The Incredible Herb Trimpe by TwoMorrows Publishing

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TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

By Dewey Cassell & Aaron Sultan T

TwoMorrows Publishing | Raleigh, North Carolina

Written by Dewey Cassell & Aaron Sultan Designed by Scott Saavedra Proofread by Scott Peters Front cover art by Herb Trimpe Cover color by Tom Ziuko

OVERLEAF: Herb Trimpe at work, from the 1970 Marvelmania Bullpen Photo Set. BACKGROUND: Herb Trimpe pencil art, What If? #2. Courtesy John Morrow. CENTERSPREAD: Splash page detail, The Incredible Hulk #106. Art by Herb Trimpe, Marie Severin (layouts), and George Tuska (inks). Courtesy of Stephen Moore. BACK COVER: From the splash page art to The Incredible Hulk #131 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

All artwork or other trademarked material herein is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational purposes with no infringement intended or implied. This book is © 2015 by TwoMorrows Publishing, Dewey Cassell and Aaron Sultan. The Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Defenders, Captain Britain, Phantom Eagle and related characters are TM & © 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. Godzilla TM & © Toho Company Ltd. Shogun Warriors TM & © Toynami, Inc. G.I. Joe TM & © Hasbro, Inc. Indiana Jones is TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC. All other characters are TM & © 2015 by the respective rights holders. Art © Herb Trimpe

EDITORIAL NOTE Readers will note that this book is written in the present tense (e.g. Herb Trimpe is…). After the book was completed, but before it went to press, Herb Trimpe passed away unexpectedly on April 13, 2015, having just returned home from a comic book convention in Secaucus, New Jersey. Our sincerest condolences go out to his family and friends as we all mourn the loss of the Incredible Herb Trimpe.

A ck no w led g e m ents

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Dr Raleigh, NC 27614 www.twomorrows.com e-mail: store@twomorrows.com First Printing July 2015 Printed in the USA ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-062-5

As with any book of this type, there are a multitude of people to thank. First and foremost, thanks to Herb Trimpe for inspiring the book and making it possible. Thanks to Brian Sagar, Chuck Costas, David Currie, Gareth Gaudin, Jeff Harnett, John Butler, Mark Trimpe, Marvin Hoover, Michael Finn, Nick Katradis, Paul Handler, Rob Pickel, Robert Razavi, Sean Rutan, Stephen Branson, Thomas Suhling, and Michael Dunne for their contributions of artwork for the book. A special thanks to premier Hulk comic art collector Stephen Moore and to Trimpe’s friend and agent, Jeff Jaworski for their invaluable contributions, as well as Heritage Auctions, ComicLink, and the Grand Comics Database. Thanks, also, to Tom DeFalco, Alex Trimpe, Roy Thomas, John Romita, Bill Peckmann, Sal Buscema, Joe Sinnott, Jon Riley, Larry Hama, Doug Moench, Eliot Brown, Len Wein, Ron Frenz, Steve Englehart, Marie Severin, Alan Kupperberg, and Stan Lee for their generous sharing of time and memories, as well as artwork and photographs. Thanks to Brian Morris and Steven Tice for their tireless and timely transcription. In addition, thanks to Scott Saavedra for his exceptional work in designing the book. And, as always, thanks to John Morrow for his continued commitment to ensure the preservation of comics history through publications like this one. Sincere apologies, in advance, for any errors of commission or omission. Portions of the text in this book originally appeared in issue #124 of Alter Ego magazine. Artwork or photographs not otherwise attributed come from the collections of the authors.

DEDICATION This book is dedicated to Herb Trimpe, who left us too soon; and to our families for putting up with the Hulk in us. – Dewey and Aaron

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Introduction The famous poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” concludes with the line: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. So it has been with artist Herb Trimpe. At a time when many artists were clamoring to get on the super-hero bandwagon, Trimpe paved his own way to success with a series of unusual assignments, including licensed characters no one wanted to draw and a certain green skinned monster. And he did it all with quiet dignity. There are those people who work largely in the background, who don’t seek fame or notoriety, but who get the job done time and again, making a big impact without making a sound. Herb Trimpe is one of those people. He worked for Marvel Comics for almost 30 years. He joined the House of Ideas not long after the resurgence of super-heroes began, starting out in production but quickly proving his creative ability drawing Westerns. As an artist, he exhibited a remarkable gift for storytelling. He drew stories for Marvel featuring classic characters like Nick Fury and Ant-Man, and offbeat characters like Killraven and Son of Satan. But he was also the premier artist on The Incredible Hulk for nearly eight years. He literally defined the iconic

Dewey Cassell (left) and Aaron Sultan.

character for a generation, helping to make the green goliath a household name. In 2012 and 2013, we had a chance to talk with Herb about his background, his passions, his pet peeves, and his favorite comics. The book spans his entire career, following a basically chronological approach, with the exception of topics like Advertising and Promotional, Animation, and Newspaper Strips, which are presented as separate chapters, but occurred during his tenure at Marvel. Flowing through the chapters of the book are the series of interviews conducted with Trimpe, supplemented by interviews with family and colleagues like his son Alex, John Romita, Joe Sinnott, Roy Thomas, Sal Buscema, and Bill Peckmann, each providing their own insight on Trimpe. Interspersed throughout the book are “spotlights” that provide more detailed information about key topics and characters touched by Trimpe, along with commentary from a bevy of professionals, including Eliot Brown, Jon Riley, Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Steve Englehart, Ron Frenz, Larry Hama, and Doug Moench, who all help to paint a more complete picture of the man, who is not only an artist, but a friend. Here, then, is the story of the man behind the monster—and so many other favorite characters of the fans of Marvel Comics. Dewey Cassell & Aaron Sultan

Foreword by Tom DeFalco I didn’t know much about art when I first started reading comic books. (Still don’t according to many in my inner circle.) I just knew what and who I liked. The first two Marvel artists to catch my eye were—and you have to remember that I started with Fantastic Four #3—Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. (No explanation necessary for those of my generation.) An early addition to that list was Herb Trimpe. I first discovered Herb while he was penciling The Incredible Hulk. He somehow conveyed the power of Kirby with the stylization of Ditko, but added a humanity, a pathos that was all his own. Where Kirby’s Hulk was an enraged monster with a hair-trigger temper and Ditko’s was a sinister and angry master-planner, Herb’s version was a desperate and haunted individual. Someone who had been misused and abused, yet struggled to control his explosive tantrums. (Of course, Herb had the good fortune to work with master storycrafters like Roy Thomas and Len Wein—two of the industry’s greatest!) Yeah, I admit it. I loved Trimpe’s stuff. Always did. Always will. Fast forward to the late ’70s. After working for Archie, Charlton and DC, I began writing for Marvel Comics. Imagine my surprise and delight when I was assigned to script Marvel Team-Up and learned that Herb Trimpe was going to be my artist. I don’t know why Herb was assigned to TeamUp. He’s not the guy who immediately leaps to mind when one thinks of a Spider-Man book. In fact, he immediately informed me that he didn’t particularly like drawing super-heroes—another minus for a title which demanded a monthly guest-star. I have no idea why I got Herb. I’m just glad I did. He may not have enjoyed doing superheroes, but he did them well. Very well! And I had a blast working with Herb and getting to know him. That’s when I learned that Herb Trimpe was a great person as well as a terrific artist. The humanity that I saw in his characters

was a pale reflection of the sweet, professional and honorable man himself. He is a genuinely nice guy. I guess that is why Stan Lee christened him “Happy Herb.” Unfortunately, our Team-Up run did not last long. (I had to drop a few writing assignments when I signed up for a temporary hitch on Marvel’s editorial staff—a six month stint that ended up lasting about fourteen years.) But Herb and I remained friends. That’s why he was my first choice for G.I. Joe when I learned that Marvel would be doing a comic book based on the soon-to-be –relaunched Hasbro toy line. I knew that Herb had spent time in the military and figured this assignment would spare him from super-heroes. Herb was such a professional that he built a clay model of Cobra Island for G.I. Joe #1 so that he could use it for visual reference. Hasbro supplied Herb with a number of toy prototypes, but some of them fell apart as Herb posed them. He felt so guilty about breaking the prototypes that he gave Hasbro the island to make up for them. Herb and I teamed-up on another project a few years later. I wanted to bring back Machine Man, an old Kirby creation that I had scripted a few years earlier. Larry Hama agreed to edit a limited series, but he didn’t want the same old Machine Man. He wanted a new twist to the character. I started talking to Herb and Machine Man 2020 was the result. (I was always haunted by that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the scene where the ark is warehoused in a room full of crates and believed that would be the great place to start a story.) Herb designed all the new characters and the visual motifs of the world of 2020. I believe that he was already penciling the second issue when Barry WindsorSmith dropped in for a visit, saw all the work he had done and was so impressed that he asked to join the team. I have a hunch you are already impressed with the work Herb has done. If not, I’m pretty sure this book will make you a believer! Thanks for being there!

ABOVE LEFT: From Captain Britain #18 page 6. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. ABOVE & OPPOSITE PAGE: From Incredible Hulk #152 chapter 2 splash. Art by Dick Ayers and Herb Trimpe with Frank Giacoia inks.

C HA PT E R 0 NE

Origins of Herb Trimpe

Home and Family

In the spirit of the comic book origin story, it seems only fitting to begin at the beginning. In this interview, Trimpe talks about his family and school, shedding light on the origins of the artist. (No gamma radiation involved.) Dewey Cassell: When and where were you born? Herb Trimpe: In Peekskill, New York, May 26th, 1939, on the Hudson River, an hour and a half from New York City.

ABOVE: The guest of honor. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. RIGHT: Parents Annie and Herb Trimpe with son Herb. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.

Cassell: So, what does the “W” stand for in Herb W. Trimpe? Trimpe: It is “William.” Actually, they named me “Herbert,” after my dad, even way after the name wasn’t popular any more. And they named me “William” after his brother, my uncle. So it’s all family-related names. I wish they’d been a little more original. I would rather be a “John,” actually, or a “Fred” I think. Cassell: “Herb” is very distinctive, though. Trimpe: Yeah, actually, it works as “Herb,” but it doesn’t work as “Herbert.” Cassell: What did your parents do? Trimpe: My dad did various things. He was primarily a skilled sheet metal worker. That was his job during World War Two, working in shipping yards in New Jersey. When World War Two was ending, we moved back to Peekskill. My dad had to leave New Jersey because we lived in an area below sea level and it was very damp and he wound up in the hospital with pneumonia as a very young man. It nearly did him in, so we moved back to New York State, when I was about five or so. And then he worked at various places. There were a number of companies around that are no longer there. You know, American industry is not what it used to be. You could live in a small town and go to work in a local factory, but it’s not doable any more. Cassell: That’s very true. Trimpe: He actually wound up retiring with a very good pension from the Peekskill Public School System, where he was a—I don’t know what they call it now—maintenance engineer. In those days, they called him a janitor. So that’s where we wound up. I don’t know if he actually retired. I don’t think he had reached 65 yet, but he got sick from working around asbestos for too long and wound up contracting lung cancer and that took about two years to finish dad off. And my mom, who had been a stay-at-home mom when

I was in elementary and junior high school, she worked in a local supermarket in Peekskill at the time, back in the meat packing department. When my dad died, she was kind of on her own. By that time, my brother and I were grownup and out and married. She lived alone for ten years after my dad died and then at 70, she remarried. It was an old friend of hers and my dad’s, actually going way back to elementary school, whose wife had also died of cancer. They just started hanging out and wound up getting married. They were married for 14 years and then he died. She lived up by herself in Peekskill for a while. Then we bought a bigger house in Hurley after renting for three years in Rhinebeck, New York, and she moved in with us. My wife Patricia’s mom is with us, too, so we’ve kind of got a miniold folks home here. The only other thing I can tell you about my mom is she always wanted to play golf, so she’s very hip on all the tournaments that take place and she has her favorites. And she loves to watch Dancing with the Stars and both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, which she gets very opinionated and steamed up about. So that’s the family history. Cassell: You told me that you had a brother, named Mike, right? Were you the only children? Trimpe: Yeah, we were. And we were seven years apart, so it was quite a gap. It wasn’t a brother you could interact with much in the early years, because of the age discrepancy. But when he got into high school, and I was in my twenties, then we did a lot of stuff together, mostly playing

baseball or just talking about baseball or talking about movies. But we were very close and stayed in contact on a regular basis. Yearly visits, sometimes twice a year, because he was living in Virginia with his family and I was still up here, but we always stayed in touch. We played tabletop gaming, war games. Cassell: Oh, really? Any favorites? Trimpe: Well, he was a Civil War re-enactor. You know, it’s quite a commitment, actually. It’s almost like being in the military because they have meetings and you have uniforms and you have to buy all your own stuff, and you join a unit, just like you would have at the time. If you were from New York, you’d be in a New York unit. If you were from Virginia, you’d be in a Virginia unit. It kind of works the same way, depending on what state you’re in. So he was a member of a Virginia unit and my nephew Mark was too. My nephew’s still doing it. He’s a big Civil War buff. I never saw any of the re-enactments, but I saw plenty of the people, a lot of the friends that were involved in it, and actually got to shoot some of those guns, like a rifle musket and a cap-and-ball pistol. Cassell: Oh, wow. So, what was it like shooting one? Trimpe: A black powder pistol is big, it’s heavy, and it makes a cloud of smoke every time it fires that obscures everything within ten feet. Not to mention the noise. It’s hard to believe. And also, since the barrels of the pistols were unrifled, it was like throwing a knuckleball. There was no direction on the ball when it came out, so it could do anything. It could go up, it could go down. He

ABOVE: Brother Mike Trimpe. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. LEFT: Herb Trimpe (back row with hat) and cousins. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. RIGHT: Trimpe’s oldest daughter, Melissa. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.

LEFT: Trimpe with children Amelia, Alex, and Sarah. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. RIGHT: Trimpe’s second wife and former Marvel writer, Linda Fite.

OPPOSITE TOP: Trimpe inked the backgrounds of the story illustrated by Tom Gill in this second issue of Boris Karloff Thriller. Courtesy Grand Comics Database. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Opening page of Dell Comics’ “Mysterious Island,” illustrated by Tom Gill with background inks by Trimpe.

put up a board in his back yard that was maybe ten inches wide and two feet high. He just propped it up against a tree and I stood maybe 25 feet away from it and couldn’t hit it. They were only really effective at practically point-blank range. An unrifled musket is about the same thing, except you’ve got the length of the barrel, so you’ve got a little more positive direction. That’s why they shot in blocks of a hundred or 200 people at a time, so you would hit something. A musket is not rapid fire, but you can really hit something. There’s a famous story in the Civil War where a sniper studied the movements of one of the Union generals during the war. He just sat in a tree for a week and watched what this guy did in his camp through binoculars. And he got his routine down; coming out of the tent, going over to the tree, putting up the mirror, shaving, rinsing his face, going back in the tent. Every day he did it, same time every day. He had a rifle musket with a sniper scope on it and he shot and killed this general a mile away. That’s pretty amazing. That’s counting for windage and everything. Cassell: So what did Mike do for a living? Trimpe: He had a commercial studio, and at one point he had three people working for him, and they did everything. This was in Charlottesville, [Virginia]. He did work out of Washington, out of Richmond, then some places in Charlottesville. He was like a little production/ad agency. They put together brochures and catalogs, and

he did illustration and the whole nine yards. He did fairly well. There were ups and downs, there were points where he was doing it all himself and then he finally could hire somebody back again. That kind of life is not easy, but he started it here in New York state, working for a guy in a studio over in Mount Kisco, I think it was. When he decided he had enough of New York state taxes and moved to Virginia, he set up a studio in Charlottesville. And then, eventually, he rented space in town, had a great little art studio there. Actually, I’ve drawn comic pages in there on visits. Cassell: How many kids do you have, and how old are they? Trimpe: Melissa was the only child from my first wife. Melissa is married to a jazz vocalist and is 48. Alex, Amelia, and Sarah, are 40, 37, and 35. Their mom is Linda Fite, who worked for Marvel and wrote The Cat. Natalia, my step-daughter, is 24 [Editorial note: ages at time of interview]. Cassell: You later worked with your son Alex, right? Trimpe: Yes, he did a number of layouts. He did some Robocop stuff that was fantastic, that actually made me look good when I finished it. And he did layouts for Fantastic Four Unlimited. It was great. Cassell: Did Alex get credit for the work he did with you? Trimpe: Maybe not all the jobs, but yes, he did. Obviously, I asked them if he could try his hand at

the layouts and they said, “Sure, yeah.” He didn’t think he drew well enough, though, to actually get in the business. He’s a musician. He’s very witty. Cassell: Where did you go to school? Trimpe: I lived in Peekskill until I graduated from high school, and then I lived in New York for a little while. I went to The School of Visual Arts for three years, mostly interested in courses in cartooning and “the strip and continuing art” as they called it then. And unfortunately—or fortunately—the school is changing its format from strictly cartooning and illustration to a fine art school that is a huge accredited college now. It was just a hole in the wall on 1st Avenue and (I think) 23rd Street, and the building was probably a firetrap. The floors creaked, the walls seemed shaky, it was an amazing piece of work. I think that building is long gone by now. I spent three years there. I worked with one of the instructors at The School of Visual Arts after I graduated from there—Tom Gill. Cassell: What kinds of things did you do for Tom Gill? Trimpe: I strictly inked backgrounds. I didn’t do any penciling whatsoever. He had a right-hand man working for him and another guy in Long Island. We used to get together down there and have a pretty good time. I usually brought the work home, but the pages would be all lettered, with all the foregrounds, figures, and so on, inked. I think his partner Bernie did most of the penciling and Tom finished off the figures in inking and I finished off the backgrounds in inking. That’s really all I did. He was working for Gold Key at the time and it was mostly the Western stuff, Bonanza and Lone Ranger and Tonto. Occasionally, they would do some movie adaptations. I think we did 20,000 Leagues under the Sea or Journey to the Center of the Earth or maybe both. But he used to get those kinds of movie adaptations that Gold Key would pick up. He got most of those assignments. But I never really went beyond inking backgrounds. It was very limited and a very low-paying kind of thing to do, but I’d make a trip down there and pick up the pages and take them home and work on them for a week and then bring them back. It was in Rockville Centre, Long Island. It’s about a two-hour drive. Cassell: What kind of reference did Tom have to work with in doing the Gold Key comics? Trimpe: He had movie stills. He had stills from all those TV shows, stacks and stacks of 8 ½ by 11 glossies on all that stuff. Complete runs of stills

that had been taken for an entire show. But you couldn’t lay out a story with just the stills alone. He didn’t copy the photos, but the reference was extremely thorough. Cassell: How long did you stay with Tom Gill? Trimpe: I inked backgrounds for about a year. I did that, actually, until my draft number came up, and then I enlisted in the Air Force. Cassell: Why did you choose the Air Force? Trimpe: Back then the military draft was on, and every male eighteen and over had to consider that in the early 1960s, in making their plans. This thing in

ABOVE: Trimpe at the wheel of an Army jeep in Vietnam. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. BELOW: Sketch of the main living area below Hon Kong Mountain in Vietnam. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.

