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| Image copyright MARVEL COMICS |
Behold - the mighty GALACTUS! But hold on a mo! It's Galactus as pencilled by JACK KIRBY sure enough - but not as inked by JOE SINNOTT. Nope, 'twas the valiant VINCE COLLETTA who delineated this page, demonstrating that he was just as capable of doing justice to the KING's pencils as some of his more fan-favourite peers.
When approached for a comment, Mr. Galactus declared himself to be extremely pleased with Vinnie's contribution to this portrait, so if you wanna argue - take it up with him!
10 comments:
He looks spooky with no eyes - he should have been drawn like that all the time.
Vince Colletta will probably get the blame for leaving them out.
Good to know I'm not the only one who thinks Vince got an undeserved bad rap over his inking of Kirby.
Love that Splash Kid...The eyes have it - or lack thereof.
J MP
Vince's inking suited Jack's pencils by diluting his artistic idiosyncracies and rendering his figures' musculature more realistic. Stan, Jack & Vince's Thor was a highlight of the '60s in my view.
Looking at some of Jack's pencils they weren't very tight and Vince certainly tightened up a lot of his work giving it a distinctive style.
Considering the work load Jack put out there were probably few inkers who could keep up and produce the required standard at such a volume.
I think that those who criticised Colletta's work over Kirby don't appreciate that there were deadlines to meet.
J MP
Jack's pencils WERE usually fairly tight, J MP, so I don't think that was the problem. Nor do I think that deadlines had much to do with the criticism that Vinnie later came in for. At the time, the issues that Vinnie inked sold more than the ones that Bill Everett inked (so I've read), so readers generally seemed to like what VC was doing on Thor. I think his reputation was later affected by poor quality reprints in the '70s, where a lot of the fine detail had dropped out, and then been poorly retouched by an office bodger with a felt-tip pen. However, you're right about VC giving JK a distinctive style, and one that was particularly well-suited for Thor.
Unfortunately I only ever got my mitts on one US printed original Thor edition (Ragnorak #200, I think) and the rest was UK reprints in black and white from Marvel UK during the Kirby/Colletta period.
My opinion is mainly formed from subsequent Kirby pencils and Colletta inked original art work that I have come across - so I acknowledge that my opinion is based on very personal (recent) subjective findings. Nice to shoot the shit though.
BTW, Nice blog Kid - though I only started reading because your beard is almost, not quite, as bat shit crazy as mine is. I'm younger by a year or two, so there is hope for me...or maybe not.
J MP
Whenever I've seen stats of Kirby's original pencils, they've been fairly detailed, but in his later work it was somewhat idiosyncratic detail, with squiggles to indicate muscles and shadows that bore no relation to what was supposed to be casting them. However, it was detail - of a kind. (His layouts for other artists to follow 'though, were pretty loose.) Mike Royer inked what Kirby had drawn, Colletta 'interpreted' (to a degree) what was on the page, and in so doing, bestowed a more realistic, illustrative quality upon it. Regarding my beard, it was washed and brushed and made presentable for that photo - it usually looked a lot wilder. I'm beardless at the moment 'though, and am disappointed to discover that I've grown another chin.
I was thinking of giving my face a break and going hairless for a while but I'm also scared what I will find underneath - feels like a nest full of birds at the moment :)
J MP
Nah, just keep it - a beard provides a handy place to carry your lunch.
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