Valiant Vinnie
comments: 3
Valiant Vinnie
or: You Almost Lost Me There
This one's for Valiant Vinnie Colletta who just had a birthday a couple days ago. While it was Ditko's work that brought me to comics, Vinnie had quite a hand in it too. I discovered Ditko's work just two months before he left Marvel. I had just enough time to get hooked and then, he was gone.
My interest in comics could've stopped right there. Flipping through the books on the spinner, looking for something, anything, all I found reminded me of why I was an animation geek with no interest in comics. And then I stumbled on a copy of Thor. I had a memory, from years before, of seeing a Thor book at a friend's place. The front of the book was, well, bleech, but, the art on the back up strip at the end was kind of interesting.
At the time I had no idea that the only difference in the art was Vinnie's inks. But those four pages had stuck in the back of mind such that I pulled the Thor book out of the rack to give it a look. Had Vinnie not taken over the entirety of the ink chores by that time I'd have put the book back and, quite possibly, never started my love affair with comics at all.
This one's for you Vince!
Happy Trails
Smitty
D'OH!
Just now I see that I scanned the blue line sideways and cropped off his widdle head. Ouch!
3 Comments so far
The power of Thor!
Submitted by Gene.mardaga on Mon, 2022-10-17 18:28
Smitty, this Thor is MIGHTY!!!!
Agreed that Colletta could truly enhance an artist’s figure pencils
Here lately, Vince Colletta's
Submitted by Chris Haizlip (not verified) on Wed, 2022-10-19 09:37
Here lately, Vince Colletta's work hasn't been getting the respect he deserves. Here's to him!
Vinnie was one of Jack's greatest inkers
Submitted by Smitty on Wed, 2022-10-19 14:54
Years before Kirby went off to DC I'd stopped following all of his books except Thor. When Vinnie left Thor on that horrible day in the Malt Shoppe, so did I. When Vinnie came back, so did I. When he and Jack went to DC I followed happily until the day Royer took over. I never bought another Kirby book again (outside a couple of benefit books where it was about giving money to the cause). In defense of Royer, he was never allowed to bring his good stuff and was relegated to a human Xerox machine as were those that followed. If you want peoples best work, you've got to let them play.