The Thin Black Line

WELL LET'S GET CONTROVERSIAL NOW, SHALL WE?

A highlight from our kamikaze raid on the San Diego Comic-con 2017.

Lynn doesn't hold any punches when I bring up Colletta.  Being a Kirby guru and probably next of kin at this point, Lynn's perspective is astute, educated, well read, memorized, and dare I say "fanatic" about the King of Comics.  So it naturally begs the question: Who might be considered Kirby's Arch-Nemesis then?

If Kirby drew it, this guy erased it.  If Neal Adams wouldn't let the man in the same room as his art and had to redo one of his pages because that standard wasn't adhered to, we are closer.  If Gil Kane says this man was his 2nd favorite inker only to "anybody else" being his first, we have a winner.

A staffer at the Two Morrow's publishing booth handed me this book and with a knowing smile let me know I was being asked to partake in something that gets under the skin of a lot of comic creators: a biography of the infamous Vince Colletta, inker at large.  I assured Lynn a portion of the proceeds would go to Colletta's estate, and that Colletta probably wouldn't be able to enjoy any of it.  Lynn's response, (not verbatim), "not while burning in hell at least..."

It only made me want to read this even more, so that's what I'm doing now.  Chapter 3 and like Walter White, you can already see how one's life builds to become who this man was when he passed.  I'm excited to finish it so we can have a discussion and even open each others minds moreso.  I know it'll be like talking Salman Rushdie into writing a sequel to the Satanic Verses when getting Lynn to empathize with Colletta, but that's not my goal.  I think I'm looking for a balanced diet of information so I can make my own conclusions.  

I invite you all to join in and read this with me.  Not your traditional comic, but about the "Pete Rose" of the comics industry and why his history can't be erased...