Collins' career is too long and twisting to detail here, but he entered the Secret Sun Hall of Fame when he starred (with Darren McGavin, no less) in the Solar foundational text Hangar 18 (which you read about in depth here), and was no stranger to other genre roles as well.
I mentioned my first encounter with Jack Kirby via a DC house ad for The New Gods and The Forever People in The Witching Hour #12. Contrary to current misconception, no one really referred to those books as the "Fourth World" until much, much later, and the term itself - most likely actually coined by DC editorial and adopted by Kirby after the fact - didn't show up until several issues into the project's run.
Strangely enough, this installment is kind of a sequel to "Daddy and the Pie," only it was published 5 years before by a different company (in The Witching Hour #12) and was written by a different writer. It was illustrated by Alex Toth though, and concerned the fate of a young man who once had an all-powerful magical talisman when he was a boy.