Archives - "The Controversial Inks of Vinnie Colletta

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Introduction to Vinnie Coletta

0:57Hello, your friendly neighborhood host, J.T. Wheatley, here again for another episode of the History Comics Podcast, this time on the controversial life and inks of Vinnie Coletta. Last episode, we focused on one of the most famous and arguably greatest inkers, Joe Sinnott. This time, we'll be focusing on one of the comics' most infamous and controversial inkers, Vinnie Coletta. To some, like Eddie Campbell, the artist of From Hell, he defended Vinnie Coletta's inks, claiming they destined to reprint well. And on May of 2007, he actually posted this on the internet, stating he

1:30was one of his favorite inkers in the 1960s. Campbell stated that inkers like Joe Sinnott and Frank Giacomo knew how to make their inks indestructible, thus they were more popular today. To others, though, and to many that responded to Campbell's internet post, he ruined the class of pencils of artists like Jack Kirby, who he worked with at Marvel and DC and was the first to ink such characters, such as the Hercules, Darkseid, and Mr. Miracle, in settings like New Genesis and Apocalypse. Some called him the gold standard of bad inking, as Eric Larson, the creator of Savage

2:02Dragon, pointed out, though he believes they were overstating it a bit. Others were in the middle, such as Mark Evan there, Jack Kirby's longtime assistant and future biographer, who called Coletta a product of the times, forced to produce art on a monthly basis to keep up with demand.

Coletta's Career

2:17During his career, Coletta had 3,580 listings as an artist and inker from the 1950s and 1980s, working everywhere and with nearly everyone, with 50 titles at Charlton, 90 at DC, and over 100 at Marvel. Coletta inked everything from war to romance to superheroes, some genres with restraints combined, as he inked the weddings of both Reed Richards and Sue Storm and Peter Parker's Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson. He was known for his fast work and fine lines, which included a rough, scratchy look. He was especially great at the female form and their eyelashes, which resulted

2:51from his softer, inking style. However, he had horrible at structures and technology, forcing his removal from Fantastic Four and Jack Kirby's fourth world. Through his life and career, Vinny Coletta made good inks and bad, and for better or for worse, his own mark on the silver age of comic books. Vinny Coletta was born in Vincent Coletta and Casteldassi in Italy on October 15, 1923, a small town of 9,000 in the province of Pomelo, Sicily. His parents were Rosa and Franklin Coletta, who was part of the local mafia. Vincent was raised

3:23to be afraid of the law and the family left for Brooklyn, his father first, followed by Vinny and his mother 10 years later. In New York, Vinny's mother had his father leave the mob life, where they eventually moved to New Jersey and opened an Italian market. It was here that Coletta's connection to the mafia truly ended, according to Coletta's own son, Franklin. Growing up, Coletta loved the art of Lou Fine and Jack Kirby, along with comic strips like Hal Foster's Prince Valiant. He would later serve in a World War II in a specific theater, where he painted on the U.S. Air Force bomber's hoses. After completing his service, Coletta

3:55attended art school and sold paintings and landscapes for money in New Jersey. By the 1950s, Vinny Coletta was in his 30s and married to his wife Viola, with whom he would have one son, Franklin. He started working in comics in 1952 with the romance comic genre, which was just starting to boom, having begun just a few years earlier when Jack Kirby and Joe Simon practically invented it with Young Romance No. 1 in 1947. Coletta with pencil and ink works like Intimate Love for Better Publications, Daring Love for Youthful Magazine, and Dungaree Doll in First Love

4:26Illustrated, No. 89 from Harvey. The latter was about a girl who runs her ailing dad's gas station, thus boys see her as a mechanic over being a cute girl. Coletta would later work with Joe Sinnott at Marvel, at the time called Atlas, and Charlton out of his art studio in New Jersey, producing 2,700 pages together. Sinnott would state Coletta frequently cut corners but continued to work with him as he owned the Charlton contract, which included comics like Love Diary and Teen Confessions. Coletta also worked with High Iseman on 1,500 pages at

5:00$10 a page, and he said Coletta was more of a pragmatic about his art, seeing it as a way to make money. Iseman also stated that it was around this time that Coletta committed to inking over penciling, as he could do that a lot faster, which Iseman thought was a shame, as he thought he was a truly talented penciler. It is unknown exactly which comic was the first ink, but the most popular suggestions are Atlas's Western Tales No. 10 on April of 1956, feature Annie Oakley, in which he co-inked with Saul Broski on Broski's pencils, or in My Own

