Ape Lad has posted up a challenge on a Flickr picture pool offering a chance for budding artists to have a go at inking a Jack Kirby Thor page from issue #144 and see if they are better than Vince Colletta:
“If you’re a fan of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s epic run on the Mighty Thor, you’ve heard (and maybe even share) the complaints about the inking style of Vince Colletta. Well, now is your chance to put your ink where your mouth is and have some fun re-embellishing a select page of Kirby’s dynamic artistry!
Thanks to the assistance of John Morrow, publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector, I’ve posted a photostat of Jack Kirby’s pencils from a page of Thor issue 144 for you to ink, experiment, and play with. Issue 49 of the Jack Kirby Collector is dedicated to Thor, and Mr. Morrow has indicated he may run select examples of the inked pages submitted to this group!
Feel free to use the discussions in this group to share your thoughts or links about Kirby, Thor, inking tips and techniques, and even the infamy of the prolific one himself: Vince “the Prince” Colletta.” (link via Boing Boing)
July 1st, 2007 at 3:48 am
My dick can ink better than Vince Colletta. What will be interesting will be seeing which of the new young guys inks better than the other new young guy. I guarantee they’ll all ink better than the infamous one.
Tips on how to ink better than Vince Colletta:
1.Dip your pen or brush in ink.
2. Find a line.
3. Cover line with ink.
Presto! You’re a better inker than Vince Colletta. It’s that simple.
Good luck one and all.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Who is this nobody named P.Craig Russell?
June 15th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
No response from P. Craig, eh? Well, count me in as a Vince Colletta admirer. I think that a lot of fans who would normally like what Colletta did got pulled along by the wave that is Vin-hate. How it got started is beyond me, I always loved the guys work.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I agree-Coletta has his detractors, and after reading about some of his practices I cringed. However, I always liked his scratchy technique on certain titles; Thor in particular. Tastes vary, if he’s not your cup of tea take solace in the fact that he’s no longer working!
To each his own!
July 17th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Dont know if my former, longer post went through but I said I loved Colletta.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
The infamy of the prolific one himself: Vince “the Prince” Colletta is as appropriate a description of Vinnie as you’ll find. Nice job.
Discuss him? That’s been done and re-done, hasn’t it? Legendary romance artist since the 50s then acclaimed inker of superhero comics like THOR and New Gods. Later on, after the Jack Kirby lovers were whipped into a frenzy because VC erased some of his pencils (an occasional practice of every inker who ever lived, I might add), negative stories began circulating. Despite VC’s inks being some of the greatest ever to grace JK’s pencils, his reputation took a hit as a result.
He also gained a reputation as the fastest inker of them all and that speed was critical to publishers making deadlines when books were late. Those books, unfortunately, could not be artistic achievements too and they further contributed to discussions of VC’s work.
Colletta will possibly always be the most controversial figure in American comic book history.
Regards,
Dan
http://ismarkevaniermentallyill.blogspot.com/
November 7th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
The only thing “legendary” about Vinnie Colletta is how bad he was as an inker, his “style” was awful to look at and he had no understanding of textures and line thicknesses or how to ink hair or clothing, never mind that he erased whatever he didn’t feel like inking. Just using the word “inker” to describe what Colletta did to so many great artists over the years just disgusts me and demeans the good work most other inkers have done, people who actually care about their craft and respect the pencillers they work over. Colletta never cared about any of the artists he destroyed with his attempts at trying to use pen and ink to cover their lines as quickly as possible so he could be done before lunch time. Even the lies that are told about how Colletta had to ink like a 3 year old to meet deadlines don’t hold up under scrutiny. Kirby was never late, neither was Colan or Mike Grell, who fought with DC for years to get that hack off of Warlord and Green Lantern. Ask him how it felt to work your butt off drawing a comic only to have a slob like Colletta destroy it just because he didn’t care about other artists efforts. He inked John Byrne just once and destroyed his art, you notice he only inked Byrne once, right? Byrne made sure to never let that happen again! Neal Adams sure liked Colletta, how many times did he ink him? What about John Romita? I know Alan Kupperberg liked Colletta but guess what? NOBODY LIKED ALAN KUPPERBERG! He was one of the worst artists to ever get work from Marvel and DC and that’s only because his brother kissed everyone’s ass to keep him working. It’s no coincidence that towards the end, the only people that would work with Colletta are the new artists and hacks that didn’t care about their work.
It saddens me how many great artists over the years had their work destroyed by Vinnie Colletta and how many key books he was a part of.