Vietnam was starting to get complicated. So it was pretty much an accepted thing at that point: you could either go to Canada, or get a college deferment, or just dive in and enlist. I had friends that were in ROTC in college, but I was past that at that point. When my number was coming up for the Draft Board, I made a pre-emptive strike and enlisted for four years in the Air Force. So I gave up two years in the Army for four years in the Air Force, thinking I was outsmarting the draft somehow. As it turned out, I spent six months in basic training and then training as a weather observer between Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and then up to Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois, where I went through almost a six-month period in Weather School. I became a weatherman. After six months in the Air Force, I was promptly assigned to an Army detachment at Fort Benning, Georgia, and I spent the rest of the next 3½ years basically in the Army anyway. That didn’t work out so well, especially since we were attached to the 11th Air Assault Battalion

Experimental unit, which became the 1st Air Calvary Division. And when they went to Vietnam in ’65, we went with them. So I spent a year in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam and we pretty much worked shift work and fed weather [information] to Army aviators, of which there were probably more than there were in the Air Force at that time because helicopters were a very large part of the Army. We fed pilots weather information on various operations that they carried out in the field. Sometimes, we went into a landing zone and fed them weather information before they came in, so they wouldn’t get any surprises in terms of winds or humidity levels. After that year was up, I was at the end of the four, so I came back to San Francisco, and then back to New York eventually. Cassell: When you were going to The School of Visual Arts, was it your intent that you would go into comic books, or did you have something else in mind? Trimpe: My interest was always comics. I can’t remember what it was called, but when I was ten, I did several installments of a baseball strip and I colored it with crayons. I didn’t really buy comics except occasionally; they were usually something Disney. But I had two cousins—they were on opposite ends of the pole in terms of their interests, but they both had stacks of comics and Big Little Books. One of them lived near where I went to junior high school, and I used to have lunch at his house and we’d pore over the comics while we were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that my aunt made and glasses of milk and chocolate chip cookies. School was about a block and a half away, so that was

easy. I had some interest in comics, but it wasn’t really until I stumbled across one of my high school buddies from 10th grade who was an EC fan. He bought the 10¢ ECs and he had the MADs from the time they went from comics to the 25¢ issues, and that got me. To this day, I think what EC was doing is what a comic book is all about. After Superman or Batman, those originals— what can you really do after that? You’re really just fooling around with the same formula. You’re changing the colors and you might be altering the powers here and there, but super-heroes are so damn boring. I can’t believe they actually caught on to the degree that they have, especially going as far as the Hollywood blockbuster movies. It just shows you how wrong I have been in making judgments about certain things like that. Cassell: So you were a big EC fan? Trimpe: EC was it for me. None of this continuing story or continuing thread. It was just plain five-, six-, seven-page length stories, right to the point, two or three of those between the covers. To me, it was just the best, especially Aces High and some of the war titles that guys like John Severin were working on. I was much more aware of the EC line of comics and artists. I wouldn’t have known Stan Lee if I tripped over him in an alley. I had no knowledge of anything that went on at Marvel. It wasn’t until my last year in the Air Force, when I was 26 years old, that one of my buddies in Vietnam, his mom sent him a Care package and in it were some comics. One of them was a Thor and that’s the first Marvel comic I had ever laid eyes on in my entire life.

I didn’t pay attention to the names, but now I know, just chronologically, that it would have been written by Stan, and I still remember the inking style. It was Vinnie Colletta, no question, and penciled by Jack Kirby. I thumbed through it, and [then] I actually read it, and I thought, “This is pretty cool. This is quite a nice slant on the kind of Superman and Wonder Woman thing. This is really refreshing.” So, that kind of got me interested. So it was the exploits of the God of Thunder that steered Trimpe in the direction of Stan Lee. But before we learn the details of how Trimpe joined the House of Ideas, we take a moment to hear from one of Herb’s children, who also worked for Marvel.

ABOVE LEFT: Trimpe’s wife Patricia and her daughter Natalie. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. ABOVE: Cover to Aces High #4, one of Trimpe’s favorite EC titles. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. LEFT: Trimpe’s rack and “very useful mosquito net” next to his footlocker in Vietnam. Courtesy Herb Trimpe.

Trimpe on Trimpe An Interview with Alex Trimpe Trimpe met and married Linda Fite while working for Marvel Comics and together they had three children—two girls and a boy, Alex, who recalls in this interview what it was like growing up Trimpe.

ABOVE: Alex Trimpe with Dad. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. BELOW: Commission drawing of the Wrecker by Herb Trimpe.

Dewey Cassell: When I was talking to your dad the other day, he was saying that you were born in the middle of a comic book convention. Alex Trimpe: Yeah. Well, I can’t say that I recall that, obviously. But that’s what I hear. I guess my mom went into labor when they were at a comic book convention. I’ve got a bunch of cards that people made in my baby book. Obviously a lot of people were artists of some kind so they’re

pretty entertaining. But yeah, that’s the story. Like I say, it could be a complete lie since I was not conscious at the time. Cassell: And you are the oldest, right? Trimpe: I’m the oldest of my mom and my dad’s three kids, but I have an older half-sister. Cassell: When were you born? Trimpe: ‘Seventy-three. Amelia was born in ’76, and then Sarah was ’78. Cassell: When you were born, was your mom still working for Marvel or had she already left? Trimpe: I don’t know. I know that when I was growing up, she definitely wasn’t and I don’t think she worked there very long. Cassell: Was your dad working out of the office for Marvel at that time or was he working at home? Trimpe: It was only at home. I mean, I don’t know when I was really little, but I think we lived in the city, in Manhattan, for a year. So probably during that time, he was still going to the office because he was in Manhattan, but then we were in Cornwall, England, for a year. Some of my earliest memories are from then. Obviously from there, he was sending it overseas and that’s also where he learned to fly an airplane. But for my whole conscious life, he was working at home in various parts of the house, but mainly a little, tiny office space on the second floor that was next to my bedroom. He also had a big drawing table downstairs, in the living room. Cassell: Do you have any particular memories of him drawing while you were growing up? Trimpe: No, I’m sure things could probably spark a memory, but nothing that just sort of floats in my mind. Actually, the one memory I have, for some reason, has nothing to do with him drawing, really. My mom’s bedroom is where all of the comic books were kept, because we got free comic books, which was the staff of life for me and my friends when I was little. But they were all on these metal shelves in there and in

fact, they might even have been in the hallway. They were down the hall from where his little office was and I guess at some point I came to him, excited about somebody. There was something I’d seen in one of the comics and he was on the phone and he sort of acknowledged what I said, then I heard him say on the phone, “Yeah, my son has discovered Jack Kirby.” For me, it was like a connection, he was talking to somebody who knew what I was getting excited about before I got excited about it, and it was sort of like a window into the comic book artists’ world. Cassell: Did you ever have a chance to meet Jack? Trimpe: No, not that I can remember. I remember my dad said that Jack Kirby would come in only to drop artwork off and then change things if Stan asked him to. And then my dad said everyone would gather around to watch him change stuff because he’d just blow through it really fast and amaze everybody. Cassell: I have heard Jack was fast. Trimpe: Before the Shogun Warriors [came out] there was some meeting and I was there, I must have been really small, but however it worked out, they settled on a creative team before there was this meeting. And again, I’m small but I was really excited because I think they’d already given me these gigantic plastic toys that were like two feet tall. But then Stan Lee showed up at that meeting. I remember he was late and if you’re 45 minutes late when you’re an adult, it’s kind of a pain in the butt. But when you’re a kid, I just remember thinking, “How is this possible that this person is so late?” It was weird because whenever we’d gone to Marvel before that—I’d go down there with him sometimes—it was a rickety place, but my memory of wherever this meeting took place, it was a much slicker kind of meeting room, but that was my one and only exposure there. I just remember my dad saying, “Yeah, he’s late,” and me being antsy, waiting. But to be able to tag along on stuff like that, obviously, was great. Cassell: I remember your dad saying that he got toys for the Shogun Warriors to use as a model to know how to draw them. Did you get to play with them? Trimpe: Yeah, those are the things—actually, I’m just assuming we got those before that meeting and that’s why I was stoked and all into it. But yeah, those are still at my mom’s house. Cassell: What about the G.I. Joes?

Trimpe: The G.I. Joes came out at the same time as Transformers and I was more into Transformers. And also, when they were “developing” the G.I. Joe comic, they asked my Dad to do character designs and he did sort of pragmatic designs of things that had a function, most of them, perfect for what the characters are doing. But I think he said later, they’d already settled on the design and they were kind of goofy, more superhero designs for what they used. And so I don’t know if it was my taste intersecting with what he was saying about those designs that they were using, because he wanted it to be more realistic. So I was not really into G.I. Joe. I think I probably played with them, you know, but I was more

Cover of Shogun Warriors #1 by Herb Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

RIGHT: Cover of Iron Man #251 featuring the Wrecker by Herb Trimpe. Layouts for story by Alex Trimpe. OPPOSITE PAGE: Shogun Warriors #9 page 10. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

into Transformers at the time and I guess I was biased against G.I. Joe. Cassell: I’ll bet you were popular with your friends, having a dad who was an artist and having all the free comics around? Trimpe: Well, not everyone really cared about comic books. Some people did, but I only really had two friends who got into comic books. But I don’t really think there was any kind of halo effect or anything like that because they were pretty close friends, like family. One was a neighbor. I’m sure they were happy that there were free comics to read, but once we got into high school, they were buying stuff anyway. I think I even bought some DC Comics at the time, like Swamp Thing. Cassell: Did your dad work fairly normal business hours when drawing or did he draw late into the night? Trimpe: Yeah, he would work at night, but he may have changed over time too, I don’t know. I remember him taking a lunch break and then going back to work, but that might have been later, because in high school, my parents bought this house that was vacated across the road, this little semi-house and that’s where his studio was after that. I do remember him working at night, not late into the night, but sometimes after dinner, for sure. The thing is, when you’re drawing comics, you can watch TV while you’re doing it. And he had a drawing board. Before his studio was in another house, he had room for it in the living room where the TV was, so it was just part of whatever family socializing there was, he’d work and do that at the same time. And then I got to use that drawing table, me and my friends. Cassell: Did you have any interest in art as you were growing up? Trimpe: Yeah, that was my main thing when I was a kid. Particularly before high school and up until the middle of my high school years, I was really into it. The ironic thing is I told my dad I was interested in doing it, and he would help me along with hints and I think he was fairly encouraging in his actions, but I do have a lot of memories of him saying, “Aah, you don’t want to do comic books.” I’m not sure, definitely, why. But I think it sunk in after a while. On the other hand, I was taking music lessons and he’d say, “I think music’s your thing.” He was good about that, like when I took trombone lessons, he learned tromboning with me and I think he did that with my sisters, as well, at least with Amelia with piano. But the funny thing is, later on, when I

was in my twenties, he’d say, “What? You don’t want to do comic books?” But yeah, I did once have dreams of being a comic book artist and then I transferred my creative outlet to other things. Cassell: I heard him say you guys had a band. Trimpe: Yeah. Well, I think the thing is for me, personally—this has nothing to do with my dad, but it’s not that fun drawing. I mean it’s fun—I like to start drawing, but I cannot stand the inbetween phases. It’s just drudgery and it’s hard and you’re never satisfied. I’d always like for the drawing to be done. You can ask most artists, I think, who can stand to do it. I know my dad’s still the same way. It’s just not that fun of a process. Where if you’re playing music, you’re playing, you know? The creative part is also an action that is fun. Playing a guitar—or drums—to me is much more fun than dragging a pencil across a piece of paper. And in music, you can make mistakes and it’s cool. I don’t know, maybe it’s also a standards thing. If you see people like Alex Toth, you’re like “I want to be able to do that” and once you set that goal, you can’t possibly do it. That’s incredibly frustrating. I can remember when I was a kid and I was trying to draw something and I was getting very frustrated, I remember saying to him, “I can picture this in my head, but I can’t put it on the paper. Why can’t I do that?” He empathized with that problem, I remember. He said, “Yeah, that’s the trick.” Cassell: There were four or five stories that you worked on with your dad. And it looks like in most of them, you did the layouts and then your dad came in behind you and inked them? Trimpe: Yeah, Dad did more than ink them. If you’re inking it, you don’t have to do full pencils. I didn’t do full pencils, so he was doing more than just inking it. It was really just the storytelling part of it. I wouldn’t say I just did stick figures, but nothing publishable, I don’t think. Initially, it was in high school—I guess that’s really lucky. That’s sort of what I did instead of a proper parttime job. And then I think I did a little bit more maybe in or after college. Cassell: Oh, really? Trimpe: And I think I did some that I didn’t get credit for, but I probably just asked and he said, “Okay.” Or maybe he said, “You want to do layouts?” because he didn’t want to deal with it that month. Maybe he had a big workload. It’s possible because I think that I had a really good eye for that storytelling aspect. I just couldn’t draw a finished product properly.

Splash page to Robocop #11 with layouts by Alex Trimpe.

Cassell: Well, the storytelling is the hard part and it’s something I think your dad has a real gift for as well, but not everybody does. I know some artists who were completely frustrated by the fact that they didn’t have a panel-by-panel script to work from. Trimpe: Well, the thing is, that’s one of the fun parts. You go with a pencil and you kind of block out what’s going to be on the pages, depending on who wrote it. Some people wrote more detailed scripts. I know my dad liked it when there was less and he could just improvise, and I agree. I don’t know if it’s the hard part, but what I’ve noticed about comic books nowadays is that they’re really well illustrated, much better on the whole than they used to be, but the storytelling is really bad. It’s just not very clear. They have really well-drawn figures, and everything’s finished very well, color is beautiful, but often-

times, I think the storytelling is not that good and I wonder why that is. It’s almost like people are emphasizing the draftsmanship aspect more than the storytelling and it makes them not as fun to read. Cassell: I think you’re absolutely right. Trimpe: You know, I read a little bit of Alan Moore’s scripts and I know that he’s—at least for the most part—fully scripting, super panel descriptions, super details, like “in the foreground is his head and then this is happening.” But writers like him know what they’re doing and that’s certainly possible, if they describe the panels well. I think that’s kind of where I was, I had a pretty good vision of how to tell the story and I’m sure that there are writers out there who have a good vision, but they can’t finish it. They don’t have the skill to actually draw it. I feel like I could probably describe it pretty well, I just can’t do the finishing part, so I suppose it depends on the writer. That’s probably unfortunate, but I think even still, the artist should still be able to make it flow a little better than some of the things that I’ve seen. If you look at those Marvel Comics from the heyday, they just moved so quick for the most part and so smoothly. “Quick” is probably not the right word, but they’re very efficient and they’re elegant in the storytelling. Now they’re kind of clunky. Cassell: That’s a good description. So, what are some of the things you did for Marvel? Trimpe: I remember doing an Iron Man versus The Wrecker story. [Iron Man #251, December 1989] And I remember doing Robocop, a real trippy, kind of hallucinating Robocop on which I think I put some of my personality. Oh, my dad was really into it, he wanted my personality in it so he would bring that out, like if I put funny faces on the characters, he was really trying to keep them in there. I also drew Snake Eyes in a G.I. Joe Handbook of Battle that’s uncredited, I think. I remember I drew the pose and then my dad put [the finishing touches on it.] I don’t know what those muscles are at the base of the neck, but I guess I didn’t make them look thick enough. And I said, “He looks a lot stronger now, mine was kind of a scrawny Snake Eyes.” And I remember the Fantastic Four Unlimited. That was a quarterly book. Cassell: So when you went to college, what did you major in? Trimpe: English Literature with a concentration in film. I took a lot of film classes, but it was mainly English Literature and just trying to find the easiest math class I could have.

Cassell: I know how that goes. So what did you end up doing when you got out of school? Trimpe: Oh, near the end of high school, I started to switch to being interested in music. In tenth grade, I started to figure out playing guitar. I saw some guy playing piano and I was like, “Ah, at least I can try it.” Not piano—but that he was playing something I knew and it just made sense to me. So by the time I got out of college, I was trying to really have a band. So whatever my jobs were, I don’t recall. I wasn’t trying to have a professional career. I can’t say that I am at this moment, really. But I was trying to have a band in Rochester, New York. That’s where I went to school and I met some of the people that ended up in my band either in school or this one guy worked at the record store. So I was up there for a few years and that was my main thing. I did telemarketing and I worked at a kitchen and supply store. That was actually a great job now that I think about it. And then, after that, we actually almost got signed to a major record label, just by luck like most of these things are. Have you ever heard of The Black Eyed Peas? Cassell: Sure. Trimpe: This is how long ago it was, they were not signed but they were up-and-coming. At the time, they were more like an alternative hip-hop group and there was a bidding war for them, most of the major labels. And it so happened that this A&R guy liked us. His boss didn’t really like us, or didn’t get us, but he said, “If you go up to L.A. and you sign The Black Eyed Peas, then you can sign this funny band you like from Rochester.” And he went out, but he didn’t sign them. We didn’t even get that bone thrown our way. And then we were going to move to New York City. My future wife lived there and I moved back to Kerhonkson waiting for my roommate-to-be. His lease was four months or six months behind mine up in Rochester, so we were going to move down there and do the band down there. And in that four to six months, he decided he wasn’t going to move, so then that was the end of that band. And then I started a band with my sister, at my other sister’s suggestion, actually. Cassell: It sounds like music’s been a big part of your life. Trimpe: Yeah, I guess. That’s kind of my thing. Cassell: I know your Dad had deadlines to meet for Marvel. So did you go on family vacations? Trimpe: Yeah, but oftentimes, he’d bring his work with him. I know that we had a family thing, on my

mom’s side of the family, her sister’s husband, in Delaware where they traditionally went. It ended up being something that we would do every year in my youth and still do, go to the beach in Delaware. I think sometimes, he would try to get his work done so he wouldn’t have to bring it with him, but sometimes he would bring it and I don’t think that he would care, really. Maybe it was a lighter load than normal, but I have a clear memory of him drawing at the beach in Delaware. Cassell: Which beach in Delaware did you go to? Trimpe: Bethany Beach, it’s just south of Rehoboth and north of Ocean City, Maryland. Cassell: So have you ever been with your dad to any of the comic book conventions? Trimpe: Oh, yeah. When I was a kid, he didn’t really do them that often. Obviously, he does

Snake-Eyes entry in G.I. Joe Order of Battle #2 with uncredited layout by Alex Trimpe. Courtesy of Rob Pickel.

