush and pen; the others rendered more delicately as are the shocked children who look on from the background. Vinnie and Joe were very close friends throughout their forty-year professional careers.
Fat Boy: When I first saw these Joe Orlando and Vinnie Colletta Daredevils it seemed like art art instead of just comic art. Hopefully you’ll post some scans of the interior pages. Sure wish I had saved these.
Comicsdad: Joe Orlando’s art is quite nice, and I can’t remember when I’ve seen Colletta’s inks reproduced so well
Joseph Graves: I thought it was strange Vinnie put as much into that over Orlando whose art is cartoonish. I liked it.
Nick Caputo: I agree for the most part, although those early DD’s by Orlando had a certain charm to them. I even liked the Colletta inks, go figure!
LOVERS 64 – NOVEMBER 1954
Despite the poor print quality of comic books in the 1950s, some artists, Colletta among them, strove to impart an illustrative, portrait-like quality to their art. This splash page represents the finest efforts of Vince Colletta to translate his love of oil painting onto a completely different, difficult medium. An artist can create lifelike people in a realistic world using oils. Museums are full of such masterpieces. The same techniques and the resultant works are literally impossible to duplicate with pencils and ink. I believe this example is as close as you will find in a comic book.
Mr. Peabody: Not much to say about the inking on the cover but the interior page you showed looks pretty good to me. It is just romance, after all, and I doubt if either of the men who created this artwork were trying for a museum piece. Anyway, there’s no way Colletta could have turned one of these rounded faced Kirby women into a something either realistic or beautiful. See the cover of Lovers #64 or most any other Vinnie girl from the 50s to illustrate my point.
Walt: I enjoy fine line work as done by the likes of Reed Crandall, Al Williamson, Vince Colletta etc and sorely miss this highly detail efforts of illustration as the today’s stock or printing processes do not allow this type of illustration.
alexarcadian: It’s apparent if you go back and look at Colletta’s romance work from the 50s he was aiming for an illustrative look something along the lines of Leonard Starr.
Russ M: The thing about Vince Colletta is what this book (The Thin Black Line) missed altogether and that’s his art. When given time, Colletta outshone every other inker on superheroes. Prior to that he drew hot romance stories that looked a lot more realistic than what other artists were doing. Just look at the cover of THOR #126 – could that finished product been equaled by anyone else. Even to this day, inkers use thick black lines that look almost measured as if by rulers and protractors. Colletta took pen in hand and illustrated, drawing shadows, depth and realism into his subjects.
Ger Apelde: But some artists, such as Colletta and Al Williamson (and most of his group of peers) liked to experiment. You see them try out new techniques in every panel. They use dry brush, full brush, pen, stencils, anything. Colletta’s early work is very similar to that, but he adds a twist of his own. He frequently uses patterns to distinguish one material from another. At times it’s almost as if he is a fashion illustrator. That, combined with his way with pretty women, made him very suitable for romance comics. He also developed a great way of drawing women’s hair, which is not something every artist masters.
Bring Back Zot: Nice article and an even nicer drawing of Vince Colletta, Michael. Love him or hate him, those 50’s covers prove Colletta had genuine artistic talent.
Michael Netzer (Former Marvel and DC Penciler): How true, BBZ. Vinnie’s romance work is not only indicative of talent, but stands along side some of the best in commercial illustration, like Stan Drake and other giants of his time.
I wrote a book! Vince Colletta was a beloved figure, especially to those in the field of publishing. So many of his contemporaries took the time to write to me about Vinnie, the person, as well as Vinnie the artist. And many of their remembrances and stories are contained in this book, DRAWN TO BEAUTY – Vince Colletta – Life and Art by Franklin Colletta, being published by Black Spring Press.
