Vince Colletta

Vincenzo Colletta (October 15, 1923 – June 3, 1991) was an American comic book artist and art director. He was one of Jack Kirby's frequent inkers during the 1950s-1960s Silver Age of comic books. This included some significant early issues of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, and a long, celebrated run on the character Thor in Journey into Mystery and The Mighty Thor.

Vincente Colletta was born in Casteldaccia, Sicily, the son of Rosa and Francesco "Frank" Colletta, the latter "a pretty high-level Mafioso", according to family lore. Colletta Sr emigrated from Sicily to escape local law enforcement and settled in Brooklyn, New York City, where his wife and child joined him 10 years later. The family then moved to New Jersey and opened an Italian market, severing any ties to the Mafia.

Vince Colletta served in the Army Air Corps during World War II; he served in the South Pacific and Guam, and according to his son "his art graced the side of many USAF bombers." After he was discharged, he attended the New Jersey Academy of Fine Arts.

Colletta entered comics in 1952, freelancing first as a penciler, inking his own work, for the publisher Better Publications, on the titles Intimate Love and Out of the Shadows, and for publisher Youthful Magazines' imprint Pix-Parade, on the title Daring Love.

The following year he began his decades-long collaboration with Marvel, at the company's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics. Primarily a romance comics artist, he drew dozens of stories and covers for the Atlas titles Love Romances, Lovers, My Own Romance, Stories of Romance, and The Romances of Nurse Helen Grant, with his earliest confirmed Atlas romance art the six-page story "My Love for You" in Love Romances #37 (March 1954). Colletta's work also appeared in such genres as jungle adventure (Jungle Action, Jann of the Jungle, Lorna, the Jungle Girl) and horror/fantasy (Uncanny Tales, Journey into Mystery).

During an Atlas retrenchment in the late 1950s, Colletta freelanced as a penciler on the DC Comics romance titles Falling in Love, Girls' Love Stories, and Heart Throbs, and Charlton Comics' Love Diary and Teen Confessions. His last confirmed pencil work for decades was "I Can't Marry Now" in Love Diary #6 (Sept. 1959).

Colletta's first work as an inker of another artist's pencils is unknown, largely due to credits not being given routinely in 1950s comics. Two possibilities suggested by historians and researchers are the cover of Atlas' Annie Oakley Western Tales #10 (April 1956), co-inking with Sol Brodsky over Brodsky's pencils, and the three-page story "I Met My Love Again", penciled by Matt Baker, in My Own Romance #65 (Sept. 1958). Additionally assigned to ink stories in Atlas' emerging science-fiction/fantasy and giant-monster comics, Colletta entered what fans and historians call "pre-superhero Marvel" with three Baker-penciled stories: "The Green Fog" in Journey into Mystery #50 (Jan. 1959), "I Fell to the Center of the Earth" in Tales to Astonish #2 (March 1959), and "The Brain Picker" in World of Fantasy #17 (April 1959).

Historians pinpoint Colletta's first inking of Jack Kirby's pencils as either the cover of Kid Colt: Outlaw #100 (Sept. 1961) or (with Colletta's credit confirmed), the cover of Love Romances #98 (March 1962).