The three “Kids” by Trimpe: Kid Colt, Two Gun Kid, and Rawhide Kid. Courtesy of Michael Dunne.

them quite often now, but if he comes in the city, I’ll try and go. That one at the Javits Center is so insane and like a high-security zone. It’s a hassle for him to try to get people in there, so sometimes I hesitate to go. But you go in there and it’s just crazy. I definitely enjoy it because I guess growing up with all that stuff, comic books are kind of comforting to me, so I like to go there. And because there’s a bunch of comic book artists around there. Did my dad tell you about the First Fridays thing? Cassell: No, what about that?

Trimpe: I think it was called First Fridays. There was an exodus of some kind up into the Hudson Valley from the city. I know that a decent amount of people who worked in comics moved up there in the late ’60s through the ’70s. It wasn’t really consistent, but there was a thing called First Friday where they’d have like a party on the first Friday of the month. It was the best thing for a kid who was into comic books because it would be all of the comic artists around there. You know, we’d go to Bernie Wrightson’s house or something.

Cassell: Oh, wow! Trimpe: Yeah! And all the people who were in that community. It wasn’t just comic artists and maybe it didn’t comprise all of the comic book artists up there. But it was great for me when I was into all that. I liked those guys when I was a kid, seeing other artists’ desks when you’d go in there and they’ve got all their pens and their pencils, and discerning between my dad’s setup in his little office, and what the similarities were and what the differences were about them. Like Barry Windsor-Smith, I remember when I was a kid, Barry used to draw in blue pencil. At least for a time, he drew with blue pencils. Obviously, First Fridays is not happening any more. It’s all dispersed now. Sometimes, I kind of get that same vibe off of comic book conventions. You go to a convention and the other artists are all sitting there at the desks with their drawing implements. That’s why I like to go, because everything else is just insanity. You know, if you go outside Artists Alley, it’s crazy. Like the video game things and there’s like people dancing and all sorts of craziness. The pageantry is fun, I like the enthusiasm, the people dressing up and acting out, that’s fun. Cassell: I know what you mean. Trimpe: But it’s not a comic book convention, really, any more, right? I sound like I’m for “the good old days,” but obviously the transition into Hollywood dollars means these comic book conventions have to deal with a lot of other things: video games, movies, TV shows, etc. What would you call that? Popular culture? Like a popular culture fantasy convention. Cassell: Yeah, it’s true. Comic books have very little to do with it any more, except that they serve as the basis for a lot of the movies. Trimpe: There’s nothing wrong with promotion and dollars and cents, obviously. This is where the rubber hits the road. And there’s a kind of sincere enthusiasm amongst the participants there. But at the same time, there’s a huge opportunistic bent to the whole thing. Cassell: That’s a very good description. So you mentioned Barry Windsor-Smith, were you a fan of his work? Trimpe: Yeah. You know, he was like just a friend of the family, a crazy uncle figure. But Barry, he’s my sister Sarah’s godfather. He’d come over for Christmas and Thanksgiving, very generous at Christmas time. Barry actually ended up giving me two electric guitars. And they’re not bad guitars either, one of them’s really nice. I don’t

know what gets into him. He’s got a bunch of musical instruments. He’s got a drum set, an electric guitar—and he can play a little bit. Cassell: Really? Trimpe: He was somebody who would be socializing. And Dan Green and his family also, they lived close by. I think they were the closest that I would see with some regularity that were in the comic book business. But Bernie Wrightson moved to Woodstock and there’s a bunch of people who live around there. He used to have these crazy Halloween parties and those kind of people have great Halloween costumes. I’m not really into Halloween, but those were really good. I remember the best costume I ever saw there was actually this guy who was Barry’s assistant, until not too long ago. I don’t know, maybe he still is. Alex Bialy? And this is back in the late ’80s— but he was Max Headroom. You remember that character? Cassell: Oh, sure. Trimpe: He had a TV on his head and when he smiled, he actually looked like the guy. He looked like him so much that I convinced a friend of mine that he actually was Max Headroom. We went to see a play that he was in and my friend came, and I said, “This is the guy that actually plays Max Headroom.” And he said, “Aw, that is him,” and then I had to tell him that I was not telling the truth. It was an awesome costume. He had like a TV frame on his head. I don’t know how it was supported on there, I guess he finagled something and colored in the background like those ’80s Miami Vice colors? There was bright green and bright pink. Anyway, it was awesome. That was the best costume I saw. Cassell: Did you dad dress up for the Halloween parties?

ABOVE: Wraparound cover of G.I. Joe Order of Battle #3 by Trimpe. LEFT: Trimpe inking the Incredible Hulk from 1970 documentary “Herb Trimpe, We Love You.” Courtesy of Jon Riley.

Trimpe: I can picture one get-up but I cannot really figure out what it was supposed to be. He kind of looked like a member of Motley Crue circa “Shout at the Devil.” Cassell: So do you have favorite comic book stories that your dad drew? Trimpe: Yeah. I really liked the last G.I. Joe Special Missions story my dad did where he inked it and wrote it and I think there is a lot of water in it and someone’s trying to launch a missile or Cobra’s going to steal a missile. That was good. He did that “Sky Warriors” thing for Savage Tales, the

ABOVE: Herb Trimpe with his PT-17 biplane. Courtesy of Bill Peckmann. RIGHT: Splash page to The Nam #75 with layouts by Alex Trimpe.

kind of like quasi-adult “Mature Readers” sort of magazine. Cassell: Right. Trimpe: That was really good. There’s some good Transformers stuff, especially some good Transformers covers. You know what else I liked? I really liked those old Hulks—before he made the Hulk look kind of like an ape, where the Hulk is kind of handsome? You know what I mean? If you look at the first ones he did, I think usually he inked them as well. The Hulk hasn’t got that big upper lip that he developed later, then the nose and the top lip got longer, which was cool. It’s part of what distinguishes him, I guess. But before that, he was sort of good-looking with this squinty movie star look. I remember that. I like that era. I just like the look of it and those are all very brushy, the inks are very brushy-looking and fat lines. Cassell: I know what you mean. What other artwork of your dad’s did you like? Trimpe: Well, it’s not comic book-related, but he did these sketches in Vietnam that are really nice. He did these really nice line drawings and I was taken with when I saw them. There’s not a ton of them. It’s just a few in a nice little sketchbook. Cassell: It sounds like he found an outlet for his creativity in whatever he was doing. Trimpe: You know, I was telling my mom the other day that a lot of what my dad did creatively, that he showed enthusiasm for, as we were growing up wasn’t really comic-related. He did other stuff; designing games and just making up worlds. He probably wouldn’t say this, but he made up a Death Star before Star Wars came out, same idea. He had a space saga that he made up as well and he actually had a Death Star that he drew a picture of. I can’t remember what the whole story was. And he also did a really cool story—I don’t know if it ever was published— where it was a biplane versus these futuristic overlords where some grandfather’s been hiding it away on the sly and he reveals it to his grandson. I can’t remember the story exactly, but that was supposed to be the beginning of the rebellion. It was sort of the prelude to a larger story. Cassell: That sounds cool. Trimpe: Do you remember that movie Dragonslayer? It was in the early ’80s. Anyway, it was a

LEFT: Poignant view of the Twin Towers in Manhattan from Trimpe’s biplane. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. BELOW: Cover of Iron Man #252 by Herb Trimpe. Courtesy Grand Comics Database.

so-so movie. The dragon’s awesome. But there was a board game that we got and my dad was really into board games. Lots of the games I played when I was a kid were games that he made up. He had all these models. We would play on this board made up of little octagons, those were the spaces. And we would set up the terrain. We’d have rocks and trees and put them in there. And then, we’d have a battle and he’d have made up all the rules. It was a dice game, in terms of what the damage was and you knew how many moves you could go in trying to outmaneuver your opponent. And then he had one with airplanes where he mounted airplanes on these sticks that had a base, but you could add sticks to it so elevation was part of the game too. You could use your move to go forward or go up or down, which was really cool. Cassell: Oh, wow! Trimpe: And like having a biplane—I didn’t really get into roller coasters until I was much older because roller coasters just seemed kind of tame, compared to going upside-down in a biplane. The same thing with most board games. They all seemed they weren’t as good, really, because of the fun that we had—especially playing with these really detailed, painted models that he would do. But with Dragonslayer, the game was

messed up. You couldn’t beat the dragon at the end, for whatever reason. So, he fixed that. He fixed the rules so that it was beatable, but in a reasonable way. And it was on this little crappy board and he took it and he made this gigantic, really nice looking version of the board. The game was like a C- and it went, I’d say, to a B+ just from his little modifications. Cassell: Wow! That sounds great. How old were you at the time? Trimpe: Maybe ten? It was probably ’83 or so, ’83 to ’85, in there somewhere. So I was very appreciative of that kind of thing. Cassell: Oh, cool. Trimpe: Yeah, my dad’s pretty darned sharp, I guess. I always liked drawing and I was crazy into super-hero stuff, but I saw his inventiveness, his ingenuity about a lot of other things besides comics. He would probably have been good at Lucasfilm, or something like that, something where you’re building worlds. He was really good at coming up with these kinds of fantasy things, with detailed backstories and explanations. Cassell: That is great. He really is quite a versatile guy. That creativity and versatility would serve Trimpe well as he joined the ranks of the Marvel Bullpen.

C HA PT E R TW O

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics began in 1939 as Timely Publications, founded by pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman. The company enjoyed early success with characters that included the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and Captain America, the latter created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. Goodman hired his wife’s cousin, Stanley Lieber, who wrote stories under the pseudonym Stan Lee and took over as editor when Simon left in 1941. When super-heroes fell out of fashion after the war, Timely branched out into multiple genres at a time when copying the competition was the order of the day. After weathering a downturn in the late 1950s by reducing staff, the company now known as Marvel found a new lease on life with the introduction of the Fantastic Four in the fall of 1961. By the time Trimpe joined Marvel, the super-hero revolution was well under way, and he had an opportunity to work with some remarkable people, while making his own mark in the field. Like all the members of the Marvel Bullpen at the time, he was given a nickname by editor Stan Lee: “Happy” Herb Trimpe. After hearing him talk about his various accomplishments during the course of his career in a modest and matter-of-fact way, it seems perhaps that a more appropriate moniker might have been “Humble” Herb Trimpe. In this interview, Trimpe talks about how he got the job at Marvel Comics, the work he did in production and inking westerns, and the unique nature of the company and the people, including Stan Lee. ABOVE: Detail of 1970 Marvelmania self-portrait by Herb Trimpe. BELOW: Cover of Kid Colt Outlaw #134 by Trimpe, which featured his first story for Marvel, “Shoot-Out at Hooker Flat.”

Cassell: How did you get the job at Marvel? Trimpe: A friend of mine from The School of Visual Arts, John Verpoorten, was working at Marvel. I’d known him before—in fact, when I left Tom Gill to enlist, he took over and started working for Tom himself. By the time I got back, he had wound up at Marvel as the production chief. I did take some samples up to DC, but I didn’t have anything current. It was all stuff I’d done in art school or done for fun. So, I got talking to Verpoorten, and he said, “You should bring whatever you’ve got up to the office and let Sol Brodsky take a look at it,” because Sol was screening incoming artists, of which there weren’t very many, I can tell you. It wasn’t like now. Cassell: What was your first assignment at Marvel? Trimpe: When I brought my work up and Sol Brodsky looked at it, I immediately got work inking Westerns freelance—Kid Colt, Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid—and that worked out good. Cassell: Do you think Stan had you ink Westerns as a try-out for penciling work? Trimpe: I don’t think he saw inking as a lesser form of the artwork where you could take an amateur and have them do it, since inking takes quite a bit of expertise in itself. But saying that, I did start out inking Westerns at Marvel over

top of Werner Roth and Larry Lieber and guys like that. I think I inked some of Dick [Ayer]’s stuff and it was quite enjoyable. So I don’t know if that was by design or just because they needed inkers on the work, because the number of Western titles was quite extensive in the mid-’60s. There were probably five, six [Westerns] out of less than 20 overall titles. When you included the romance magazines, they took up quite a percentage of the total output of titles in the mid-’60s. And they were good books to work on, too. Cassell: I heard that at one point you ran the Photostat machine. Trimpe: I got a call from Sol one day and he said, “We’re not going to send galleys out to copy any more. We’re going to do all that stuff in-house and we’re getting this big photographic device that we can shoot text or pictures on.” This was when cut-and-paste was actually cut-and-paste. And it was about eight feet long and it had a bed to put the work on, and a huge adjustable camera, and you could feed the paper right into a developer and then a fixer and then into a dryer. And he said, “We need somebody to operate that—there’s a technician coming in from the company—would you like to take the job?” And I said, “Sure, it sounds good. I’ll do that.” So that’s

ABOVE: Cover of Marvel Super-Heroes #16 featuring the Phantom Eagle by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. LEFT: Cover art to The Incredible Hulk #110 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

ABOVE: Cover of Daredevil #78 penciled by Trimpe. Courtesy Grand Comics Database. RIGHT: Cover art to Kid Colt Outlaw #155 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Jeff Jaworski.

when I started working for $130 a week, and I did that for maybe six months. Cassell: Did you continue to do any artwork? Trimpe: During that time I did ink some Westerns on the side, and then I did “The Phantom Eagle” with Gary Friedrich and some other odds and ends. Cassell: Did you enjoy doing the Westerns? Trimpe: Yeah, because I liked Western comics. Actually, I think the first full-length story I did was “Shoot-Out at Hooker Flat.” It was written by Gary Friedrich and it was in a Kid Colt comic. [Kid Colt Outlaw #134, May 1967.] Cassell: Did you have reference for what horses looked like or different styles of guns? Trimpe: I made ‘em up. I made horses up. I draw terrible horses. I didn’t really use photos much. That might have been one of Jack’s influences, because Jack just made everything up out of whole cloth. He just invented it, and I think I was doing the same thing. And we were asked to look at Jack. Not so much “draw like Kirby”—that wasn’t it. A lot of people voluntarily drew like Kirby, like Barry Smith had a strong Kirby [influence] in the beginning, as did Jim Steranko, but they both took it one step further. They both went into their own realm after a while, and they were both unique and unusual because of that. Me? I didn’t know where the hell I was going. Cassell: What other artists were working at Marvel at the time? Trimpe: Most of the guys in place were a generation before me, and they were solid craftsmen. When I came into Marvel, I had to squeeze in between guys like Romita, Colan, Kirby, Buscema, Don Heck, Bill Everett. These guys were excellent artists. They had grace and style. Inkers like Sinnott and Giacoia—nobody can do that today. Nobody knows that kind of brushwork and the kind of things they did with ease, it seemed. It was magnificent-looking art. If you see an original Buscema page, it’s just astounding work. It’s incredible. So when I was coming in, I was the piker of the bunch. I came on around the same time Barry Smith came in and shortly after (or maybe before) Jim Steranko. We were the moreor-less contemporaries in the ’60s. Of course, I couldn’t draw anywhere near any of them. Cassell: That generation of Romita, Colan, Kirby and others were really very humble, though. Trimpe: Yeah, that’s true. At the time, it was, “Okay, it’s another plot, it’s another story. Here’s the character, draw it, make the deadline, get the check.” That’s all there was to it then. Most

of the artists came from commercial art backgrounds, even though to one degree or another, they loved doing comic books. I’ve heard Syd Shores and other artists say, “If things got slow when I was doing commercial work, you could always run over to a comic book company. They’d give you a script and you’d go home and do the artwork, bring it back, and they’d pay you right away.” They’d pay on delivery and that was one of the advantages of working on comics in those days. It helped tide people over. At times, comics were used by commercial illustrators, or people who worked outside the business on a regular basis, to supplement their income. They didn’t tell anybody they drew comic books. That would not be wise as a career move, you know. Cassell: Did you ever hang out with the other artists outside of work? Trimpe: We had a softball team in the publishers’ league. Jim Shooter was the driving force and

Splash page to Marvel Super- Heroes #16 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

ABOVE: Cover of Sub-Mariner #9 by Trimpe and Dan Adkins. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Marie Severin caricature of Trimpe with girls in Marvel Bullpen. Courtesy of Jon B. Cooke.

main agitator in getting the other team stirred up. We did well. Cassell: There is a Marie Severin cartoon of you that shows a bunch of women from the Marvel Bullpen fawning over you. Any truth to that characterization? Trimpe: Maybe she was noticing something that I didn’t see. I’m wondering how you came upon that one. I have a bunch of drawings she did, but I’m not sure where they are. Quick brush sketches on newsprint or scrap paper. I believe I was the primary target for her quick wit and incisive drawings. I have offered in the past to return them to her, but she only wanted me to send copies. That’s Marie. Cassell: What was it like working with Stan Lee? Trimpe: I was an excellent storyteller, and I think that’s what sold Stan. Because Stan’s genius— never mind the dispute between characters and who created what—his revelation to comics was having the artists visualize the story. I heard him say early in the game that it’s primarily a visual medium. And this was coming out of a writer’s mouth, mind you. So Stan was not a small guy. He saw the big picture. He realized that if you didn’t have the story, you didn’t have really anything. I was still drawing in the Jack Davis style when I got to Marvel. Stan put his foot down on that immediately. No more nine panels on a page, and scritchy-scratchy cross-hatching. Jack Davis’

stuff is fantastic, but he had this cartoony adventure style, and there just wasn’t any room for that at Marvel. They were deep into the superhero genre, and rightly so for the time, because it was exploding. Marvel was well on its way to overtaking the #1 company at the time, DC. They were like the “little brother” or the black sheep of the comic world. But Stan had this brilliant idea of throwing the storytelling into the artists’ lap. First of all, for the guy drawing the book, it’s the most fun. I know a lot of guys worked from full scripts, but I know they were all happy to latch on to the lead that Stan was taking. Giving the artist the freedom to direct is really what it was. Even though the writer may have come up with the plot, as in a movie where the writer comes up with a script or a plot, the director is the one that tells the story and they’re usually the ones whose name is the biggest on the screen, and that’s what we were given. Some people don’t consider it a privilege. They think we should have got paid more money for it, but I wasn’t thinking about the money at the time. I was already making more money than I ever made in my life, starting at $135 a week, and within a few months, I was making $200 a week, so I wasn’t complaining. To have that option, to be able to tell the story, pace it, decide panel size, panel spacing on the page; to me, that was the most fun of all and I was a natural at it. I just fell right into it. Cassell: When you were working with Stan, did you have story conferences where he would talk about what he was looking for? Trimpe: They were the first months at Marvel, before he started to slide more of the work over in Roy’s direction. Because Stan was writing all the books when I came on, or Roy might have just been hired and was starting to pick up a lot of the slack on those books, because Stan was going crazy. That’s a hell of thing to have to do, write all that stuff in one month. But anyway, we did the story conferences in his office. Nothing written down, just

SPOTL I GH T ON

The Photostat With Eliot Brown Machine

Stu Schwartzberg and the Photostat machine. Courtesy eliotrbrown.com.