Looking at the flip side of the coin, to comic book aficionados, Colletta was as polarizing a figure as could be dreamed up by any writer. A deadline-whipping machine, Vince saved more Marvel and DC books from missing their printing schedules than anyone by a large margin. In doing so, however, it was often necessary to simplify the art which rubbed many pencilers as well as countless readers the wrong way. It didn’t matter that these jobs were late due to the gaffes of pencilers and editors, Vinnie shouldered the criticism. Critiques and sometimes heated discussions about my father have lasted to this day.
DRAWN TO BEAUTY is a work of non-fiction that reads like fiction simply because the unvarnished life of this man is difficult to imagine. This account of his existence, which begins in Sicily, slaloms through New York and New Jersey, only to touch down in a seemingly infinite afterlife, is a thrill ride from cover to cover. It is also a poignant biography which will have you shaking your head and wondering how these stories could be real.
Best of all, numerous illustrations created not only by Vince, but also in collaboration with other talented artists such as Jack Kirby and John Romita are found within. From Romance Comics to Superheroes, Colletta made certain that the females were beyond stunning. Vincent Colletta is the most published artist in the history of comics because he did the impossible. And he did it beautifully.
For comic book aficionados, the Vince Colletta story begins in 1952. After art school and a brief career as a portrait painter and muralist, he was introduced to the world of publishing by a family friend who suggested comic books.
Standard Publications was the first door he knocked on. It turned out to be Vinnie’s lucky day. He was given an assignment – just a few pages of a romance story, “then we’ll see how it goes from there” his editor said. My dad was excited. A young husband and father, his foray into oil painting was a critical success and earned him a living but it hardly proved lucrative. Manhattan now beckoned.
Only a few months passed before Colletta was also drawing stories for Timely-Atlas Publishing -the company that one day would become mighty Marvel. What a crazy transition going from portraits to cartoons but, in a way, an organic circular progression for the boy who loved to draw pictures on paper bags in his father’s grocery store.
Stan Lee ran the show at Timely back then and the way Vinnie illustrated females excited him. Thus began an “all work you can handle” career that spanned 40 years. It wasn’t just the provocative poses and sensual embraces but also the illustrative details that, before then, had never been seen in comic books.
By the late 1950s, Vinnie began to focus on production art. The girls were just as beautiful but the art took on a simplicity unlike previous years. As the volume of work mounted, he took on assistants who would do everything from layouts to inking backgrounds. It became known as the Colletta Studio and became a stopping point for famous artists such as Wood, Baker, Sinnott, Steranko, Giordano, Giacoia and Orlando.
Eventually, the implosion of the comic book trade happened which pretty much ground an entire industry to a halt. Those publishing companies that survived severely cut back the number of titles. Never one to wait for opportunities, my father solicited work from small publishers such as Charlton and Dell – a Godsend not only for Vinnie but also the artists who came to depend on him to bring in the work.
The early Timely-Atlas romance art by Vince Colletta is a joy to look at. It has the depth one expects to find in fine art and it’s evocative. You want to plant a kiss on every one of Vinnie’s girls. The most beautiful women on earth. Who knew they could be found in the pages of a comic book?
From an interview with Vinnie’s daughter Roseannette:
Q: Vinnie’s women are considered to be the most beautiful in comics. Why do you think he had such a talent for drawing females?
A: Because he thought women were beautiful. He was born in Sicily which is steeped in hundreds of years of sculpture and painting of the human form. It’s embedded in the culture and maybe in the genes
DRAWN TO BEAUTY, VINCE COLLETTA – LIFE AND ART is a gorgeous book featuring a compelling memoir of the artist. I want you to be so immersed in this world that you can’t put it down. It’s a view into a different time, place and culture. You’ll also read many comments and conversations, an extraordinary number of them apologetically praising his work. And there’s those incredibly gorgeous women. Very few of Vinnie’s contemporaries ever matched the realism he provided with pencil and pen.
Stan Lee, Marvel’s former Editor in Chief and Colletta’s former boss: – “Just mention the name Vinnie Colletta and the first thing that comes to mind is his gorgeous portrayal of beautiful females in his artwork.
