i feel a little unclean for bringing up that business about Vince Colletta once more. It's starting to look like I actually give a damn about the whole thing. Sure enough, my visitor statistics shot through the roof for a couple of days. However, I don't think I made myself clear in the end. My position on this is that arguing about Colletta erasing a few of Kirby's pencilled figures is on the same level as arguing about who is stronger, Spiderman or the Hulk. If you care then you are a loony! Don't tell me any more about it! Furthermore, consider how it must look to the outside world, who think it rather eccentric if not foolish for grown people to read comic books, let alone get upset and villify an artist for erasing another artist's pencilled figures FIFTY YEARS AGO. This stuff sounds made up, like a hokey plot for Murder She Wrote or some other old 1980s TV blather for people who stay home in their cosy slippers. Stan Lee could have done a cameo and explained to bright wee Angela Lansbury what an 'inker' is. And the main suspect could have been a big puddin' with no social graces. I expect someone will send me a comment telling me it was already done, and Mark Evanier wrote it. And wee Dirk Deppey remembers it well and put his homework aside to go and watch it and how mortified he was to see his hobby mocked in front of all the adults.
uh where was I ...
Changing the subject, Leif Peng looks at the illustrations of William Smith. I love the big bar scene, of which this is a small detail:
Labels: "Make room for me vinnie"
posted by Eddie Campbell at
00:32
10 Comments:
"consider how it must look to the outside world, who think it rather eccentric if not foolish for grown people to read comic books, let alone get upset and villify an artist for erasing another artist's pencilled figures FIFTY YEARS AGO."
I have no proof or examples on hand to proffer, but I daresay that there are probably equivalent spats and arguments in literary and fine art circles about matters of an equally trivial nature...it's just human nature.
cheers
B Smith
"uh where was I ..."
Well, you were NOT talking more about Vinnie Colletta, as I recall.
To those of us who enjoyed the comic books of the 1960s, ALL of the Silver Age comic artists were (and are) a treasure.
B Smith: try the never-ending spat between fans of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.
"My position on this is that arguing about Colletta erasing a few of Kirby's pencilled figures is on the same level as arguing about who is stronger, Spiderman or the Hulk."
The Hulk would win you doofus!
Um, this has nothing to do with the topic, which is probably not a bad thing, but for those of you interested I just stumbled onto a site that has lots of nice art on it (it's a site that sells prints, but it has nicely enlarged pictures so that one can pour over all the detail)
http://www.vintageprints.ca
Who did write Shakespeares plays? By the way, has anyone ever erased your pencil lines when they've inked your work, or vice versa?
From an email written by Vincent Colletta's daughter Cynthia:
"The quality of his life was declining as he aged and was "shut out" by the new and younger artists coming aboard and the powers that be at the top dismissing him as he was no longer valued. They used him because he could always get the work done on time when given impossible inhumane demands to meet."
To those who know the world of publishing, especially in the case of dailys, weeklys and monthlys, what Colletta did was understandable, even heroic.
For the uninitiated and to those who wish to know why Mr. Colletta erased Kirby's lines because "Kirby's penciled pages were never turned in late" they should realize that, in addition to any regular books Vinnie was inking such as Thor, that Marvel consistently and routinely bombarded him with 18 pagers that needed to be done in 2 days. Now if any of the whiners have a solution to how Marvel could have gotten each and every one of their books to the printer by the deadline each and every month, month after month, year after year without Vinnie and precious few like him, let's hear it now.
Eddie, never feel bad for what you write and what you believe in. You have brought a huge amount of joy and satisfaction to Vince Colletta fans everywhere.
The grainy texture in the bar scene is fantastic.
It transports my thoughts to the shadier and darker corners of the image - which in turn jets my associations to Tarkovsky. And then I wonder; what do you think of him?
You know, I actually did once stumble across a (newspaper) comic-themed MURDER, SHE WROTE. The couple of minutes I watched weren't very engaging, but it DID have a cameo by Mell Lazarus. And, If I recall correctly, the murderer was Harvey Fierstein
I'm happy to read that people are still talking about Vince Colletta even though he's been dead more than 17 years. His art was great, in my opinion, and the number of younger artists he helped made comics a better place.
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