The Photostat machine was a projection photocopier created by the Commercial Camera Company. The Photostat was used for photographic copying of documents, a predecessor to the modern day Xerox machine. Marvel Comics acquired a Photostat machine in 1967 to save the time and expense of sending documents out to be copied. Herb Trimpe was the first operator of the Photostat machine for Marvel, later succeeded by Stu Schwartzberg. Former Marvel Comics editor and writer Eliot Brown explains the process associated with using the Photostat machine, “This thing was a ‘First Print’ type— meaning that it was best used to make a reversed image, a negative.

Stu went through the process of making a ‘Second Print’ to make the better used positive image. Another thing to set the mind reeling was that Stu made an exposure by pulling on a piece of string which was attached to the shutter. And he counted. For really long counts, he used the second hand of a clock! Stu—and no doubt, Herb spent a lot of time making copies of the original book pages— for two reasons: One for a safety copy and the other for a color guide—both of these were reduced to ‘printed size’. Watercolor went on the photo paper beautifully. The reason Marvel stuck with such old technology was that this was fed with a roll of paper, which came in different

widths. A piece of ground glass was how you focused when you needed. I’m not sure if Stu ever actually focused more than setting the machine up (each) first time in place— he cranked the various components into position with rulers on the rails.” The copies produced by the Photostat machine had a distinctive appearance. The paper was lightweight with a somewhat slick finish and typically had a dark brown or black edge around the image. The same approach was used by most comic book companies at the time. Brown notes that the same Photostat machine was “delicately carried” from one Marvel office to the next, until it was ultimately replaced with newer technology.

ABOVE: Trimpe impersonates the Hulk in a familiar pose. (See page opposite.) Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. BELOW: Doug Moench, Trimpe, and Louise Jones in the Marvel Bullpen. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.

[talking it over with] Stan. That was the way it worked. The only thing written down was what I wrote down after the conference. When I sat back down at my desk, I threw together what we had talked about, and then structured 20 pages or 18 pages, whatever it was, of artwork out of that. It might be ten sentences of plot, and I would take that and flesh the whole thing out into a story. I got to fill in a lot of intermediate action to bridge the story. Stan saw the artist as the visualizer and the pacer of the story. There is an interview with him for the London show last year [2012] on their website, and he said right there that he hired artists that could tell stories. He makes jokes about it: “because I was trying to get out of the work.” Even with Roy, I don’t think I ever got a written plot. Since I was in the office at the time, he’d just come in and sit down and we’d discuss the plot and I’d write down what I remembered and evolve a story around it. The artists are the people that are drawing the pictures, and a comic book is primarily pictures with the story in support of it. Because if you don’t tell the story in the pictures, there’s no way you’re going to make it up in the dialogue. Cassell: It was certainly a novel approach. Trimpe: Keep in mind that Stan’s a writer. Most writers that I know wouldn’t make that concession if you had a gun put to their head, because they want the recognition and the power. They want to be the controllers of the story. There are a few people who visualize very well and they can hand you a script and it makes sense. Larry Hama’s a good example, because he can draw. When I got scripts from him for G.I. Joe, it was a breeze. But if you get a finished script from a writer, and especially if

you’ve already established your own ability to tell a story, now it’s costing you more time and work. You have to analyze that script, seeing it through the writer’s eyes, then reinterpret it so you can tell the story in a way that you’re comfortable with. It’s a pain in the ass, and it also goes against my original concept of comic books as we practiced when I was in art school, and that was as a comic strip artist—creating, writing, drawing, and inking your own stories. To me, that was what a comic book artist was. There is something interesting, but insulting, about the nature of breaking the comic book—the presentation, the format—down into separate assembly lines. But for me, following a complete script was a nightmare. It slowed me down. Cassell: How big were the Marvel offices at the time? Trimpe: Small. As you’d come off the elevator, turn left, and go in the door, to your right would be the receptionist. And you’d walk straight down the hall and the first right was the Bullpen. I was in the Bullpen with John Romita, Marie Severin, and Tony Mortellaro primarily. An extra artist would come in sometimes. Like John, I was in one corner. They were partitioned with the low partitions like you see in offices, a wall up to your waist or higher, and then glass on top of that that you can’t see through. And I’d say the area we were in was at the biggest, 12 feet by 14, something like that. That was on one side of the hall. The other part, across the hall, was elongated. That was where Morrie Kuramoto was, who was a letterer, and another production assistant.

But that place was not deep—it was as long as ours, but it wasn’t as wide. There was a doorway in back that was where the camera was. That’s when the third person from School of Visual Arts came in, Stu Schwartzberg. Both John Verpoorten and I hung out with Stu. He took over my job in the copying and the stat room. That was a full wall because you had to have darkroom conditions in there when you were developing stuff, since the pans were out in the open on this machine. The fixer bath and the developer bath were both large trays, end-to-end, behind the camera. We had to have it totally dark in there except for a red light. And if you kept walking down the hall, past those two entrances, you’d go straight into Stan’s office. John Verpoorten was to the left in the production department, where they did all the schedules and piled all the returned artwork. And I think Sol Brodsky was off to the right. So it was very small. The last Bullpen I saw at Marvel, when I was in there at some sad point back in the ’90s, the Bullpen area was huge. It was like a classroom-sized room. Cassell: Was Marvel a good company to work for? Trimpe: When I started working there, it was a mom-and-pop organization, basically. It was in the days when Martin Goodman and Stan were still in charge. Martin Goodman was the publisher of Magazine Management, of which Marvel was only one of the divisions. They had several things that they did, pulp magazines and so on. And in those days, I went in and I told Stan I needed an advance on my salary. “I need about eight

hundred bucks.” And he said, “Let me talk to Martin.” So he came back with a check for $800, no interest, taken out of my salary a little bit at a time. Cassell: Wow. That’s amazing. Trimpe: That’s the kind of company it was— unheard of by today’s standards. And it was the middle 1960s. It was like the 1920s, when you used to go to a bank and tell the banker, “Hey, we’re busted and I need a break on the mortgage.” And he says, “Sure, Harry. No problem.” It was that kind of thing. It doesn’t exist any more. Of course, comics are very big for their britches now. Everybody thinks they’re very important. When I got worried about stuff, Tom DeFalco always used to say, “Herb, it’s only a comic. We’re supposed to be having fun. If we’re not having fun, what’s the point?” That’s my attitude about the whole thing. And of course I am totally lost in the shuffle because of that. Cassell: So back in those early days, where was Martin Goodman? Trimpe: When I started working there [at Marvel], our offices were separate from Martin Goodman’s office and the rest of Magazine Management. He was actually across the street in another building. He was a good guy. He was like the old-time publisher type. And his son Chip worked for him, also. I don’t know what he would be up to now, but he’d probably be my age or almost my age. [Editorial note: Chip Goodman died in 1996 at the age of 55.] Chip Goodman was a good guy. He was kind of a novice, though. He didn’t want to be a hard-

Detail from page 3 of The Incredible Hulk #193 by Trimpe and Joe Staton. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

S POT LI G HT O N

“Herb Trimpe, We Love You” With Jon Riley

Herb Trimpe at his drawing board in the Marvel Bullpen from the 1970 documentary “Herb Trimpe, We Love You.” Courtesy of Jon Riley.

In 1970, New York University student Jon Riley shot a 26‑ minute black and white documentary film titled “Herb Trimpe, We Love You.” At the time, Trimpe had been drawing The Incredible Hulk for over a year and a half, both interior pages and many covers, and his style was resonating well with readers. Riley explains how the documentary came about, “I had met Herb at a neighbor’s party shortly after I returned from a year of school in Paris, France. I was so mesmerized by him and the intensely American thing that he did and represented, that I eventually got around to asking him if I could do a short film about him. My original idea was a 15-20-minute short. However two other students were interested in my idea and agreed to join their allotted film stock and time to make a half-hour documentary that we dreamt might be on NY Public TV. We were students at NYU’s Graduate Institute of Film & TV and were on a very, very limited budget. So it is fairly rough and not very professional in terms of film craft, but it is the real Herb Trimpe.” The film opens with the camera panning in on Trimpe sitting at his drawing table in shirt and tie at Marvel Comics, inking a full-page drawing of the Incredible Hulk, as a voice over says, “On April 1st, 1968, Herb Trimpe began work at Marvel Comics as the artist of The Incredible Hulk comic book. On that day,

he lost his anonymity.” Pinned to the wall behind Trimpe’s desk is a poster of General Patton, along with several covers of published comics. The film is narrated by Trimpe and features some priceless footage of John Verpoorten, Tony Mortellaro, and Marie Severin engaged in conversation with Trimpe in the cramped quarters of the Marvel Bullpen. The film includes insight from several fans of Trimpe and the Hulk, among them Flo Steinberg, former gal Friday to Stan Lee, as well as brothers Alan and Paul Kupperberg, who both went on to become comics professionals. Also included are scenes of Trimpe spending time with his daughter Melissa, then around six years old, and Trimpe commuting on the train into work and

visiting with friends, including Linda Fite, whom Trimpe later married. The film also has a delightful animation sequence drawn by Trimpe of Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk, as well as a fantastic montage of artwork by Trimpe that accompanies the end credits. The song that plays during the credits is “Jackson” by Jerry Lee Lewis, which was Trimpe’s favorite song at the time. The film is a wonderful tribute to Trimpe and a rare glimpse into his personal and professional life early in his career. The film was profiled on NBC television’s Today Show in 2003 and a short segment of the film was included in the 2013 PBS documentary “Super-heroes: A Never Ending Battle.”

ass. He was always pleasant, but a lot of stuff was being delegated to him from Martin’s point of view, by the time I was doing the inking. Then, when I was actually hired on, we were not there any more. We were in the other offices. Cassell: I know that Marie Severin and others did some illustrations that were used in the men’s magazines that Martin Goodman published. Trimpe: Well, they went even further than that. When they did Confidential Romances and Strange Detective Stories or whatever the hell they were doing there, all these pulp titles, they used to take our pictures. They used employees’ photos to be the axe killer, to be the cop that made the arrest, to be the wife of the victim— we were the characters in those stories. That would be people in the office that they were taking pictures of. Cassell: You mentioned earlier “The Phantom Eagle.” How did you get that assignment? Trimpe: Well, I have a pilot’s license, you know. Back in my mid-30s, I was living in England and did Iron Man and gave up The [Incredible] Hulk. During that period, I was also taking flying lessons and I got a license in England. When I came back, thanks to a reciprocal agreement they have between countries, I was able to convert it over to a U.S. license without having to take a test again. I bought an airplane eventually and flew it for 14 or 15 years. It was actually a World War II Army trainer. It was called a primary trainer, a PT-17. It was actually built by Boeing, taken over from the Stearman Company in the ’30s when they went out of business. It was never referred

to as a Boeing, though; it was always referred to as a Stearman. So Boeing manufactured these things for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and they were used to give pilots their first 60 hours of flight training. After the war, they were sold off at very cheap prices. A full tank of gas and $500, take it away. Otherwise, they were going to burn them up. A lot of them were sucked up by the agricultural business—the [crop] dusters and sprayers of the world bought these airplanes and converted them. It was a two-seat airplane—a biplane—and the student would sit in the rear cockpit, instructor in the front, and communicate via hand signs or there was a mirror on the upper wing where the instructor could see your face in the back and determine whether you were getting ready to jump or something. But there were no radios. It was all done through Gosports, which was a rubber tube and a funnel thing that looked like you measure stuff with. The ends were plugged into your helmet and you talked to each other through this rubber hose, and that’s the way they trained combat pilots in World War II with this airplane. Then when they went over to dusters, they sealed over the front cockpit, put a tank up there for chemicals, put spray lines along the bottom wings, and they were used to dust crops all over; mostly in the U.S. And then came a time in which they were gradually of interest again. They were no longer obsolete airplanes. Suddenly, they became antiques, so a lot of them were converted back to

ABOVE: Tony Mortellaro and John Verpoorten (left) and Marie Severin (right) in the Marvel Bullpen from the 1970 documentary “Herb Trimpe, We Love You.” Courtesy of Jon Riley. BELOW: Fortieth birthday card from Marie Severin and Stu Schwartzberg. Courtesy Herb Trimpe.

RIGHT: Life imitates art with Trimpe in his PT-17 biplane. (See page opposite.) Courtesy of Bill Peckmann. BELOW: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #116 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

civilian use and that’s what I got. I got one that was a duster and a sprayer, which was converted back to civilian use. It had a blue fuselage with yellow wings and yellow tail surfaces, with a 220-horsepower Continental radial engine. It was very dependable and basically used as a sports plane and we had a ball. I had a very good time with that for quite a while. So everybody knew that. I think [Jim] Shooter’s got a thing on his [web]site about the time I took him and his dad and Bob Layton for rides. They came up to where I was keeping it in a hangar. I took these guys for rides on a day where there was a storm moving in, and the wind was so bad that we actually had to get on the ground at one point and get it in the hangar before we got blown away. But Shooter still remembers that and he was kind of overjoyed by the whole thing. So it was a well-known fact, me and this airplane. So about Marvel Super-Heroes #16, Gary [Friedrich] says, “I want to submit a story. I’ve got this character, the Phantom Eagle. It’s an out-of-copyright character that they did back in the ’40s and so we can use it.” So he plotted a story and I designed the character, which nobody remembers, although I actually have gotten one or two commissions for the Phantom Eagle. I have to say that what I’d like to do is redraw it. I know [Howard] Chaykin and somebody else did it a couple years ago. It just

didn’t have the same flavor and they tried to dull it down a bit, and get rid of the colors. This because a super-hero World War I pilot isn’t just ridiculous to begin with. But I would love to redraw that first issue. That would be a fun thing to do, because there’s a lot of it I wouldn’t touch that looks good to me. But the rest of it gets so wooden and stiff after a while. I don’t know if it was the deadline, I guess I was trying too hard or something. At any rate, except for the more recent, latter day version, it was a one-off and unfortunately, it didn’t turn out like Wolverine did as a one-off. Cassell: I thought it was well done. Why do you think it didn’t catch on? Trimpe: Aviation just doesn’t work in comics. For me, it did with EC and the aviation stuff that George Evans and Jack Davis and Wally Wood did. Oh, Wally’s airplanes were pretty weird, but Jack Davis did great stories. I wouldn’t mind doing a war story now, actually. That would be kind of fun, but it’s not politically correct any more, I guess, to do that kind of thing, Cassell: Yeah, that’s true. Trimpe: Even though it’s more and more politically correct to fight wars. They just don’t want kids reading war comics. They want it to be a surprise. So when they turn eighteen and the

recruiter comes around to the high school, it’s all new to them by that time. Cassell: Was Marvel pretty good about returning to you your original artwork? Trimpe: Well, when they started to return it, yeah. We got it all back. That was the result of the actions of Neal Adams and some others, members of the Academy of Comic Book Arts, which was kind of a guild, not exactly a union. As a result of that, and pressure that Neal put on the publishers, and the fact that they were running out of space to store it, they decided that it would be a good idea to return it to the artists—with the provision, of course, that you could not copy it. They held the copyright. You had the art, and you could do what you wanted with it; display it, sell it privately, burn it in the wintertime. Cassell: Before they started giving it back, there were stories about people giving it away to visitors that came in the office. Trimpe: Oh, that happened all the time. Literally, there was a six-foot pile of comic book art in the corner of the production chief’s office, John Verpoorten. It would come back from the printer and get piled up. Finally, they decided the best place would be some warehouse, so they started to warehouse it. When they decided to return the artwork, they had to get somebody over from the office to inventory it, so that it was split up by artists and eventually sent home. That’s when

they were dividing it up and sorting it out by a percentage of pages, which must have been a hell of a job. You know, the penciller gets 11 pages, the inker gets six pages, the writer gets two pages. I figure there was a point where the letterer was getting a page or two. So that was going on and the only way we could arrange to get a full book was to come to an agreement with the other people who were getting pages. I had a deal with some inkers that, “I’ll get two books and you get one book.” Cassell: That makes more sense. Trimpe: So that’s the way it worked. I’ve received art, bits and pieces of things, probably as recently as a year ago. Every once in a while, something will turn up, some nondescript ad page or some ridiculous thing that they find that you did for some obscure purpose. Just recently—within the last two years—I got a complete issue of X-Factor that I had penciled and had been partially lettered, but they never got an inker for it and never published it. It was an inventory [story] that I did. It’s practically nil at this point, but for a long time, every once in a while, something would come back in.

Detail from page 2 of Marvel Super-Heroes #16 featuring the Phantom Eagle. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

One of the creators with whom Trimpe worked closely, especially during his early years at Marvel, was “Jazzy” John Romita.

Romita on Trimpe An Interview with John Romita

Artist John Romita was a fixture at Marvel Comics for many years. In the same way that Trimpe is associated with the Hulk, Romita is inextricably linked to Spider-Man. In this interview, John talks about working with Trimpe at Marvel and his impressions of his fellow artist.

ABOVE: John and Virginia Romita from 2001 San Diego Comic Con. BELOW: Romita rendition of the Hulk from FOOM #2.