When I first met Vinnie and he showed me his art samples I was overwhelmed. I had never seen anyone depict beautiful women in romance stories as dramatically or as glamorously.
Years later, when the trend turned to superhero stories, Vince showed his amazing versatility by becoming a terrific inker of many of our main characters, with the countless issues he inked of Thor being his most memorable.
Not only was Vincent Colletta extremely talented, but he was also one of our most dependable artists. If ever another artist became ill and couldn’t meet his deadline, I can’t remember the number of times I’d give the assignment to Vinnie who would work through the night and inevitably deliver the work on time.
Indeed, Vincent Colletta was a fine artist, a valued co-worker and a dear friend whose work will be long remembered.”
Martin Pasko, Veteran writer: I think Vince Colletta was one of the best inkers of his generation in the comics business, but — sadly, IMO — his reputation suffered unfairly for his consummate professionalism. Vinnie was the guy so many editors came to rely on to make up the time in the schedule lost to writers’ and pencillers’ slowness. Vinnie often had to cut corners — such as scrimping on backgrounds — to turn the pages around in time. And after SOME, but not all, editors had happily put the books “to bed,” they — and the fans — would talk trash about Vinnie being a hack — conveniently forgetting that NO creative choice Vinnie made was EVER in sacrifice to the clarity of the storytelling and what the reader was paying for. I always thought the way he was regarded in some quarters was grossly unfair…
…because I WORKED with him, and I saw what he could do when allowed to do it (he was a good penciller, too, but he never got much of a shot at it except on the romance books)…and I remember all the magnificent ink work he did, over guys like Jack Kirby and Gil Kane and many others, when he was Given. Enough. Time. To Be. The Best. He could be. Which was, IMO, magnificent.
Frankie, Vince is honored by having a son who respects his memory as you do, because it’s a testament to a guy who apparently did in his personal life what I always knew he did in his professional one: his best.
For readers not familiar with Vince Colletta, my father was an artist and inker, known primarily for his exquisite romance art and, later on, his contributions to the superhero genre. Debates over his techniques and methods will probably never subside.
Stefan Etrigan: For those of you who can’t be bothered to look, it’s the beautiful cover to FOREVER PEOPLE #3 by Jack Kirby, with surprisingly lovely inks by Vince Colletta.
Jose: I’ve always said Vinnie Colletta was pretty good, when he wanted to be. So I’m glad he’s in my sketchbook.
Ken Quattro: Mike’s quest of Romita art has undoubtedly affected the going prices of Romita art. But unless others also treasured that art as well, then Mike would be paying far less. It takes more than one person to affect the market. If he was “hoarding” Vince Colletta art, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Richard Howell: If you’re one of those who enjoy the Kirby/Colletta THOR collaboration–and there are many who agree with you (many who don’t, too)–you’re in luck, because there are many, many pages from those issues on the market.
Doc V.: To which I’ll add that if anyone wants to get rid of that “crappy” Colletta romance art they might have, I’d gladly take it off your hands.
Ray Cuthbert: When the great inker Vince Colletta left the Kirby “Fourth World” books, Colletta’s rounded and romantic finesse was sadly lacking after that…
Ben Herman: No offense, Ray, but I have to disagree completely. When Kirby got rid of Vinnie “my best friend is my eraser” Colletta, the art improved.
Ray Cuthbert: No offense taken. My point is merely this: I liked Vince Colletta’s inking on Kirby most of the time. Vince had plenty of faults as an inker (like his erasures), but I liked what he brought to the table on Kirby’s work. There are only three inkers who worked on Kirby that I can think of who made Jack’s women look attractive — Wood, Sinnott and Colletta. Vince’s work as a top-flight romance artist made his inking of Kirby particularly appealing in my eyes.