5:30Romance No. 65 on September 1958, with the feature I Met My Love Again, where Coletta inked over Matt Baker's pencils. Iseman did credit Coletta with teaching him how to work faster, like ignoring picture framing or using a picture of an eye with a single tear to show crying, as opposed to showing the whole face. With this, they were able to produce seven to 10 pages a day. In retrospect, many considered Coletta's run of romance comics his best work, being able to draw beautiful women better than anyone else, despite the CCA's restrictions that hampered this in the

6:02late 1950s, i.e. no cleavage or sex. Since Charleston also produced magazines like True Magazine, Coletta put his photography skills to work as well, and Iseman even recalls posing as a body for a staged crime scene picture. Vinny Coletta came across as a classic Italian appearance, where he wore a white suit with a black shirt unbuttoned at the navel, along with a gold medallion. When Joe sent out attending the comic book convention in 1975, organized by Coletta, he had never met him in person or seen a picture of him, but he was able to pick him out of a crowd of 1,000 in an instant.

6:34Vinny called him that Italian uncle that everyone has in their family. He loved good food and was a bit of a ladies' man, including hanging out with models like Luz Childs, a model and actress from the movie Moonraker, or Shelley Winters. Reportedly, Coletta also worked as a photographer, which got him to know many of these actors and models, which also included Peter Falk and James Ferentino. Coletta claimed to have mob connections, despite his father leaving the mob when he was a child, and looked like a gangster, to a point that Stan Lee had him retake a promotional picture because he looked

7:05too much like a mob hitman. Some believed it based on his house at Three Old Woods Road in Saddle River, New Jersey, which he bought in 1962 and was priced at $3,589,000, complete with a full-sized swimming pole, cabana house, and clay tennis court on four acres of one of the richest neighborhoods in New Jersey. When guests like Joe Qbert or Roy Thomas came over, he refused to allow pictures to be taken there, furthering the myth. However, this house came about because Coletta got himself deeply into debt, thus he had to work extremely hard to pay it off, pulling off numerous one-nighters over the

7:4025 years he and his family lived there. At one point, Coletta thought about starting a restaurant in a prime location as well, though Stan Lee talked him out of it. Ironically, a restaurant would open there and became successful, and Lee and Coletta kidded themselves years afterwards about it. To maintain his work value, Vinnie Coletta would hire numerous assistants and traded value for quality. The first complaint was that he didn't ink parts he didn't want to and used assistants to do the background work. As a result, the panels would have varying quality as each was done by a different

8:11assistant, but he also got paid some of the lowest rates for inkings at the time, which got him a great number of jobs, also requiring him just to work these great number of jobs just to make money and make shins meet. Among the artists who hated this work was Neil Adams, who re-inked his own pencils on Brave and the Bold number 81 after Coletta got a hold of them, and Alex Toff, though Jack Kirby did tolerate him. Gil Kane jokingly stated Coletta was his second favorite inker, and when asked who was his first, Kane said, anyone else. The biggest problem, and he stated, was that Coletta was Rush's work

8:45even when he didn't have to, and more than a few stated he would have been a much better inker if he just slowed down a bit. During this time, Coletta also worked for DC on books like Falling in Love and Girls Love Stories, along with other genres such as adventure like Jungle Action and Horror Fantasy and Uncanny's Tales. Vinny Coletta's inks in these stories would overpower the pencils he worked on, and he would frequently make every character look middle American. On the side, he was also a talented at picking racehorses and even was called the artist at the tracks. However, Coletta never told anyone his

9:17secret, even when high-eyes men asked him, stating, no, it would lower my odds. It was said that the $40 he won from those races was when he was the happiest. Vinny Coletta's studio was open day and night due to his work schedule, and he even allowed cops to come in to make phone calls. His friend, model-actor Zlada St. Edmund, also said, everywhere Coletta went, it was like a club, with lots of friends and hangers-on. His romance style was light, warm, and lush, according to Trina Robbins, especially with his work on Marvel romance comics, as opposed to DC's, which according to Robbins was

9:51cold and angular. Even Alex Toth's Malick Coletta's work on romance comics, which according to John Romina Sr. was really saying something. As mentioned before, Toth hated his inks. However, many argued this may have been what hurt Coletta when the romance faded into the superhero genre emerged, as their stories were more detailed and took more time. That was exactly where Coletta was heading, though, as he would soon start a career in one of the most acclaimed comic books at the time.