Aaron Sultan: What are your earliest recollections of Herb? John Romita: They go back to the time when he got hired. He was one of the crew—John Verpoorten, Herb Trimpe, and Stu Schwartzberg—they all came in about the same time. I think they were all part of the class that Tom Gill was giving in the School of Visual Arts, and— believe it or not—both Schwartzberg and he came in as a Photostat operator. The interesting memory about that is that we were in such small quarters at that time and there was a big, tremendous drum to dry out the photostats. It was really like prehistoric times. This drum was right behind a very flimsy wall separating us, and it was filled with hot water. And in the summertime, it just used to drive us nuts because it warmed up the damn room so much that we were sweating. I don’t know if anybody else told you, but it was certainly not a fun job because making photostats was not easy. Anyway, he had to get used to the camera, and that damn big drum you’d feed the paper in and it would dry out the paper and give it a little sheen. Well, my first memory of Herb is that I’m sure he was not the happiest guy for those first few months. Sultan: How did he make the switch to being an artist? Romita: Marie and I and occasional visiting artists would do cover sketches and do fill-in repairs. He probably did it the same way I think everybody, including my son, did when he first came up. John Jr. used to come up during summer breaks, when he was eighteen and nineteen. Marie Severin was constantly doing cover sketches and when she was busy, she would hand it out to everybody and she broke my son in doing cover sketches. I believe that Trimpe probably did the same thing and started doing some covers. That was the general pecking order; guys

doing cover sketches, and then doing pencils, and then doing inks. Sultan: So who were the people in the Bullpen at the time—in addition to you and Marie—that were helping Herb along? Romita: Well, of course Stan and Sol Brodsky. Stan probably gave him some tips and he maybe gave him the indoctrination spiel. Marie was instrumental in helping a lot of guys get started. She had a knack of working with people and of course, when I was working with Herb when he was a young guy, he would occasionally ask me questions and I would volunteer some stuff. I think Stan would give him the storytelling and then I would reinforce the storytelling advice as soon as he started doing penciling, even the storytelling on the cover sketches and finished artwork. There was a sort of a Marvel Way to approach things and no matter how we studied comics in school and in previous jobs, it generally was a different approach. We were always looking for the human interest and we were always looking for the entertainment part, and not so much the flash and the DC approach on covers. But we indoctrinated him, probably, almost as an ensemble group. And John Verpoorten, who was our Production Manager during those years, was a hell of an artist himself. He could have easily been a full-time inker and he probably would have been a good penciler, too. He was a hell of a talent, but he was such a good production manager that he was reduced to doing some freelance stuff. He used to ink some of my stuff, help me with the newspaper strip. So that crew that came from Tom Gill was very well represented for years up at Marvel. Sultan: That’s amazing. Romita: Yeah, we had a sort of a Bullpen then with Marie and Herb. When Herb started coming in, he was already used to it because he had come in every day as a stat man. So he just got

Cover art to Marvel SuperHeroes #41 by Herb Trimpe and John Romita. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Advertisement for Marvelmania Unpublished Art Portfolios by Trimpe and Romita that were never made.

a drawing table and moved right in—between me and Marie. Sultan: Oh, so in the Bullpen, he was situated between you and Marie? Romita: Yeah, we would rotate around, but generally, we were next to each other. Marie was either behind us on the other wall or down the room a little bit. It wasn’t a very big room and Marie made hundreds of cartoons making fun of us because our general chatter was political and social and difference of opinion on artwork, discussing Jack Kirby, John Buscema, whoever. In other words, we were constantly talking while we were working and Marie made a lot of fun of us. She used us as a target. Sultan: You wouldn’t happen to have any of those cartoons still around, do you? Romita: I have a few, yeah. I had a lot and I let other people borrow them and I didn’t get all of them back and I’m really annoyed at that. And let me tell you, if I had every cartoon she had, I’d cherish them because she did the funniest, most biting stuff—and she was her own worst target. She would destroy herself in cartoon form. Sultan: I’m assuming this is around the late ’60s you’re talking about here? Romita: Yes, I think late ’60s, maybe ’69 into the early 1970s. Sultan: Okay, so just to complete the picture, who else would be walking around the office at that time? I heard John Verpoorten.

Romita: Yeah, he was in the Production department and Larry Lieber, Stan’s brother, was a regular. He would come in almost every day. We would have great discussions and we would discuss the art of comic books and the Marvel way—we’d admire Kirby’s stuff when it came in—everybody would make copies—and they’d admire Buscema’s stuff, everybody made copies. It was a grand time. Sultan: Did you ever go out to lunch together? Romita: Occasionally we did, but it was not a daily thing, by any means. Before Virginia came on in the mid-’70s, I used to just walk. I would take a quick right, down to the closest place I could get and then walk as far as I could go in a half hour and then walk back and get to work. It was my daily walk. Occasionally, we would get together in a Chinese restaurant in the building when we were at one location. We also went to lunch one day when we had to evacuate the building because there was a bomb scare. Frank Giacoia, by the way, was a constant visitor because he was always late and always had to come in and finish up work. So Frank Giacoia and Herb Trimpe and I would take artwork with us, ink and brushes and pens, and went to a restaurant on Third Avenue and believe it or not, we were inking on the table while we’re having coffee. There was one shot that I remember very clearly—Frank Giacoia was filling in blacks upside-down on the same page that I would be finishing up a figure on the bottom of the page. But we also had other artists coming up occasionally when they were delivering work. Gil Kane used to come in at least once a week and chew the fat with us. We always had a lot of conversations. And Herb and I used to argue politics a lot. Herb was a wild political thinker. He believed in the extremes and I believed in intelligence and restraint. Did you ever see the cartoon where it just shows Herb’s drawing table and my drawing table? Marie Severin took us apart: my table had an unexploded missile embedded in the drawing surface, another bomb and a couple of hand grenades, and also arrows because we always used to assume that Herb was of Indian descent— because of his dark hair and his lean look and his attitude, like an Apache. Then, of course his table had spaghetti and meatballs thrown all over it. [Editorial note: Romita is of Italian descent.] So the Italian was throwing meatballs and spaghetti at the Indian and the Indian was firing arrows and missiles at me. That’s one of the funniest cartoons that I’ve ever seen.

Sultan: Oh, that’s great. Romita: And I remember Larry Lieber was a big target of all of us. We all used to give him a lot of flak because he was a peacenik and of course, Herb Trimpe was warlike, and I was in-between. And we would always give Larry trouble. You know, the U.N. always had to solve everything and we used to tell him that the U.N. wouldn’t solve anything. And Marie Severin, of course, just plain chuckled and shook her head whenever she heard us in a discussion. She would never waste her time talking to us about that stuff. Sultan: How much collaboration were you doing with Herb? Romita: I didn’t collaborate much with him except sometimes I did cover sketches for his books and he was one of the guys who jumped in and inked the 200th Anniversary of The United States in ’76. John Verpoorten and everybody pitched in and Herb and I and Frank Giacoia all did a bit of that book. It was huge—I think it was a treasury. But the period of time that he was working at the office was probably the most fun we ever had. We almost did a syndicated strip, he and I. I don’t know if he’d remember because

I was tinkering with the guy who created it. The guy who created it was the policeman who wrote the Popeye Doyle movies. Sultan: Oh, The French Connection? Romita: Yeah, The French Connection. He wanted to do a French Connection syndicated strip and he asked me to pencil it. It was supposed to be an adult daily comic which I was skeptical about. I said, “I don’t know if you’re ever going to get a syndicate to do it,” and the Popeye Doyle cop said he didn’t have to go to a syndicate. He thought 20th Century Fox was going to syndicate it for him. This sounded like it might be a nice bit of change, but I believe I asked Herb would he be interested, if I got the gig to pencil it, would he ink it? And the reason it fell through is that they wanted us to do a two-week sample for free, and I said, “No. At our stage of our career, we don’t do anything for nothing.” It would have been nice to work with it. Trimpe had a good ink line. Sultan: So when you became Art Director, did the dynamics change with Herb? Romita: We always had the same relationship. It was always amicable and it was never superiorto-underling because I did the Art Director job

ABOVE: Cover of 1976 Marvel Treasury Special featuring “Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles.” Courtesy Heritage Auctions. LEFT: Detail of page 59 from the 1976 Marvel Treasury Special with pencils by Jack Kirby and inks by Herb Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Cover art to Conan the Barbarian #33 by Trimpe and John Romita. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

without pay. In other words, I didn’t get a penny for that. And I was never officially Art Director until about ten years later. The thing is Stan just abdicated and asked me to do all of the things he used to do. I would advise people on how to jazz up pages and how to tell a story the Marvel way. And so I sort of, slowly but surely, inherited the job of indoctrinating young artists. So my Art Director’s duty never entailed any kind of discussion or corrections. If I had a correction to make, I would make it as a suggestion. I never forced an editor to make a change and I never forced an artist to make a change. I sometimes changed their stuff and I sometimes advised them to change, and they did it at their own leisure. It was a rather casual relationship. I never hired or fired anybody

and if I did, it never would have affected Herb anyway because he was always a valuable guy in the office. He was so versatile and so dynamic, he just was going to be there, no matter what. Sultan: So let’s talk about the Hulk for a minute. Many fans associate Herb with the Hulk. We have Jack Kirby’s initial round in the early ’60s, and I know you took multiple turns with the Hulk. Romita: Yeah, I did a ten-page story from a Jack Kirby breakdown. I did a short one-shot of the Hulk that I’m very proud of that Peter David wrote, but I did a lot of Hulk covers and a lot of inking on people’s covers, and Herb was dynamic. His covers were terrific. Herb had a great association with it during some very important years. That first Hulk book where the Wolverine was introduced is probably one of the most sought-after books. He’s probably signed a million of those. Sultan: Any thoughts on his interpretation of the Hulk, compared to the prior artists? Romita: Every one of the people that did the Hulk had their influence on it and I don’t believe it deterred it. If anything, it always jacked up the sales because the Hulk was a natural, though if you get the wrong guy on it or if the person does it wrong, it would have hurt. I like Ditko’s stuff, but I never enjoyed Ditko’s Hulk. But I enjoyed Marie’s, I enjoyed Herb’s, Gil Kane did a good Hulk, and I inked a lot of Gil Kane covers on The Incredible Hulk. The point is, the Hulk is like Spider-Man. No matter what you did with Spider-Man and the Hulk, he was such a sensational character and this is notwithstanding the period where the original book was cancelled because they thought it was going to fail. And then, when it came back, it came back like gangbusters. Herb never hurt a book that he worked on. He always did some great stuff. What he did with the Son of Satan and everything that he did, he brought something new to them and yet also checked the flow. In other words, he did not interrupt the evolution of a storyline and the character. That’s a pro. Sultan: I know he integrated the Hulk into a TV commercial. Romita: Well, he did a lot of commercial stuff. Herb was never a slow artist. He was always fast, always on time, and he had plenty of time for special stuff. I think for a while, he was not doing a regular book, but he was still doing a lot of advertising. Sultan: So tell us about Wolverine. We all know Herb drew The Incredible Hulk #181 cover and that issue is historical. But I believe you actually came up with the concept.

Romita: Well, I just came up with the physical look of the costume, that’s all. I may have had some influence on the fact that he was not very tall. When the editor Roy Thomas and the writer, Len Wein, came to me and asked me to do a costume on a character called the Wolverine, they only said he was a Canadian. But my process was I would go to the encyclopedia and look up the word “wolverine.” Whenever there was that kind of a name, I would always look it up and see if there’s some kind of a hint. And I remember distinctly there was a little picture of a creature that looked like a cat, a wild cat, with claws and it described it as saying “it’s a ferocious little animal with claws.” But “little” was in there so when I did the sketch, I did him as powerful as I could and I gave him as many claw-shapes as I could on his costume. I had no idea he was going to be an X-Man—it was way before he became an X-Man—so I just did all the claws I could and I remember I put the retractable claws in. I’m pretty sure that was my idea. I made them retractable because when I do a character, it’s got to be plausible. And you can’t have a guy with these huge claws coming out of his wrists and the back of his hand and every time he goes to scratch his nose, he’d lose an eye. Sultan: Do you think the Gladiator has a similar problem? Romita: The Gladiator was not one of my favorite costumes I ever did. I’m glad that people don’t mind it. Well, the thing is at least he can have [the blades] not spinning. But the claws could get in the way [for Wolverine], so I made them physically withdrawable into his forearm. And then I made some kind of a little bracket for each one of them to fit into so that he didn’t tear his own skin. But what I’m saying is that I took a practical definition and so that’s why I wrote down that I thought he should be 5’ 5” or 5’ 4”. But he was expected to be a villain. I thought he was a villain at the time, so that’s the reason. So the input that I had was that I suggested he be short, not too tall, not like most super-heroes, and I suggested the retractable claws. And Herb just took it and ran with it like a football and turned it into something memorable. Sultan: Do you recall any kind of feedback or anything that let you know you’d done something special? Romita: No. In those days, we did not have an immediate view of the success or failure of a book, because the distributors needed to take three or four months to organize the figures and then

to release them. And of course there was always skepticism as to the accuracy of the figures. But by the time we found out that it was a sensation, months had passed and I’m not sure how long it took before he became an X-Man. I don’t remember anybody immediately coming in and saying

Legendary cover of The Incredible Hulk #181 by Trimpe (and John Romita) featuring the first full appearance of Wolverine. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Wolverine sketch by co-creator John Romita.

that the Wolverine’s going to be a sensation. It just sort of grew like natural growth and suddenly, we’d look up and he’s a sensational character and they put him in The X-Men. I don’t know if he was going to be a sensational character as an individual. But most of the time, I was too busy working on other new stuff to pay attention to what was successful or not, and they never told us. I don’t believe Herb ever heard about any success of anything until months and months later. Sultan: So I guess you’re answering the question I had when I was a kid. I always wondered why Amazing Fantasy #15 said “August, 1962” and The Amazing Spider-Man #1 said “March, 1963.” It took that long to see how things were going. Romita: That was even more of a difference because Martin Goodman didn’t think anything of Spider-Man. He thought it was a crazy idea. He didn’t even want to have Stan do it. And Stan did it in a book that was being cancelled as a throw-away. In other words, he said, “What the hell. We’re going to cancel this book next month, Amazing Fantasy, and so we’ll throw in this fifteen-page Spider-Man story.” It was against the publisher’s will and so that’s the great story of Spider-Man. The publisher had no interest and thought it was scary—he said, “Kids hate spiders. Why would they watch a character they call ‘Spider-Man’?” Shows you what he knew. Sultan: So, how did Wolverine persevere? Was it like with the Kingpin, another character you introduced that was brought back? Romita: Well, actually, bringing the Kingpin back was an indication of what Stan thought of the character. In other words, when he was comfortable with a character, when we developed a fullydimensional character that had not only a visual impact, but the personality became something important. Stan used to do a wonderful thing. I would come up with as much of a departure as possible from the normal character you would expect in the situation. In other words, every mobster always looked the same with a black shirt and a white tie and a slouch hat and a scar on his face, lean and mean. I tried to make the Kingpin of Crime as different as any criminal that I’ve ever seen, based him on a couple of movie actors, and I made him look fat, but we immediately established that it was 400 pounds of muscle. And then Stan took it and built on that, and he would ask me to have him warming up by beating up four of his own men, just to stay in shape. That’s the kind of stuff that Stan would add, and then slowly but surely, we would give

him so much depth of emotion that it was fun to work with. And as Stan embellished it more, he enjoyed including him and adding to it. Then we went to the Kingpin’s wife and had a great relationship with his wife who was a tribute to The Dragon Lady. I loved The Dragon Lady from Terry and the Pirates, so I made the Kingpin’s wife to be like The Dragon Lady in middle age. And so mostly, it was what Stan liked. When Stan liked a character and felt like it was advancing the interest line of readers. He had a great feel for what the readers liked and he could tell almost by the fan mail. I guarantee you, the fan mail impressed Stan on the Wolverine and the Kingpin. We got a swell of fan mail over Mary Jane so that was really our way. It wasn’t anything mechanical, it was mostly emotional. Sultan: So, what would be your parting words about Herb? Romita: Well, all I could tell you is there are guys who do decorative art for Art’s sake. And there are storytellers who do dynamic stuff that you cannot get from most people. Herb was a storyteller, a born storyteller, and there was never a dull moment in anything he did. It was always dynamic and advancing the storyline and the characters’ development. There was always a great theatrical sense and an active sense. I can name some guys that are better known and are considered elite artists, but I wouldn’t give you a penny for their storytelling and their character development. There are guys that do fancy artwork that’s just artwork for artwork’s sake and there are guys who tell a story and bring a character to life. Herb’s one of the guys that brings a character to life. Sultan: Well, that’s a terrific statement about Herb. Romita: That’s why he’s still in demand at conventions. There’s a meeting of the emotions between fans and Herb, same way there is with me. Because I believed in every character I ever did, they believed in the character. And if you do fancy artwork, but you don’t believe in the character, you’re never going to kid anybody. But when I became attached to my characters, the fans became attached to me. Herb was the same way. When he did a character, it became his character and that’s a very important part of Marvel because there are plenty of good artists, but there are not many good storytellers. Another Marvel artist who shares a connection with Trimpe is legendary inker Joe Sinnott.

