Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and fifty-second installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Click here for Part 1 of this Vince Colletta-themed installment!
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COMIC LEGEND:
Stan Lee wouldn't allow a Vince Colletta photo to be used in a collection of photos of Marvel Comics artists.
STATUS:
I'm Going With True
In the first part of this all-Colletta Comic Book Legends Revealed, I wrote about how longtime Marvel inker, Vince Colletta, was often mistaken by others as being "connected," something that he got a kick out of and wouldn't mind letting others keep on believing. In fact, Colletta looked enough like a gangster that he nearly PLAYED one in one of the Godfather films!
However, in an amusing set of circumstances, Colletta's look was too much for Stan Lee at one point!
It all came out in a cool interview that Jim Shooter did with Vince Colletta that ran in Marvel Comics' Bullpen Bulletins section in the spring of 1983...
In it, Colletta explained that one time Stan Lee wanted to feature photos of the Marvel artists in a comic book, he called Colletta about the photo that they had taken of him. Lee felt that Colletta looked too much like a gangster and that he wanted it redone because he didn't want to scare kids (or their parents).
Colletta is presumably referring to Marvel Tales #1 in 1964. If his photo was retaken, Colletta made sure to be extra non-threatening by laughing in his new photo...
It's possible Colletta is referring to the next time that Lee did this, which was five years later in Fantastic Four Annual #7 in 1969, where Colletta's photo was conspicuously absent (so perhaps Colletta never got his photo re-taken and it was just pulled period?)...
Now, could you argue that Colletta was just making the story up? I guess so, but Shooter has mentioned in the past that when Colletta told him stuff like this, it tended to turn out to be true, and it really isn't all THAT far-fetched, so I am going to believe him.
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In the latest Movie Legends Revealed - Was Robert De Niro "traded" to another studio so that Al Pacino could star in The Godfather?
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Feel free to make suggestions for future legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com!