Inking for Marvel

10:19Coletta made a big name for himself when he inked Jack Kirby's Pencils on the Tales of Asgard feature on July of 1964 for Journey in the Mystery No. 106, which later became The Mighty Thor. He had previously inked Jack Kirby's Pencils in Kid Outlaw No. 100 in September of 1961, and his cover for Love Romances No. 98 on March of 1962. By May of 1965, Coletta was doing the whole book with issue No. 116 and would continue through 1970 for a six-year run, which included Jack Kirby's Last Pencils on the book, issue No. 179, on August of 1970. Working with Kirby, he and Coletta developed

10:55a style that became a trademark for the character. Along with helping to expand his roster, Hercules was introduced in Journey in the Mystery Annual 1965, which Coletta inked. However, he became infamous for renewing details from Kirby's original Pencils so he could ink faster, including whole characters and backgrounds. For example, in The Mighty Thor No. 125, Jack Kirby's Original Pencils, of which Eric Larson owns, a scene depicts Hercules throwing a tree off of some train tracks before a train passes by. However, after Coletta finished the inks, the train is completely erased.

11:27The scratchy look of his inks did make Thor more natural, though, as you can notice chinks in the armor are cuts on his skin. The reason for Coletta cutting corners was that he argued he worked on so many books at once, but Joe said that he was the only inker he knew that did that. When it came to female characters, as his romance background did pay off here in The Mighty Thor, though, like Sif, Coletta was fantastic, with some noting that she truly had the eyelashes of a goddess. Plus, one could argue that the art or the story was not truly affected by the changes, but diehard Kirby fans considered it blasphemy, especially in The Mighty Thor, which many

12:01considered the high mark of Kirby's art career. Plus, more than a few credit Coletta with helping his art on these pages, including Eric Larson. A battle scene in The Mighty Thor No. 127, Larson points out as one of Coletta's many highlights. In fact, Alan Cooperberg, who penciled to Thor from 1982 to 83, begged for Vinnie Coletta to be his inker, only getting him on the last issue of his run, and according to Cooperberg, that was the one issue he penciled where Thor actually looked like Thor. Even Stan Lee got frustrated

12:32when Thor No. 139 came out in 1967, noticing many of the characters were now smoky half-silhouettes, another corner-cunning technique that Coletta used, but remained friends with him as they socialized a number of times, and Coletta greatly admired Lee. Stan Lee as a friend helped, as fans were frequently writing, attacking his inks, though some admired him as well. This didn't stop Vinnie Coletta from inking many other Marvel books as the first Daredevil comics in Fantastic Four No. 40 to 43 for Jack Kirby, along with Fantastic Four

13:02Annual No. 3, which featured the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, along with a guest starring nearly every Marvel character at the time. However, even Stan Lee couldn't tolerate his kind of according to Marvel's flagship book and had him removed. Simply put, Coletta was awful at technology in the Fantastic Four, though he was great with texture like in Mighty Thor, thus he was better suited for the series. Eddie Campbell went so far as to compare his work on Thor to Lord of the Rings. His replacement was Joe Sinnott, who previously inked the Fantastic Four No. 5 that featured the first appearance of Doctor Doom. It would be an epic run with Jack

13:36Kirby that still stands at the high-water mark of the series today, as of course Sinnott is considered one of the greatest inkers of all time. As for Coletta, he remained the go-to anchor for editors to get jobs done quickly, especially on books running late. But the low quality and corner cutting he brought to his inks hurt him in the long run, as more than a few pencillers started to object to working with him. His son Franklin said his first passion was actually painting, and while he did shortcuts, he never tried to compromise the art. For Coletta, comics was just more about making money. When Jack Kirby went to D.C.