Sinnott on Trimpe An Interview with Joe Sinnott

Joe Sinnott is renowned for his tenure inking Jack Kirby’s pencils on The Fantastic Four. The artwork resulting from that collaboration served as inspiration to many artists, among them Trimpe. Aaron Sultan talked with Joe about his career at Marvel and his interactions with Herb Trimpe. Aaron Sultan: I understand that, like Herb Trimpe, you are from upstate New York. Joe Sinnott: I was born here in Saugerties, New York, in 1926, if you can believe it. It’s a great little town. It’s a hundred miles north of the city at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. And, of course, I always drew, all my life. When I was a little kid, three years old, I can remember my mother had a little boarding house, and one of the teachers that lived there gave me a box of crayons for my birthday. Since that day, I’ve always been drawing, on brown paper bags or anything I could get my hands on. Of course, it often got me in trouble in school, because I wouldn’t be paying attention to the teacher up at the blackboard. But, hey, later on in high school I was art editor for the yearbook and our newspaper, and it allowed me to do some pretty nice drawings. I joined the Navy when I was 17 and they put me in the Seabees, and I was on Okinawa during World War II, driving an ammunition truck. So, when I came back out of the service in ’46, I knew I wanted to go to art school. I looked in the New York Times and I saw a little ad by Burne Hogarth for his Cartoonists and Illustrators School, that was called the School of Visual Arts. So I took a comic course, and one of my instructors was Tom Gill. A great guy, by the way, a prodigious worker. He had a lot of outside accounts with Dell, and Timely, and Fawcett. And also he did the Lone Ranger. So, while I was at school, he liked my work, and he asked me to be his assistant. I used to go out to his little place in Rockefeller Center on weekends, a little front porch, and we’d draw comic books. And I learned more from Tom than I did from the school. I owe everything that I attained later because of Tom. And, as you probably know, later on Herb Trimpe became Tom’s assistant, also. Of course, I was quite a few years ahead of Herb at the school. But Herb learned a lot from Tom Gill, also, I’m sure. A great guy. He lived to be in his nineties,

and was well-respected in the field. I worked for Tom about nine months, I think it was, while I was in school. And I got married in the meantime, so I finally said to my wife Betty, “I’m doing all of Tom’s work. I’m ghosting everything.” At first I did everything but the heads. Tom wanted to do the heads to make it look like his work. But then he let me do the heads, so I was doing everything,

ABOVE: Joe and Betty Sinnott at 2004 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. BELOW: Cover of Daredevil #70 by Marie Severin, Trimpe and Joe Sinnott. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Trimpe pencils from page 4 of What If? #2. Courtesy of John Morrow.

the penciling, the inking. So I go over to see Stan Lee at Timely, they were Timely in those days, at the Empire State Building, where their offices were. As soon as Stan looked at them, he knew that I was doing the work for Tom, ghosting the work. So he gave me a script right away. It was a Western called, “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die.” You don’t forget those things, Aaron. So, from that day on, I’ve been with Stan for 62 years. Can you imagine? Sultan: Incredible. Sinnott: Yeah! The first fifteen years in comics I penciled my own work, and then, of course, I inked it. And so it’s been a great career, no question about it. Of course, when Herb came along, I was inking for Marvel at that time. Stan liked my inking. He had a job once that he couldn’t find an inker for. Jack Kirby was not an inker. He could not really ink his own work, so Stan called me. He said, “Joe, I’m in trouble. I gotta have a job done quickly. Could you do this job by Jack?” So inked it. This is in 1961. And he liked it so much, he said, “Joe, would you do another one?” Which I did. And then, finally he had me do Thor, and then, of course, Fantastic Four #5. And he liked the combination. And I was able to make as much money inking Kirby. Of course, all of the other companies I penciled and inked my own work. Sultan: Wow. Sinnott: So, Aaron, that’s the kind of career we had. We worked hard, and I’ll tell you, we were freelancing at that time, and so we had no benefits and whatever. Of course, that came later with some of the great companies that bought out Marvel. They gave us vacation pay, and 401K plans, and pensions. When the super-heroes hit it big in the ’60s and ’70s, the companies were good to us, but it was tough working for Marvel back in the early days. Sultan: One of the characters you share in common with Herb Trimpe is the Hulk. Tell me a little bit about your earliest interactions with the Hulk. Sinnott: I loved working on the Hulk. I just loved the character, and he was just fun to draw and to ink. Of course, I don’t know whether you remember or not, I ghosted the syndicated strip of Larry Lieber for almost a year while I was doing all my Marvel stuff. Stan called me, he says, “Joe, Larry needs an inker on The Incredible Hulk [strip], could you fill in for a while?” I did The Incredible Hulk, and I thought it was one of the best things I ever did. I put a lot of effort into it, and I don’t know if you remember, Aaron, but it looks pretty

good from my vantage point. And, of course, Herb and I did the Hulk together, but mainly I did many Hulk stories with Sal Buscema. Sultan: What was it like inking Jack on the Hulk? Sinnott: Jack, as great as he was, he wasn’t perfect. I mean, [with] his characters, even the Hulk, Jack’s muscles weren’t real muscles. They just looked good. They were so dynamic. When Buscema did a muscle, you knew it was an actual muscle that we have in our body. [But] Jack was very easy to ink, no question about it. When Kirby drew the Hulk, I loved the way he drew the face. It was certainly different than guys who followed. And people that did the Hulk after that, of course, they had their own individual styles, and they were all different. And even though John and Sal Buscema were on it for so long and did a great job, when you think of the Hulk, you think of Herb Trimpe.

Cover of What If? #2 by Trimpe and Joe Sinnott. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

LEFT: Cover of Marvel TeamUp #108 with Paladin by Trimpe and Sinnott. Courtesy the Grand Comics Database. RIGHT: Trimpe’s unpublished cover art to Spitfire and the Troubleshooters circa 1986. Courtesy of Jeff Jaworski.

Sultan: So what was it about Herb’s style of drawing the Hulk? Sinnott: That’s a good question. I often go to shows with Herb and I’ll sit there and watch, because Herb works with a dry marker, a big, heavy Sharpie. And he draws on a big pad, and, of course, he loves to do the Hulk. And, of course, the Hulk is much easier to do when you’ve got a dry marker than if you have a pencil, because you’ve got big, bold lines, and Herb’s great at that. Each artist that did the Hulk, they treated hair different. That’s the thing that I look at, the hair. Some, as you know, have very short hair. Some, like John Buscema, he liked long hair. But there was something about Herb’s Hulk. Herb had a little cartoon flavor to it like Kirby did, and, like I said, it’s pretty hard to pinpoint. Sal Buscema did so much Hulk, but his was the straight Hulk. I can’t say it was in a class with his brother John, or in Herb’s style of the Hulk, or even Kirby’s, but he had his own style. So I can see right in front of me, Aaron, all these different Hulks by these different artists. Other people did the Hulk, of course. Even, like I said, Larry Lieber, he did it for a long time in the strip. Marie, she did a great Hulk, but I’m not as

familiar with Marie’s Hulk, even though I worked with Marie a lot. Her brother John Severin, I’ve just got to say, he’s in the top three of my artists, he was so versatile. Sultan: What else can you tell me about Herb Trimpe? Sinnott: Who’s Herb Trimpe? [laughter] I love Herb. I don’t know whether his first love or his second love is aviation, but he’s working on this great strip. I hope you’ll see it, it’s for the Internet. It’s a great strip, and we love to talk airplanes because when I grew up, all the strips in the thirties were airplane strips, it seems. There was Tim Tyler’s Luck, Tailspin Tommy, Barney Baxter. Barney Baxter’s always been one of my favorites. Great airplanes. Frank Miller, the original Frank Miller, and the way he textures clouds. He’s a great cartoonist. But one of my favorites when I was a little kid, eight years old, I used to love Tim Tyler’s Luck, and I used to look at it week to week (it was in our paper, the Journal American), and even at eight years old I could tell the difference in art. Some weeks I’d say, “Gee, it doesn’t look as good as it did last week.” And I didn’t realize until almost I was a grown man, that

Alex Raymond used to ghost it occasionally, and whenever he did it, it was excellent. Not that Lyman Young wasn’t a good cartoonist, but, naturally, Raymond was better. Sultan: What is your earliest memory of when you encountered Herb? Sinnott: I think I read about him, actually. Maybe Marvel was promoting some of the people working for them, and it mentioned he went to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, and that Tom Gill was one of his big influences. Sultan: Do you recall any of the issues where Herb did the pencils and then you inked him? Sinnott: I must admit I had to ask my son Mark, and he said, “Dad, don’t you remember, you did the G.I. Joe [Order of Battle] #3, it was a wraparound cover? All the characters that were in G.I. Joe? You did a Marvel Team-Up with the cover, #108, and you did Spitfire [and the Troubleshooters] #1, the whole story, plus the cover. You did What If? #2 and #14, the one had the Hulk in it and [the other] had Sgt. Fury.” As you know, he fought in World War II, and I always loved Sgt. Fury. And Herb and I did the covers for them. And yet, if you ask me what did any

of them look like, I wouldn’t remember. Aaron, when you do so much work, you forget what they look like. Everything runs together, no matter who the artist is. Sultan: If we fast forward to more recently, you mentioned that there’s a group of you who have gotten together for lunch. Sinnott: Yeah, usually about every four months we get together. There’s been as many as 20 of us. We usually have around seventeen people. John Byrne comes up from Connecticut, Tom Palmer comes up from New Jersey.. Of course, we have in the area Jim Starlin, Joe Staton, Herb and myself. And Ramona Fradon and some others, [like] Ron Marz. We usually have lunch at different restaurants around town. Then, once in a while we’ll go up to Terry Austin’s house in Woodstock and shoot the breeze, tell a few lies, and things like that, during the afternoon. Of course, my son Mark comes, and Fred Hembeck, he and his wife come. Sultan: I’m curious, because another artist that lives in that area, Barry Smith. Does he come to those socials? Sinnott: I love the guy. He and I get along real well. I’ve known him ever since he first came over to America. I’ll never forget it, I was at a Phil Seuling convention in New York, and I was in the washroom. I can still see it. He was about seventeen at the time. And I’m washing up, and he’s next to me. I didn’t know who he was, just this tall, skinny kid. And he turns around and he looks at my nametag. I had my nametag on, it said “Joe Sinnott,” and he did a double-take, like you see in the movies. He looked and said, “You’re Joe Sinnott!” And I said, “Yeah, I’m afraid so.” He says, “I just came over from England. My name is Barry Smith.” He wasn’t Barry WindsorSmith at that time. He said, “I’ve admired your work all these years. I can’t say enough about how much I like your work.” I mean, he was really acting up a storm. So, since that time, he and I have been very friendly, and whenever he has a show, I’ll go to it. But we don’t get together. He’s a loner. A lot of guys don’t get along with him, but I get along with him very well, and I think the world of Barry. Of course, he’s a great talent, as you know. Sultan: It’s great that you all keep in touch.

LEFT: Cover of What If? #14 by Trimpe and Joe Sinnott. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Uncut Hulk Sketchagraph card by Joe Sinnott. Courtesy JoeSinnott.com.

With a solid foundation at Marvel Comics, fate (in the guise of Stan Lee) steered Trimpe toward a character with which he would become inseparably linked, the Incredible Hulk.

The Incredible Hulk With the success of The Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby decided to try to make lightning strike twice with The Incredible Hulk in May 1962. The Hulk was, in some respects, the least novel invention of Lee and Kirby. Marvel had been publishing monster comics for years. At a time when they were re-inventing the super-hero genre with characters that had as many human weaknesses as superhuman strengths, the Hulk seemed a bit out of place. In fact, the initial comic book series was cancelled after only six issues. However, Marvel recognized that there was something different, something special about the jade giant and he did not go gently into that good night. While he lost his own title, the Hulk began to make guest appearances in other comics, beginning with The Fantastic Four. He became a founding member of the Avengers and then began appearing alongside Giant-Man in the split book Tales to Astonish, where he remained until he got his own title back with issue #102. A number of well-respected artists rendered the Hulk over the years, from Kirby to Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Bill Everett, John Buscema, and Marie Severin, before the reins passed to Herb Trimpe. Trimpe first inked the Hulk in five issues of Tales to Astonish, beginning with #94, and then later took over the penciling with issue #106 of The Incredible Hulk in 1968. After a slow start, the Hulk has proved to have enduring popularity with fans, many of whom consider Trimpe’s rendition to be the definitive one. In this interview, Trimpe talks about how he got involved with the Hulk and some of his favorite things about the green goliath from his eight-year tenure on the book.

ABOVE: From Trimpe Hulk pinup in Hulk magazine. OPPOSITE: Hulk Smash! Courtesy of John Morrow.

Cassell: How did you get involved with the Hulk? Trimpe: I inked a couple of “Hulk” stories in Tales to Astonish that Marie Severin did. And then, for some reason, Marie went on to bigger and better things. Stan had other plans for her. I don’t know if he wanted her to do more coloring or what, but I had been working in the production department for about six months—and doing freelance on the side, which included the infamous “Phantom Eagle”—and he stuck his head in my cubicle one day and said, “Hey, Trimpe. You want to draw The Incredible Hulk?” I said, “Oh, okay.” To me, it was more of a steady gig. Cassell: When you started inking The Incredible Hulk over Marie’s pencils, did you have any inkling that they were going to want you to take over the book? Trimpe: Well, no. I do think that the inking I did on that was really building a foundation for going further, although, at the time, I had no idea how long that would be. We just didn’t think in those terms. It was just, “Oh, it was a job? Okay. What’s next?” Cassell: How was it picking up where Marie left off?

Trimpe: I don’t think I ever had a serious hitch except when I started penciling The Incredible Hulk. There was a little transition period when I was doing layouts, and I was kind of falling into the EC style. I did about four pages and showed them to Stan and he said, “Ehhh, let me get Frank [Giacoia] to lay this out and you follow that. And that’s the way I want you to do it from now on.” So I said okay. I tore up the pages and I threw them in the trash, right in the Bullpen, and Frank laid out the story. I followed Frank’s lead and I tightened it and it was fine. But the first complete issue that I penciled was laid out by Frank Giacoia who, of course, was an inker. That was [The Incredible] Hulk #109. These were the days when inkers were first-rate pencilers. They pretty much are today, too, but he was an excellent penciler, as is Joe Sinnott. And I kind of got it right away.

“Herb was an amazing storyteller. You could give him anything and he knew how to run with it and tell a story that was stunning. And boy was he fun to work with in the bullpen. And all the girls loved him. We had a lot of fun over the years.” - Marie Severin

ABOVE LEFT: Marie Severin rendition of the Hulk from FOOM #2. ABOVE RIGHT: Detail of transformation from page 19 of The Incredible Hulk #109 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Detail from page 2 of Tales to Astonish #96 by Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

Stan had no complaints and from that point on, never really said anything about any layouts or storytelling again. He asked me a couple of times when I was going to learn to draw, but other than that, there was no real critical discussion as to the content that I was doing. I was trying to follow Marie’s Hulk, and I think I eventually got around to it after a year or so. Stan was absolutely correct, but in retrospect now, I’m looking at that stuff and it has a quaint quality to it that I think a lot of the fans liked, because they still continue to ask for signings and pictures and drawings and the collectors seemed to have maintained an interest. Cassell: When you started working on The Incredible Hulk, were you still doing some production work as well? Trimpe: Yeah, I was on staff. I did production work plus inking, plus I started penciling The Incredible Hulk while I was on staff. I was getting a flat salary, plus extra for the work that I was doing freelance that went over the amount of salary that I was getting. If I exceeded that, anything on the side, I could voucher for it. Say, if I was making $200 a week and I was getting $50 a page, I would only need to do four pages a week to justify the two hundred. But of course that’s not nearly enough to match the schedule, so if you were doing ten pages a week, those other six pages would be freelance and could be vouchered, so it was a

good deal. It’s kind of like overtime. Obviously, the faster you were, the more pages you turned in, the more money you were going to make. I was working that way practically until I left. I got a check every two weeks. And it was very comfortable, and it was fun, and working in the Bullpen was a blast. I couldn’t wait to get to work every day. At that time, I was living in Peekskill and I was commuting. I hated to commute. I didn’t have the patience for it. So I was glad when I got to the office and I stayed late and we hung around, went over to the bar or whatever, and it was a lot of fun. Cassell: If you both penciled and inked a story, did that count towards your quota, as well? Trimpe: Yeah, that worked. I had an inking rate. I could apply the inking to the quota, or once the quota was matched, I could apply it to freelance and voucher it. It was an interesting way to work. Cassell: When did you start working at home? Trimpe: I worked in the office for six months maybe, probably not more than a year, after I started The Incredible Hulk. Actually, if I looked at the issues, I might be able to tell. I was inking Marie in the beginning and it was not unusual that if I were working on that stuff in the office, I would very likely take it home on a weekend or an evening, and work there also, so it was a mix of things that were going on at that time. It was pretty active in the Bullpen. There were a total of

maybe 10 or 12 people in the entire office, and it got pretty hectic. It was hard to draw and so one day, Stan said, “Well, why don’t you just work at home?” So I said okay. I stared working in the city, in my apartment, but as if I were still going into the office. And I was still getting paid exactly the same way. Now I was working at home, under the same conditions, basically getting a page rate that matched my salary. Cassell: Sounds like a great arrangement. A few years later, Marvel changed hands, right? Trimpe: Goodman sold Magazine Management. He retired and Marvel was taken over by Cadence Corporation. That began our corporate career. And in those days—in the early ’70s—Cadence was a very good corporation. It’s not like today at all, by any stretch. We had full insurance in every area you can name, including psychiatric and dental and eyeglasses and everything else. They had a pension plan that was out of this world. You could put aside as much as 6% of your income and they would add 30% to that. So actually, when I came out of Marvel, I had a pretty good lump sum in my IRA—75% of it was destroyed in the crash beginning 10 or 12 years ago. But I have no complaints. We had benefits and it was like a real job used to be, for a brief period of time. But not any more. Cassell: When you first started on the book, why did you try to draw the Hulk like Marie? Trimpe: I had looked at Marie’s pencils and I inked a couple of them, so I just assumed that’s the way the Hulk looked, and I tried to draw the Hulk like Marie did. Actually, I think she was one of the, if not the best Hulk artist. Of course, Kirby basically created the look of the character and you can’t deny that. But I think Marie really launched into the more modern-day Hulk, as far as look and style goes. As for myself, I wasn’t thinking style, I was just trying to draw and keep up with what some of these other guys were doing, and failing miserably, in my opinion, most times. But there wasn’t a whole lot of criticism from one artist to another on how they drew the character. Everyone had their own stamp on it and Stan really didn’t have a problem with that, unless it was so far off base, like he had three eyes or something. Other than that, it was pretty much accepted. If you look at the jump from [Steve] Ditko’s Spider-Man to John Romita’s SpiderMan, or even back to Kirby doing Spider-Man, the look of the character is much different. Cassell: There was a point, after you’d been drawing the title for maybe a year-and-a-half,

when you developed a very distinctive style for the Hulk. Did you just evolve into that? Trimpe: I started out overly simplified. He kind of looked like a great big green dwarf. But after that stage, which were the early ones and probably the ones that people would like to buy, I got better. I got better at the drawing. The change in the look of the character was just a function of the improvement in the drawing, basically. I wasn’t trying to do anything in particular. I never really consciously developed a drawing style, because what I did naturally was very much influenced by EC Comics—little panels, a lot of closeup drama. You never saw a splash or a two-panel page in EC, and that’s pretty much what I leaned towards, sort of a cartoony adventure style like Jack Davis. That was what I liked and I tended to do it more naturally. With the super-heroes, we were drawing more realistic, more illustrative kind of stuff, and it was completely unnatural to me. It still is, you know. Cassell: Well, you do it very well. Trimpe: Oh, after years, you get it down. It’s like your signature, you just scrawl it out. But it

RIGHT: Detail from page 19 of The Incredible Hulk #164 by Trimpe (in the style of Jack Davis). Courtesy of Stephen Moore. LEFT: Back cover of Marvel Treasury Edition #2 by Trimpe.