In the words of my personal hero, Bono, “It takes years of dedication, personal sacrifice and hard work to create art that touches the soul and enriches the lives of all that see or hear it. It takes only a moment for the small and talentless to destroy it.” Colletta was a destroyer.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Excuse me. Mike O’Brien? Are you an artist? No? Then what am I doing talking to you?
For everyone else, Vince Colletta was an artist and inker who drew thousands comic books during his career. His work has been hailed as exquisitely beautiful since he began in the early 1950s.
I’m a fan of most of his work and want to say that opinions like Mike’s are out of line and really contribute nothing to the thread.
Someone else posted his web site that shows many great Colletta pieces. If Mr. O’Brien wants to be considered something besides a hot air balloon, let him show us some proof of what he’s talking about. Show us some examples of those terrible VC inks. Buffoon.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Did P. Craig Russell take the Re-Inking Thor challenge himself? Russell is an adequate inker but I doubt if he could match Vince Colletta even if you gave him a month to ink the page.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:40 am
When inking with his dick, did P. Craig Russel (who by the way is a superb inker who brings out the best in any artist lucky enough to have him ink his work…)did he mean dick with hand or dick without?
April 10th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I love the critics that bash my grandfather like they really know anything that they’re talking about. Were any of you there? Did any of you witness the years he was employed, busting his ass every day in his studio downstairs, sacrificing the time with his own family to meet his almost impossible deadlines? That’s funny I did and all I can remember was an extraordinary man that dedicated himself entirely to his profession. Those of you that think you have some authority to criticize his talents have no clue what you are talking about. You state that other artists and editors couldn’t stand him? Why is is then he kept working and they kept asking for him? Anyone can work fast enough to meet a deadline. I would like to see how well you manage to put out those pieces of work. As you sit there behind your computers making your judgements, I sit here with a room of memories, those that include letters of praise, and pictures from those same people you claim couldn’t stand my grandfather inking their pages. Has Stan Lee ever been in your living room with a big smile on his face? Best picture I own… Get over yourselves and try spending your time on more worthwhile things than bashing on someone that isn’t even around anymore. Maybe that’s why you all do it, I suppose it is far easier to be rude toward someone that won’t come back at you. Losers.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
And for those that have respectful contributions toward my grandfather’s work I thank you for your kind words as I am sure he would. He loved what he did and we were all very proud of his talent. This wasn’t just a job to him, it wasn’t about making the deadline and getting paid, or pawning his work off on others. I can say I witnessed first hand this man down in his studio EVERY day and night.. Even had his own bed in there! His drawing table still stands in that room by itself now…
April 26th, 2009 at 2:25 am
What a nice letter from Vinnie’s granddaughter. I knew Vinnie and he wasn’t someone you’d want to mess with. I suspect that Katherine would put a pretty good ass whuppin on P. Craig Russell if they met.
May 11th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Well said Katherine.
You punks should stop being fanboy jerks and move on.
Chris
July 19th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Where is P. Craig Russell’s vesion of the page? Perhaps all he can do better than Vinnie is throw bullshit around. I know that he can’t pencil or ink nearly as well.
August 4th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
P. Craig Russell is an embarrassment. To make an underhanded statement like that about someone no longer here to defend his work is as low as a human can go.
And where is the Russell version of the Thor page?
P. Craig All Talk-No Talent Russell.
August 26th, 2009 at 1:34 am
I have, on occasion, panned the venerable Mr. Colletta for some of his deadline-beating ink jobs. There is no comparison, however, between P. Craig Russell’s inks and Vin’s inking even on his worst day. Russell doesn’t even come close.
P. Craig definitely should have kept his dick in his pants on this one.
December 30th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
After having seen perhaps twenty comics inked by P. Craig Russell and a hundred times that many that were inked by Vinnie Colletta I’m going to have to say that Russell definitely should have kept his mouth shut on this one.
Russell spent a great deal of time trying to build a good reputation only to ruin it with one stupid comment like this (if it was, indeed, him who wrote the comment.
Poor form. Craig.
January 19th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
I liked Alan Kupperberg (and Vinnie Colletta, too!)
P. Craig Russell, not so much.
February 6th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Interesting article.
http://ismarkevaniermentallyil.....-down.html
February 26th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
After looking at all of the entries my conclusion is that nobody even came remotely close to bettering the Vince Colletta inked version. I noticed some of those making negative comments about Colletta never submitted ink jobs.