Loston Wallace: I never cared much for Colletta’s inks over Jack, but I don’t hate them. In fact, I feel Colletta has gotten a little of a bum rap. Sure. He erased, hacked, and altered, but he was a professional. He got the job done. Mediocre or not, he was dependable. Don’t get me wrong. If Vinnie were alive today, I’d pray that he wouldn’t be the guy assigned to ink me. But there are two sides to every story. It seems Vinnie was interested in making money, not art. He was true to his convictions.
Tony Fornaro: How anyone can look at those Kirby/Colletta Thor’s and say “what crappy inks.” is beyond me. I personally believe that was the best Kirby art ever.
Greg Huneryager: I found the gallery very entertaining/ informative. It’s interesting but Colletta doesn’t seem to be that bad a match with Toth.
Ken Quattro: I agree about Colletta’s inks over Alex Toth. As bad a rap as he gets for what he did with Kirby’s pencils, Colletta “fit” Toth nicely. Given the fact that he inked Toth frequently, I’d assume that Toth approved of his work. Toth didn’t much care for inkers who overworked his pencils and put their imprint on them. Colletta’s “strength” was that he used a spare line.
Ken: Just curious,…(and pardon my ignorance on this) but is Vince Colletta still with us? I know little about him other than, unlike many out there, I sincerely enjoyed his work on early Kirby Thor pages. As a matter of fact when and if I ever break down to get my example of Kirby (my TOS by Colan has to come first!) then a Thor page with Colletta inks would probably be my choice!
AH: ouch better be careful mentioning something like that can get you into trouble on this list =O. AH remembers the last Colletta arguments!
Paul Smith (Former Marvel and DC penciler): Vinnie did brilliant work at DC. Adams, Kane, Kirby, Vosburg, Grell and a host of lesser artists that no inker could’ve saved. You’re free not to like it but it doesn’t change the fact that Vinnie was one of the best.
John Byrne (Former Marvel and DC penciler): I always enjoyed the time I spent hanging out with Vinnie in the bullpen.
Erik Larsen: (Former Marvel and DC penciler):Years later, I look back and get a kick out of it. It was the last issue of Thor that Vinnie Colletta ever inked and the last issue Stan Lee ever scripted, so it was like I was filling in for Jack Kirby as part of the classic Thor creative team. In retrospect, it really wasn’t as bad as I seemed to think it was. And it one case, what I took to be a shortcut on Vinnie’s part aided the storytelling. Vinnie had made an incidental foreground figure bald, which, in retrospect, eliminated a distraction that helped focus the readers attention on what it should have been focused on: the battle, which raged behind him. This foreground figure was unimportant — the battle was.
Stan had a good eye for talent. Starting his career at Standard Comics, Colletta was soon chosen to illustrate almost every cover in the Timely-Atlas romance library. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Vince’s good girl art in the romance books helped draw attention to the fledgling publishing company that would one day become Marvel Comics.
A TIMELY AWAKENING FOR ROMANCE ART IN COMIC BOOKS
LOVE VINNIE COLLETTA? NO APOLOGY NECESSARY
A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY – VINCE COLLETTA IN NEW YORK
THERE’S SOMETHING FISHY ABOUT THIS ARTICLE.
CARE FOR SOME WITE’ OUT IN YOUR COMIC BOOK ART?
UNEXPECTED? I NEVER SAW IT COMING.
JACK KIRBY, VINCE COLLETTA, MIKE ROYER AND THE KULT
How to Draw Beautiful Women -The Perfect Swipe File
SHIFTING GEARS
Jack Kirby’s GALACTUS – As Portrayed by Vince Colletta and Joe Sinnott
Dazzler Art by Frank Springer and Vince Colletta
Is it Art? Or, is it Comic Book Art?
A HELL OF A SPLASH PAGE
TALKING TRASH ABOUT VINNIE
THE ART DIRECTOR’S CHAIR AT DC COMICS
A VINCE COLLETTA REMEMBRANCE BY ALAN KUPPERBERG
JACK AND VINNIE – FROM START TO FINISH