RIGHT: Cover art to The Incredible Hulk #165 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.OPPOSITE TOP: Color prelim of the cover to The Incredible Hulk #120 by Trimpe, which varies from the published version. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Hulk teeth by Trimpe from page 12 of The Incredible Hulk #147. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

doesn’t mean that it’s any more exciting or fun to do. It just means you’ve got a formula, which is pretty much what I have now as far as drawing the Hulk or drawing Wolverine goes. Cassell: Marie commented that she really viewed the Hulk more from the perspective of the monster side, the tragic monster. Trimpe: Well, she didn’t do it that long, for one thing, so I never thought she had a chance to really evolve in a way that might have been comfortable with her. I think she was actually trying to follow in the Kirby mold in a sense, though the character itself was more or less her own. She didn’t copy Kirby. There were times in my early days when I oscillated between thinking about Marie’s stuff and then trying to draw like Kirby’s old Hulk. I was always flip-flopping back and forth, changing the weight of the line on the inks. It’s a heavy line this month, a thin line the next month, trying to look like John Severin the next month—God, it was exhausting. Good thing we had a team in the publishers’ softball league to relieve some of the tension. I wasn’t into going to the bars there after work and drinking yet. That stage hadn’t developed. Cassell: One of the things that I liked about your Hulk was that there was realism about it. For example, when you drew the Hulk, he didn’t have perfectly straight teeth. Trimpe: Oh, how could he, right? A critter changing from the form of a rather slim and averagesized human being into something eight feet tall

and 2,000 pounds? That means he goes through a teething process that by no comparison does a baby go through, even with their first teeth and as much pain as they go through. They don’t fit in his jaw, or they’re too big for his jaw, or his jaw’s too big for them. His whole physical structure would be totally at odds with each other, as far as the physical growth goes. Truthfully, I never thought of it that way, but I’ve had a lot of dental work done, so I’m kind of tooth-conscious. I’ve had so many root canals, I could actually do one myself. I know the whole procedure. So, yeah, if the guy looks like a brute, then he should have teeth that look like a brute, not like Arnold Schwarzenegger, that goes to some Dentist to the Stars and has everything re-implanted and perfect like some sort of robot or android. That was part of it. The other part was that I always wrestled with his hair. I couldn’t quite ever decide how I wanted the hair to look. I loved Kirby’s hair because it was a little bit of hair on top. I think that was accurate in terms of what the character might look like.

Cassell: I always thought you did a good job with the hair and even with the proportion. One of the things I notice when you see other people drawing the Hulk is that frequently the head is out of proportion to the rest of the body. You always seem to get it right. Trimpe: Yeah, it’s ridiculous. There’s something about early cartooning that if you’re going to show a big, strong guy, the thing to do is give him big thighs, big forearms like Popeye, and definitely a little head, because a little head accentuates the body size. It makes the body look bigger with a smaller head. So they’ve been leaning in that direction and I don’t know why. When Kirby and Lee came up with the character, the Hulk was what he was supposed to be, a distorted human being with an illness, basically, a serious illness that affected growth hormones to the max. So that’s the way I consciously, or subconsciously, always thought of the Hulk, that he was a monster. What people in the 18th Century would have called a monster. But really, a person who was born deformed would have wished like anything to be like everybody else. That’s the way I saw the Hulk, that’s the way Roy saw the Hulk, and I think that’s the way Len saw the Hulk. It was an abomination—no pun intended—for the Hulk to be what he was. That’s the human side that he never lost, and that’s why there was a theme of pathos and humanity that ran through the Hulk’s character. Now I don’t see it that way. I don’t see the humanity in the Hulk, especially now. His thighs got really big and his head got really small. And every time you see somebody doing a commission, he’s always enraged, crazy enraged. In our stories, a good part of the time, he was not enraged. He was stumbling his way through a forest or fishing himself out of the ocean or wondering what the f*** was going on here. It’s not a new theme, the Hulk. It’s the idea of dual personality. It exists in fiction, it exists in real life, and the full forms are schizophrenia and multiple personalities. I think that’s one of the reasons he’s successful. Nobody can identify with Captain America, but you can definitely identify with a character like the Hulk, especially in those days, in every decision you make, because you’re torn. You don’t know which way to go with it. “Should I do this? Should I do that? If I do this, what’s going to happen, and if I do that, is it going to change everything?” Not to even get into the area of people with illnesses they can’t control, which is basically

OPPOSITE TOP & ABOVE: Hulk smashes—permanently. Rare example of Hulk taking a life. From page 20 of The Incredible Hulk #148 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy of Jeff Jaworski. OPPOSITE BELOW: Classic Hulk pin-up by Trimpe. Courtesy of Thomas Suhling. LEFT: Page 17 from The Incredible Hulk #127 by Trimpe featuring a handsome Hulk. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

RIGHT: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #109 by Trimpe and John Severin. Interior layouts by Frank Giacoia. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Detail from page 7 of The Incredible Hulk #164 by Trimpe featuring a great sound effect—Ploog! Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

what the Hulk has. He is a human stricken with a horrible disease, and his struggle is, “I’m in it, but I’d rather not be. So don’t mess with me in the meantime.” He doesn’t take kindly to being prodded and pushed and studied and examined and tied up and tied down and carried off somewhere and pummeled with tank guns and infantry assaults, and he gets mad. It makes him mad, so then he uses his disease to an advantage, his strength and power, which is something many of us tend to do, actually. You know, the thing that we don’t like most about ourselves, sometimes it comes in very handy. I think that the basic roots of The Incredible Hulk can go very deep, in terms of the human condition, and I think that’s one of the reasons I liked it. I really liked it, and I liked the stories that we did, filled with pathos and remorse and all those other things that make life sad sometimes. Cassell: I agree. I think it made the Hulk a very sympathetic character, one you could identify with. I noticed that when you started drawing The Incredible Hulk, you also started doing the covers. Trimpe: Yeah, I don’t know why that was. I think Stan liked my covers. Like I say, I was a good

storyteller, which is probably why I got hired, not on extremely able art abilities. After a little bit, I fit right in with the Marvel style of storytelling for super-heroes. And, of course, the cover tells a story. The cover is the one single piece of artwork in the entire comic that really has to tell the most. Or conversely, tell the least, to make you interested in the story. But it has to be interesting, there’s no question about that. Now, that Ka-Zar cover [The Incredible Hulk #109], that’s a good example. At first, I laid out that cover and Stan rejected it. And I can’t remember who, but somebody else laid that cover out, I finished it, and John Severin inked it. That happened a couple of times along the way with the covers. They were not designed by me, they were laid out by somebody else and I finished it. Cassell: Speaking of inkers, did you have a favorite? Trimpe: Me and John Severin. I mean, I liked all of them. Everybody did a fine job, and my pencils were very tight. I might have taken a second glance at covers that were maybe overembellished—that was unnecessary—but I liked everybody that worked on those covers. If ever I had an idol, I guess John Severin would fall into that category, because he worked for EC Comics. And of course Marie, and not because of her ties to John, because I think she was actually a much more versatile artist. Actually, people used to tell her that, and she would get mad. She would defend her brother. It would upset her to tell her she was better than John. But I liked Jack Abel’s stuff, because he had a really nice brush style in the classical sense and the work was always presentable, and it never looked like it was sloppy or rushed, which it did even sometimes when I did it. Cassell: Did you like inking your own stuff if you had the chance? Trimpe: Oh, yes. First of all, I didn’t have to pencil as much. That was the big advantage, actually. All through art school, I thought that syndicated comic strips were the be-all and end-all of a cartoonist’s existence; it would be the ultimate job in the world to be a syndicated comic strip artist. I know they had help, but basically, they came up with these ideas on their own, and the artist was the person that conceived the story, drew the story, inked the story, and wrote the story. That’s the way I saw a comic book artist when I went to work at Marvel. I found out very quickly that it was done on an assembly-line basis. Well, now it’s kind of gone back again. For years

now, there’s been more personal control, more ownership. But I never conceived of the idea that there was a penciler and an inker. There was only an artist, in my mind. You only put enough pencil down to do the drawing in ink, which was the printable version. To me, that was the artwork. The pencils were just the foundation to the house and all the inks were the house. Cassell: I know a lot of people feel that the combination of you and John Severin on The [Incredible] Hulk was the epitome of what the Hulk ought to look like. Trimpe: Yeah, I’ll go with that! I enjoyed them. They were fun. And then we did some stuff like a four-part mini-series on Rawhide Kid. He inked the pencils I did, which I only did sort of tight layouts, and those pages

are stunning. And yet you put them up for sale and people just... mmp. My rep just got a John Severin page that he penciled and inked, a Western cover. It is magnificent, and he got it for a price that is really embarrassing. Severin could draw, he could draw anything, and he could draw it authentically. But nobody’s interested in that any more. I just have a problem with the notion that if Jack Kirby came into the business today, he wouldn’t get work, because [he and] a lot of these guys look too professional. Cassell: Why do you suppose that is the case? What has changed? Trimpe: I don’t know if it’s because there’s a drift towards the amateur side of entertainment, with reality shows like American Idol. It’s like people just want to see normal people

ABOVE: John Severin photograph by Aaron Sultan LEFT: Trimpe pencils and John Severin inks on page 20 from The Incredible Hulk #153. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

ABOVE RIGHT: Detail from page 15 of The Incredible Hulk #193 by Trimpe and Joe Staton. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. ABOVE: From a 1948 advertisement featuring Captain Tootsie, the inspiration for Doc Samson. BELOW: Action from page 6 of The Incredible Hulk #153 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

doing normal things. There’s no real interest in classical drawing. Inking with a brush takes years to really develop chops and know what you’re doing. Look at Joe Sinnott’s stuff when he was inking, or Giacoia, or any of those inkers that could really handle the tools. Don’t let anybody kid you, it’s ten times easier to ink with a pen. You can rough the line, you can make it thin and thick. But a brush is a special thing, especially if you were using feathering, which traditionally is used to indicate a light source. With the use of the feathering or cross-hatching, you can build it to the point, like John Severin did, where everything was almost three-dimensional in the drawings, but there’s no appreciation for that. Can anybody draw better than John Buscema? He was like Michelangelo reincarnated. It’s all beautiful stuff, truly photographically beautiful females and beautiful male bodies,

without all this phony bulging muscle/vein thing that makes it look so grotesque. When an artist makes the Hulk look grotesque, that’s really looking grotesque. Cassell: I think you’re right. I think that inking has almost become a lost art. Trimpe: It is. I was talking to one of the guys at a show. He had the anatomy [skills] of some of these modern inkers, with the open feathering, fake feathering with a pen where you leave it open a little bit so it’s like a little, tiny arrowhead. It’s so funny. He had every single move down that some of these guys use. I’d rather see just stark black-&-white, like Hellboy. Ahh! That’s good stuff. It’s very good and it’s not grotesque, either. Cassell: One of the things that always struck me about you and John Severin is that when you worked together, the resulting artwork was the best of both of you. Trimpe: Yeah, I think you could see my drawing, still. There was no doubt. But I think John also made it look better. He corrected things. I think that’s what an inker basically should do, unless you have a Jack Kirby, where the penciling is so stylized that it stands by itself. You know, Kirby’s pencils could have been photocopied, the pencil line blackened, and you would have everything you need right there. But you’re right. I’m happy it worked out that way. Cassell: Did you have a favorite villain when it came to the Hulk? Trimpe: I liked the Leader and the Abomination. Mole Man wasn’t so bad either. There were others, I guess, but I liked the Abomination because he was like the Hulk, another big, green person. They made a good match, if not physically, at least visually. They looked good taking each other on. Cassell: Did you ever have any objections about a character you had to draw?

ABOVE: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #145 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy Grand Comics Database. LEFT: Hulk versus the Abomination on page 2 of The Incredible Hulk #137 by Trimpe and Mike Esposito. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

S POT LI G HT O N

Wolverine With Len Wein

Wolverine commission drawing by Trimpe. Courtesy of Sean Rutan.

Comics fandom would be forever changed in the fall of 1974. The introduction of Wolverine in the pages of The Incredible Hulk #s 180, 181, and 182 would catapult the character into comic book immortality and be the defining moment of the Bronze Age, as Spider-Man was to the Silver Age. 35 year old Herb Trimpe, now seven years into his incomparable run on The Incredible Hulk, was asked to bring to life a Canadian mutant by the name of Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine. Equipped with the uncanny ability to rapidly recover from injuries, Wolverine also has the ability to be a vicious fighter, complete with retractable claws that spring forward from the back of his hands. His body’s skeleton is reinforced by a fictitious metal known as adamantium, making him virtually indestructible. When asked about sharing how the Wolverine came

about, writer Len Wein responds: “You’re kidding, right? I think there are people in Ethiopia who know how Wolverine originated. There are very few people who don’t know. Maybe an Eskimo somewhere. “ So for the outsider Ethiopians and Eskimos, and anyone else unfamiliar with how the idea for the Wolverine materialized, Len proceeded to share the story once again, “Wolverine came out of Brother Voodoo, weirdly enough. I was doing Brother Voodoo and the book was set in the Caribbean. The characters had Caribbean, Jamaican, and Haitian accents. Roy Thomas called me in one day and said, ‘I hate you because you do great accents and I can’t, and I’d love to hear what you’d do with a Canadian accent. And so I have a name, Wolverine.’ And I went and researched wolverines to find out that they are short, hairy, ferocious animals with razorsharp claws and no fear, who would take on creatures ten times their size . It’s as easy a character as I’ve ever created. And the funny thing is, I thought I did a terrible Canadian accent. I decided to use him in the Hulk simply because it seemed like a good place to use him. I made him a mutant because I knew there was talk of eventually reviving the XMen as an international group of mutants, and I figured it would give whoever ended up writing the book a Canadian

character if they wanted one. I never knew I’d be the guy who ended up writing the book. It’s really all as simple as that. I did a number of characters with John Romita: Brother Voodoo himself, Wolverine, the Constrictor, a couple of others, where we’d just sit down and work out the design together. And I did the same thing with Dave Cockrum. Dave had already done some design work on some of those characters. We did a little adjusting on some of the pieces here and there.” So with the design in hand by Marvel art director John Romita and the idea and definition under the supervision of Roy Thomas and Len Wein, Herb Trimpe brought the character to life, first as a cameo at the end of Hulk #180, and then as full story material in Hulk #s 181 and 182. “The way I see it, Romita and Len Wein sewed the monster together and I shocked it to life! It was just one of those secondary or tertiary characters, actually, that we were using in that particular book with no particular notion of it going anywhere. We did characters in The Incredible Hulk all the time that were in particular issues and that was the end of them,” Trimpe remembers. Little did anyone realize that the Wolverine would become the signature character of Marvel’s best selling book for decades to come— the X-Men.

PUTTING A VALUE ON WOLVERINE On May 16, 2014, Heritage Auctions sold the original artwork from the last page of issue #180 of The Incredible Hulk, featuring the first appearance of Wolverine, for $657,250. The page was penciled by Trimpe and inked by Jack Abel. In 1983, Trimpe gave the page to a teenage fan, who kept it for over 30 years, until consigning it to Heritage.

Final page from The Incredible Hulk #180 by Trimpe featuring the first appearance of Wolverine. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Trimpe: Well, it was never a judgment call. The Hulk was kind of a one-off, a sole operator, and everybody that he ran into was usually pretty interesting. I don’t ever remember having a problem with any of the books, the artwork, or specific issues just based on a villain or a character that was introduced in the story. I think it was too easy. It was early on, and it was fun and it was easy. Some people had more egos than others, but the idea of getting offended because the story didn’t suit your style or the character didn’t work for you, it just didn’t happen. Actually, the biggest arguments I ever heard were John Verpoorten trying to make a deadline and getting inkers on the phone who were still sitting on pages, when the shipping date was the

INSET: Panel from page 7 of The Incredible Hulk #145 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy of Stephen Moore. RIGHT: Page 17 from The Incredible Hulk #131 featuring Iron Man versus the Hulk by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy of Stephen Moore. OPPOSITE PAGE: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #140 by Trimpe and John Severin, featuring a story by Harlan Ellison.

next day. You’d hear a lot of yelling and screaming. The inker was pretty much the last person, aside from the colorist. In those days, Marie did that stuff in the office and she was so fast it was pretty much irrelevant. But getting those pages back in the office, or a freelancer missing a check somehow, the check didn’t get to him or her and they’d call in and there could be a row. Most people got upset about that stuff. From the management end, it had to do with production. And from the creator end, it had to do with money mostly. It was pretty much nuts and bolts. Cassell: What about the supporting characters that you created along the way, like Doc Samson?

Trimpe: Well, I started to make a list. I actually started to go through some of the names, some of the comics, and some of the incidental characters that I just came up with, shooting from the hip. When I hit 20 or 25, I stopped. Most of them are extremely forgettable. But all the secondary characters that appeared in The Incredible Hulk [during that time], I designed them. I made them up, if they hadn’t already been established, from Crackerjack Jackson down to Zzzax and all the rest of them. But Doc Samson was strictly Roy Thomas’ idea. The amazing story about Doc Samson is that he’s based on a candy product, Tootsie Roll candy, which featured a comic book character. The ads appeared in newspapers and other comic books in little comic strip form, and the hero is Captain Tootsie. And except for the green hair, it looks exactly like Doc Samson. Cassell: Oh, really? Trimpe: Roy said, “This is what I want.” He said, “I always liked Captain Tootsie, and I want to adapt it to a comic book character.” And we used him in The Incredible Hulk. He already had the story idea going so I said, “Okay, great.” He actually gave me some samples of the “Captain Tootsie” comic strip. I think he had long hair, it was blonde. I don’t remember if he had a lightning bolt or not, but he may have. I think he had a big “T” on his chest. But they’re the same thing, boots and tight pants and short-sleeved shirts, a polo t-shirt where his muscles bulged out, all that. Cassell: What about Jarella, the Hulk’s girl friend? Trimpe: Jarella was a Harlan Ellison character, but of course he didn’t do drawings for it. I came up with the look, but he was doing the story. I think he wrote the first one, the one Jarella was introduced in, but I did do the drawing on that. Cassell: What about Wolverine? What role did you have in the creation and beginnings of that character? Trimpe: Well, let me put it to you this way: if by some fortunate or unfortunate happenstance in life, I happen to be the sole survivor of the people involved in the introduction and creation of Wolverine, I will be the sole creator of Wolverine. That I can tell you right now. There will be no doubt about it. And the odds are good. But if so, I’ll let you know ahead of time. Cassell: Okay. Trimpe: So the answer, what I’m going to say now, is going to be completely different than if I live to be a hundred, okay?