14:08in 1970, Coletta would follow him there, beating out Wally Wood and Frank Giaccaro for the job of inking Kirby's fourth world books, mainly due to being fast and cheap. Especially Kirby was getting top page rated at the time, thus D.C. needed a way to save a few bucks. Starting out, Kirby didn't care as long as his inker made the deadlines, something no one argues Coletta could do, and was more concerned with who the colorist was. However, Coletta's inks on Kirby's D.C. books, which started with Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen, was not at even his best, even for his admirers. He followed up on New Gods, Forever People, and Mr. Miracle,

14:43and it was at this point that Kirby truly started to hate Coletta's inks, and it truly backfired when patrons of the fourth world were linked to Marvel. According to Coletta, who was still working for Marvel and D.C., he was just showing off his work, but for Kirby, who was paranoid about Marvel spying on him after his departure, it was tantamount to sabotage. When Kirby confronted Coletta over this and in short cuts and inking, Coletta said that Kirby should just simply make his art simpler. Thus, Kirby, with encouragement from Mark Kevener and Wally Wood, demanded Coletta

15:14be replaced with Mike Royer on New Gods, Forever People, and Mr. Miracle after her fifth issues, though he would stay on with Jimmy Olsen. This was all under Carmen Infantino, who was publisher of D.C. at the time, and who Coletta openly hated, calling him a Goomba, an Italian slur for cousin, not the mushroom villains from Super Mario Bros., though that's still kind of insulting as well. For Infantino, it was the first time he ever remembered any one of the D.C. artists going against Coletta. Despite the change, this wouldn't be enough to save

15:44Jack Kirby's 4-4 books, which will all be canceled by the next year. Still working at Marvel during all this, Coletta was starting to ink the Tomb of Dracula series in 1972, before the writer Marv Wolfman had him taken off the book, while Jerry Conway had him removed from Thor. This so-and-sense Coletta, he threatened then Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas, stating to him, I feel like you've got a hand in my pocket, and I'm thinking about throwing you out the window. Thomas assured Coletta that while he was being taken off Thor, he would be given another book, so he wouldn't actually be losing any income, which is all Coletta really

16:15cared about. Thus, they didn't have any harsh words afterwards. Previously, Roy met an adult film actress, Daryl Lloyd-Rain's, at Coletta's studio, and even took a picture with her. However, he quickly told his wife about the incident in case Coletta ever tried to use it against him. Of note, Thomas never saw those photos and heard about them ever again after that. Coletta was even given a job inking the first seven issues of the Invaders comic, a series Roy Thomas helped create back in the Avengers No. 71 in December of 1969, about a group of superheroes Captain America fought with during World War II, but

16:47soon he was back in D.C. in a much bigger role. Carmen Infantino had been fired as publisher, much to Coletta's Glee, and the new publisher, Jeanette Kahn, made him art director in May of 1976, reportedly because he was one of the few artists she actually knew. He was staying in the job for three years before leaving on May of 1979, with his most significant claim being that he discovered Frank Miller, while continuing to ink numerous D.C. books, notably Wonder Woman, who naturally fitted Coletta's style. However, he once again would be criticized

17:17by many of the pencilers, notably Mike Grail, who hated his inks of Warlord, a book he launched in 1975 about an Air Force pilot who finds himself stranded in a secret inner earth. Coletta started inking on the book in 1978, and Grail was originally excited, as Coletta was at this point considered an industry legend. However, when the finished pages for Warlord came back bearing little resemblance to his original pencils, according to Mike Grail, his opinion soon soured. Even the fans noticed asking why Grail's art fell off after issue number 15, resulting in Grail wanting Coletta removed. The D.C. brass informed Grail that

17:51they would do it if he got two months ahead in the book, which Grail did, along with four covers, but they refused to do it anyway. Thus, Grail held back on the issue so he could ink it himself. Reportedly, it got so bad, in Warlord number 44 in 1981, a gambler resembling Vinny Coletta had his hand chopped off trying to cheat Warlord. Years later, though, Grail would admit he had a hard time working with inkers in general, preferring to do it himself, and that Coletta was good when he needed to be. Plus, when he needed someone to meet a

18:21deadline, Coletta was still your man. Coletta would eventually step down as art director, though according to many, he was just a full-time inker and did little work outside of that. Joe Stanton gave an example when he and D.C. editor Paul Livis was coming up with the look of the Huntress, who was originally the Earth-2 daughter of Batman and Catwoman, and Coletta during this meeting spent the whole time asleep on the couch. Coletta continued to ink numerous D.C. books after stepping down as art director because editors always needed those deadlines to fill. In the 1980s, Vinny Coletta worked mostly freelance, though he bonded with Marvel's

18:55new editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter, and even used his photography skills to shoot most of the photos in the Mark Marvel Fumamito book of 1984, which depicted the Marvel bullpen as a live-action comic book. Coletta had mixed feelings from the Marvel artist, though, and many never said it to his face. Coletta would eventually criticize Marvel over Shooter's firing in a profane letter in 1987, and as a result, he went from making 26 Marvel books in 1987 to just six in 1988. Reportedly, he even called Roy Thomas about taking the editor-in-chief position

