Colletta Sr emigrated from Sicily to escape local law enforcement and served with the US armed forces in World War II, where he provided art on the sides of bombers.

[4] Colletta began his six-year run on Kirby's "The Mighty Thor" feature with the "Tales of Asgard" backup in Journey into Mystery #106 (July 1964).

seemed devoid of large areas of black, [which are] used to give figures weight and heft but an artistic concept yet to be fully explored by the time of the Middle Ages, an era whose crude woodcuts most reflected the art style needed by the Thor strip[.

It] captured the elusive quality of otherworldly drama that the strip would increasingly demand as [Stan] Lee and [Jack] Kirby took it away from the everyday world of supervillains to a mythic plane where the forces of evil were on a far more gargantuan scale.

While Colletta's rates were good and he brought "an innocent Marvel Age look to Jack's new heroes", he was prone to "erasing background characters" and transforming "[b]ustling crowd scenes [into] easier silhouettes".

[12] He was replaced by inker Mike Royer, causing some fans to write to DC in complaint, denouncing Kirby for "abandoning the Marvel-style look".

[13] Colletta went on to ink a large array at DC, including a variety of Batman, Superman and Green Lantern titles; the TV tie-in series Isis and Super Friends; and nearly every issue of Wonder Woman from #206 (July 1973) to #270 (Aug. 1980), over pencilers including Don Heck, Dick Dillin, Curt Swan, José Delbo and Michael Netzer (Nasser).

Thus emboldened, he went to DC, and after getting savaged by Joe Orlando, got in to see art director Vinnie Colletta, who recognized talent and arranged for him to get a one-page war-comic job".

[15] Before and after his tenure, Colletta continued to do a small amount of inking for Marvel, as well as for Skywald Publications' black-and-white horror magazine Psycho.

He nonetheless has been criticized by a range of fellow professionals and comic historians for erasing various details in a penciler's work, both in order to lessen the inking burden and to help meet time constraints during an industry era when printers charged then-prohibitive thousands of dollars for missed deadlines, which resulted in idle presses.

[17] As comics artist Joe Sinnott told author Marc Flores, who writes under the pen name Ronin Ro,[18] "When I penciled the romance stories, I used to tell myself, Vince wrecked what I did.

[20] Gene Colan, penciler on the series (and on several earlier projects inked by Colletta), remarked many years later that "when he wanted to he could do very good work, but he didn't take his time with my stuff.

Back when he was working for Marvel, Ditko said he'd pick up the latest issues in the office and always check the credits before taking the comics home.

Critic Tony Seybert wrote that "for tales set in the distant past of myth and legend, Colletta's soft delicate inks evoke the vapors of ancient times [and are] just as effective on Asgardian crags as on the sylvan glades of Olympus.

When asked to describe his philosophy of inking, he said, "Well, first of all, some inkers like to pick and choose... and they'll take their time, no matter what the deadline is, even if the editor is in a jam, or a colorist is waiting for pages to come in so they can earn a living, too.

[25] Some time after having recovered from a heart attack, Colletta was diagnosed with cancer; three weeks later, on June 3, 1991, aged 67, he died at Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood, New Jersey.

[26] At least one obituary, in The Comics Journal, erroneously stated he died at age 65 and in "late June", and claimed the cause was heart disease.