Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and twenty-eighth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Mike Grell had Warlord cut the hand off of a Vince Colletta cariacture in an issue...inked by Vince Colletta!
STATUS:
True
Today, based on a suggestion from Keith Morgan, we look at a time that Mike Grell expressed his annoyance over his inker on Warlord.
Mike Grell created the fantasy series, Warlord, in the mid-1970s and it became a popular series that Grell wrote and drew for a number of years. However, after Grell initially inked himself on the series for the first two years of the book, the book then went to monthly and DC decided that Grell needed an inker if he was going to continue to pencil the book on a monthly basis (Grell didn't necessarily agree, but it was DC's call). Soon the regular inker on the book became Vince Colletta, who was DC's art director at the time. However, while Colletta was DC's art director, he also did a LOT of inking for DC at the same time and there was even some folks who wondered whether the art director gig was just a way for DC to get Colletta to do a ton of inking for them (I have no idea what the truth is there). In any event, Grell was not a fan of Colletta's inks and he kept trying to get Colletta removed from the book but DC wouldn't budge. Grell once inked himself on an issue and held them back until the last moment so that DC would have to publish the book with his inks and not Colletta's. They then gave him some other inkers...and then went back to Colletta.
In any event, Grell eventually expressed his irritation in an issue of Warlord where he basically mocked Colletta in an issue...inked by Colletta!
Travis Morgan (Warlord) and his traveling companion, Aton, were on the way to try to find Travis' daughter when Aton foolishly gambled and lost their horses to a gambler named Tevalco El Cint...
Wouldn't you just know that Tevalco El Cint is an anagram for Vince Colletta. Colletta also was known to be a gambler. Okay, so Colletta's stand-in character then forces them to steal a jewel to get their horses back...
The mission goes wrong and they return and El Cint offers to play a game of chance with them again. If he wins, they do another job for him. If he loses, they get their horses back.
He, of course, was cheating and Warlord responds by cutting off his hand!
He then gives a speech about how the cheating wasn't the problem so much as his views on work brought others down. Harsh stuff, right?
Colletta was replaced by other inkers for a little bit after this but then Colletta returned to the book. Grell eventually left the series.
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That's it for last week's late Comic Book Legends Revealed!