19:26before it was given to Tom DeFalco. One of Coletta's last inking jobs at Marvel was Fred Hembeck's Destroys the Universe 1989. Hembeck originally asked for Terry Austin, but when he was unavailable, editor Larry Hamlin suggested Coletta, resulting in Hembeck to beg for anyone else, such as Chip Stone. In the end, Coletta got the job, and when Hembeck got the finished pages back, he couldn't help but notice that many details changed and still doesn't look fondly on the comic book as a result. In a strange move, especially for the constantly

19:57in-depth Coletta, he sold off his stacks of original art at $5 a page while also starting to work on the movie screenplay. He would end up selling his house in Saddle River for a ton of money, according to his son, giving him the financial cushion needed to try his hand at screenwriting. Coletta ended up writing four screenplays, such as Primo, a Mafia comedy, and had previously claimed that he auditioned for the role of Sonny in The Godfather, the Joe Qbert, who stated that he might have been kidding, but he did look the part.

20:27Vinnie Coletta would die of cancer on June 3rd of 1991 in Westwood, New Jersey at the age of 67. It was claimed his funeral was secret due to mob connections, though of course that is once again furthering the myth. He rarely gave interviews for the press, especially the fans, and is still controversial to this day, though he would receive a special recognition award post-omniously from the Inkwells in 2016, which his son Franklin extended his thanks. Some still call him a hack, while others a true legend and professional. However, like many controversies in the world, and comic books in particular, it was likely somewhere

21:01in the middle. Vinnie Coletta had talent, as many know, with his ability to draw women in texture, but sort of changed himself by rushing through books. But even this was Coletta's strength, as when an editor needed a book to make its deadline, Coletta was there, and in the rush to meet that monthly schedule, he could do a 10-J job in just three. Many of them, from Thor to the New Gods, being the most important comic books of the time. In the end, Freck Hembeck probably described Vinnie Coletta best. His work was unmistakable, and he was unforgettable, but that is not always a good thing. I would like to thank the Chief Store for this episode,

21:36The Thin Black Line, Perspectives on Vinnie Coletta, Comics' Most Controversial Anchor by Robert L. Brandt Jr., a great biography of Vinnie Coletta with numerous interviews of the many comic book greats that worked with him, along with great reprints of his inks and the original print pencils he's changed, so you can see and judge for yourself if Coletta's inks were good or bad. A must-read for any comic book history fan.

Comic Book Review

21:59And now it is April 2nd, 2026, time for the favorite comic of the week. Batman, number 8, by Matt Fraction and Ryan Zook, which is a very good, kind of a catch-up issue that finds Batman reaching out to Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, on how to take down

22:29the Vandal Savage, who, by the way, is now the commissioner of Gotham City, and is teaming up with the new mayor, Poison Ivy. This is a really fun issue that, while it's mostly about just a bunch of talking, it does a great job, like, catching up where everyone stands in this new status quo, and it's very interesting to see Vandal Savage teaming up with Poison Ivy to take on the Bat family. And also, it's neat that Alan Scott kind of explains to Batman that why is Vandal Savage, who's usually a Justice League-level threat, is just concentrating on Gotham City for some reason, pretty much theorizing it must be something personal, and Batman needs to get

23:02to the bottom of it. Just a great catch-up issue of Fraction, like I said, Fraction is the Grinch of his writing, his characters, and dialogue, and Zook, while he's not as dynamic of an artist as Jorge Jimenez, whose part was busy, likely because he did that fantastic Superman and Spider-Man issue last week. He does a great job with these more talky dialogue-heavy issues, great reads from the beginning, and ends on a nice little cliffhanger that really sits at the next status quo for the Bat family. And, well, all in all, just another great read from DC, and they're signing it as the DC Streak's continuing right now, they

23:33are hitting on all cylinders. Though I will admit there was a certain Marvel book Venom I was wanting to pick up this week because something long overdue finally happened, but it was sold out at my local comic book store, and if you know what it is, well, you know why it's sold out, because it's about bloody time. But until then, definitely check out Batman. The current one has been fantastic. And that concludes this episode of the Archives. Join me again next week before it's likely another episode of the Archives. Until then, go ahead and enjoy some good comic book. And, of course, check out Batman. It's been a great run lately.

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