ABOVE: Wolverine versus the Hulk commission reminiscent of The Incredible Hulk #181. OPPOSITE TOP: From page 20 of The Incredible Hulk #151 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Hulk commission drawing by Trimpe. Courtesy of Sean Rutan.

But no, it was a character that was conceived by Roy, designed by John Romita, animated and introduced by me, and given a voice by Len Wein. That’s the basic structure. I [recently] got in touch with John Romita and Roy Thomas and I didn’t tell them [anything], I just said, “How did it happen? How did this character actually come about?” And both of their memories were exactly like my memory. Cassell: So, how did it get started? Trimpe: Roy came up with the idea of a Canadian super-hero. He wanted to do it, and he coined the name “Wolverine” because he wanted him to be much smaller than the average super-hero, but a very fierce human being like the wolverine is as an animal. And he said, “I discussed it with Len at a lunch.” I would say Roy had something to do with the plot, too. Then he said, “I talked to John Romita, and discussed the character with John.” John did the preliminary drawings of the character, and there were some adjustments made down the line. And I was there. I might have added some input, I don’t know—it doesn’t really matter. John’s story was that Roy came to him and asked him to design a character called Wolver-

ine, giving him a little bit of background about what his abilities would be. And John said, “I didn’t even know what a wolverine was. I thought it was a female wolf.” So he said, “I got out the encyclopedia.” John got down the encyclopedia and he looked up the character and he saw what it looked like and he started to fiddle around with the artwork. Cassell: Did you have any inkling that it would turn out to be something special? Trimpe: No. Wolverine was a one-off. That’s what we did—we just did these things from the hip. Cassell: I think you undervalue your contribution to the character. Trimpe: I don’t feel I had a small part in it. I feel I had a very important part and as storyteller, an important responsibility at the time, in retrospect. Cassell: What about the cover to The Incredible Hulk #181? Trimpe: When I look at that cover, I’m not sure I did the layout to that cover. Nobody else has a recollection of that. But the Wolverine character coming at you, that is a John Romita pose. There is no question about it. At that stage of the game, I wasn’t capable of doing a pose like that. It wouldn’t have occurred to me. The one character that does look like I posed was Wendigo. But the Hulk on that cover and Wolverine look like John Romita’s layout to me. I know he did make a change on the face, because now they’re starting to print the original cover with the face that John Romita did not adjust, which was just a redrawn head pasted on the Hulk’s figure on the cover. But now you see examples [of the original]—I don’t know where the hell they’re getting the art from, it must have been from early silver prints. But Stan didn’t like the Hulk head I had on that cover at all when it was finished, and John redid it. It was stuck on with rubber cement, so we could peel it off. The old head is still there. We didn’t white it out or anything. That was my secret about that cover to indicate whether it was a fake or not, if somebody ever tried to palm off a recreation as the real thing. Not many people knew that until I started to tell them a couple of years ago. But that’s a Romita head on the Hulk, inked by Romita. Cassell: I didn’t know that. Was it a challenge making the stories flow from one issue to the next? Trimpe: One of the nice things is we really linked stories with The Incredible Hulk, but they weren’t continuing stories for the most part. The place

start the the place that he’d he left off might be sh. Roy fre s lly each story wa next issue, but usua er writlat e e on some of th had a strong influenc complire maybe a little mo ers, making things Stan, th wi t d a little bit. Bu cated, planning ahea her. ot an to from one issue ey everything was fresh th at th urse, the problem e The characters, of co th in it ve ue, they’d still ha it had in the last iss en wh , ts ’s approach to plo his next issue. But Stan in go u’d her issue, was yo was time to do anot do last “Okay, what did we office and he’s say, need we So . the villain, okay issue? So-and-so is New in f of t Hulk? He was lef m.” a villain, and where is fro t ar st that’s where we’ll at York City. Okay, so th ion at loc ailable and the go A villain that was av t jus uld t issue, and it wo we left off in the las from there. like tting the story, but Writers then were plo en th d an y, or directing the st e I said, the artist was th of st Mo ripting the story. y the writers were sc an y all re r ve , there were ne l ne writers I worked with pa te dia t want an interme rchanges. They migh ne ge t bu e, ted here and ther or something adjus cause it nt very smoothly, be ally speaking, it we a much w no spect that it is wasn’t a big deal. I su , basihip e th shooting from bigger deal. We were was at Th . ing for-all kind of th cally. It was a freert. pa at was the fun the good part of it; th you any ytelling ability give or Cassell: Did your st rs? clout with the edito

hy indis a pus nt— a w r e v e mics we lear, I n to be c s a career in co aised the t s u J : r Trimpe as far a g have p at least nderful fans the hirin g l— a in u o d id o v e g w s in o h e h g t b ne, hou not and, alt ings I have do vyweight. I’m e p m ea . Co f th kinds o sidered me a h . Friendly? Yes dlines? ts ea on never c ’s just the fac h? Yes. Hits d I don’t it It . w t n k s or me t? mode at asy to w aura of excite E . s aw in th e Y an Marie s , those tent? g t in a d h u w x t e ybe ut then Yes. Bu except for ma arlier. B e d — e o n s io think ment credible ing. you had g the hir u draw The In sketch in o d ’t o ren g did y girls we ow lon ulk for H : ll e s dible H e r c Cas In eat e oing Th Sal Buscema b g d p u Hulk? d k : I woun , I guess. I thin hen doin Trimpe a day w rs a like in e , y n t u h r ig l. It was . I nger a u lo s a about e u n g by doin ics was not u , it was a job me out om ent ed ssignm ible Hulk. I bail ns on c long ru ore than an a d e r ng I m he Inc s how lo en w o n getting ot myself off T k d g ’t. Go ave be actually , I wish I hadn now I would h sk me, y k a I will a out. Tod e kept going. , people ve to say t c e p v s a o a could h t in retr And I h now. Bu vorite title?” y b it f fa of as your “What w ible Hulk. on The red rimpe T The Inc h it w homas, borator or Roy T n. a it ll d o e c d sio uent er an A freq Hulk was writ is brief intermis h le t ib g Incred ollowin rofiled f p is o h w

S POT LI G HT O N

Hulk Reprints The stories from The Incredible Hulk are some of the most often reprinted of the Marvel Universe. As a result, the Hulk stories by Trimpe are accessible to a wide audience that might otherwise not be able to find or afford the original comic books. In the same way that Marvel Tales reprinted stories that originally appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man, issue #32 of Marvel Super-Heroes began the reprinting of Hulk stories, starting with those from Tales to Astonish and

ABOVE LEFT: Trimpe cover to issue #98 of the Marvel UK reprint title Planet of the Apes. ABOVE RIGHT: Cover of the first Fireside reprint volume, Origins of Marvel Comics. Courtesy Grand Comics Database. LEFT: Issue #52 of the French title L’Incroyable Hulk, which reprints The Incredible Hulk #193. RIGHT: 1991 TOR reprint paperback The Incredible Hulk: A Man- Brute Berserk!

continuing through issue #157 of The Incredible Hulk before the title was cancelled. Another format for reprinting Hulk stories were the Marvel Treasury Editions popular from 1974 to 1981. There were Trimpe Hulk stories reprinted in no less than six Treasury Editions (#s 5, 8, 17, 20, 24, and 26.) In addition, issue #25 featured an all-new Hulk story by Trimpe. (See the Spotlight on Spider-Man for more about issue #25.) The United Kingdom provided a new audience

for comic stories originally published in the United States and Marvel UK reprinted a number of Trimpe Hulk stories in the pages of titles like The Mighty World of Marvel. Origins of Marvel Comics, published by Fireside in 1974, included a Hulk story by Trimpe. Ideals Publishing Corporation also reprinted a Hulk story and other Hulk images by Trimpe in their 1981 book, The Incredible Hulk, written by David Anthony Kraft.

Trimpe’s Hulk Rogue’s Rogues Gallery Over the years of drawing The Incredible Hulk, Trimpe put his mark on a number of classic villains and created some new characters as well. Here is a “rogues gallery” of some of the friends and foes of the Hulk as rendered by Trimpe.

PREVIOUS PAGE: Rhino and the Leader from page 11 of The Incredible Hulk #124 by Trimpe and Sal Buscema. Courtesy of Stephen Moore. RIGHT: Tyrannus splash page fromThe Incredible Hulk #127 by Trimpe in the tradition of Jack Kirby. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

LEFT: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #115 by Trimpe and Dan Adkins featuring the Leader. RIGHT: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #168 by Trimpe featuring the Harpy (a.k.a. Betty Ross.) BELOW: Detail from page 4 of The Incredible Hulk #108 by Trimpe and John Severin featuring the Mandarin. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

LEFT: Klaatu from page 10 of The Incredible Hulk #136 by Trimpe and Sal Buscema. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. RIGHT: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #141 by Trimpe featuring Doc Samson.

ABOVE: General Thunderbolt Ross, his daughter Betty, and Bruce Banner from page 3 of The Incredible Hulk #131 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy of Stephen Moore. LEFT: Detail from page 20 of The Incredible Hulk #111 by Trimpe and Dan Adkins featuring the Galaxy Master. Courtesy of www.romitaman.com. RIGHT: The Absorbing Man by Trimpe on the cover of The Incredible Hulk #125.

INSET & ABOVE: The Juggernaut from The Incredible Hulk #172 by Trimpe and Jack Abel. LEFT: Last page from The Incredible Hulk #136 by Trimpe and Sal Buscema featuring the Abomination. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Cover art to The Incredible Hulk #121 featuring the Glob by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

TOP LEFT: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #167 with MODOK by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. TOP RIGHT: Xeron the Star Slayer from The Incredible Hulk #136 by Trimpe and Sal Buscema. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. LEFT: Splash page from The Incredible Hulk #166 by Trimpe and Sal Trapani featuring Zzzax. Courtesy of Stephen Moore. RIGHT: Maximus the Mad on the cover of The Incredible Hulk #119 by Trimpe and John Romita. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

LEFT: The Mole Man from page 7 of The Incredible Hulk #127 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Stephen Moore. RIGHT: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #191 featuring the Shaper of Worlds by Trimpe and Dan Adkins.

The Toad Men from the cover of The Incredible Hulk #190 by Trimpe.

LEFT: The Gremlin from the cover of The Incredible Hulk #188 by Trimpe. RIGHT: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #113 by Trimpe and Dan Adkins featuring the Sandman. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Trimpe Inking Gallery Traditionally, the best inkers, like Joe Sinnott and Sal Buscema, are accomplished artists in their own right. Perhaps that is why Trimpe was such an effective inker. He collaborated with a variety of pencilers over the years to produce some excellent stories. A great example would be the last issue of the original Silver Surfer series, penciled by the legendary Jack Kirby and inked by Trimpe. What follows are examples of artwork penciled by other artists and inked by Herb Trimpe. Of course, like most artists, Trimpe preferred to ink his own pencils. And when it came to illustrating licensed characters for Marvel, he often had the opportunity to do just that.

ABOVE: Detail from The Incredible Hulk #117 page 8 by Trimpe. LEFT: Detail from page 9 of the Silver Surfer #18 penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Trimpe. Courtesy of Aaron Sultan.

Transformation page from Tales to Astonish #95 penciled by Marie Severin and inked by Trimpe. Courtesy of Aaron Sultan.

LEFT: Crypt of Shadows #7 cover penciled by Mike Ploog and inked by Trimpe. RIGHT: Cover of Crazy #3 penciled by Marie Severin and inked by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

LEFT: Ka-Zar cover of Marvel Super-Heroes #19 penciled by Barry Windsor-Smith and inked by Trimpe. RIGHT: Cover art to The Rawhide Kid #108 penciled by Larry Lieber and inked by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Splash page from the Silver Surfer #18 penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Inking Trimpe Gallery Even with fully rendered pencils, the inker can have a tremendous impact on the appearance of a finished comic book page. Trimpe had the opportunity to work with a variety of inkers, among them Jack Abel. In an 1983 interview by David Anthony Kraft in issue #7 of Comics Interview magazine, Abel comments, “I enjoyed doing The [Incredible] Hulk with Herb Trimpe a lot. Trimpe is of the Jack Kirby school, which, believe it or not, I’m not one of the great admirers of, although I can see why it was successful. But Trimpe did a completely professional job, and anyone who does that is easy to ink. He put down in pencil what was supposed to be there—no scribbles, everything sharply defined, easy to ink.” Able goes on to remark, “I always did think that Severin’s inks over Trimpe’s Hulk pencils were really incredible. Of course, as I know from working with him, Trimpe is a stickler for authenticity himself, and really knows equipment and weaponry. I am thinking particularly of one Hulk story where the Hulk was in a parallel dimension where World War II was going on. I thought that it was about as good artwork as I have ever seen.” What follows are examples from the various artists, including Abel, who inked Trimpe’s pencils over the years.

ABOVE: Detail from The Incredible Hulk #193 page 16 by Trimpe and Joe Staton. INSET: Hulk sketch by Jack Abel. LEFT: From the splash page to The Incredible Hulk #171 by Trimpe with Jack Abel inks. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

Cover art to The Incredible Hulk #147 penciled by Trimpe and inked by John Severin. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

TOP LEFT: Creatures on the Loose #10 cover featuring pencils by Trimpe and inks by Marie Severin. TOP RIGHT: Detail of SHIELD heli-carrier from issue #15 of Captain Britain penciled by Trimpe and inked by Fred Kida. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. LEFT: Hulk versus Banner in this panel from The Incredible Hulk #158 penciled by Trimpe and inked by Sal Trapani. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

LEFT: Cover art to Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #154 penciled by Trimpe and inked by Al Milgrom. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. RIGHT: Cover to The Incredible Hulk #177 with pencils by Trimpe and inks by Frank Giacoia.. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

LEFT: Godzilla #22 cover penciled by Trimpe and inked by Jack Abel. Courtesy Grand Comics Database. RIGHT: Cover art to issue #2 of Outlaw Kid featuring Trimpe pencils and Bill Everett inking. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Thomas on Trimpe An Interview with Roy Thomas

Roy Thomas was editor and writer at Marvel Comics for many years, taking over the reins from Stan Lee. In this interview, Roy talks about Marvel Comics and working with Trimpe on The Incredible Hulk. Dewey Cassell: How did you first meet Herb? Roy Thomas: I don’t recall except that he came to work there in the office. He was a buddy of [John] Verpoorten, but I can’t remember which of them came first. I think he started out working in the stat room, and then he was doing corrections and different things. He was probably in a different room than I was, but of course there were only two or three rooms at that time. He was about my age, so I got to know him somewhat, but we were always busy at the office, so I think we just exchanged a few words here and there. We got along well, but we didn’t socialize, really. Cassell: You wrote quite a few of the Hulk stories that he drew. Were you using the Marvel Method at that time? Thomas: Yes. We would just talk it over. Some books I wrote a plot for, two or three pages, especially if it was somebody not in the office, like Buscema. With Herb I doubt if I ever did, and certainly not often. With Herb or Marie, we just sat down and talked for a while and got the general direction, some of the plot, and then he’d start drawing. And if he needed to talk to me about anything else, if he hit a snag, or he wanted to clarify something, or something wasn’t working, all he had to do was say so, and then we’d talk and work it out. Although I don’t think that happened often. Cassell: Do you know what prompted Harlan Ellison’s Hulk story about “The Brute that Shouted Love at the Heart of the Atom”? Thomas: Of course, it was Harlan’s idea to do that particular story. I don’t know if Stan had talked to Harlan, but I did know Harlan slightly. I’d met him a few times here and there, at conventions in New York. I was in touch with him, and he submitted his idea, and I thought it was great. Harlan had submitted the Jarella story as a single issue, but I decided we should stretch it over two issues, because it seemed a bit much to force into one story of 20 or so pages. So we

made it both an Avengers and a Hulk. I was very enthusiastic about it, and I was quite happy with the outcome. Cassell: Wasn’t it somewhat unusual at the time to use an author from outside of comics? Thomas: Well, sometimes I went after a particular person because I wanted to. For example, getting John Jakes to do a couple of plots for Conan and Kull. That was my idea, because he was writing sword and sorcery, and I thought it would be good to bring him in. Cassell: Why do you think Herb lasted so long on The Incredible Hulk?

ABOVE: Roy Thomas from the 2004 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. BELOW: Cover art to The Incredible Hulk #129 by Trimpe featuring the Glob, a favorite of Roy Thomas. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

RIGHT: Splash page art to What If? #2, written by Thomas and illustrated by Trimpe and Tom Sutton. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Cover to The Incredible Hulk #123 by Trimpe. Courtesy Grand Comics Database.

Thomas: Well, he’s a good storyteller, with a nice flow to the stories, and he drew a good Hulk. Once he got on it, it seemed like things were going well, so he just stayed on it for years and years. And it was selling well. It was selling well under him and Stan, and it was selling, if anything, even better under Herb and me together, if I can judge by the couple of print run increases that were made during our tenure based on sales of our issues. I only left it because I got a little too busy with other things, after a couple of years. And while I liked working with Herb, the Hulk character was never one to which I was really personally attached the way I became, at various stages, to The Avengers, for example. Cassell: What new characters did you create with Herb for The Incredible Hulk comic book? Thomas: I don’t believe Herb and I made up a lot of new villains or characters during our rein. Mogol was ours, Doc Samson, the Glob, and Jim Wilson (named after a not-particularly-close friend of mine in Missouri—Gary Friedrich had earlier used his mocking nickname as the basis of “Crunch Wilson” in his “Sentinels” series created for Charlton) stand out as the ones that had the longest shelf-life, even if idiots eventually got rid of Doc Samson’s more colorful costume.

Cassell: Did you have a favorite Hulk villain that you liked to write about? Thomas: One of my favorites was probably the first story I plotted that made the Glob as sort of a modern version of the Heap. The story in which the Hulk sort of became the Golem in the story, which really didn’t have a super-villain, was another one. I really liked them all, but I will say that I probably spent less time on plotting and thinking about the Hulk than any other book I wrote during that period, partly because the stories seemed to just kind of write themselves. There was always something Herb and I would come up with in a few minutes. Either he had an idea, or I had an idea, or we got one together. And then Herb would just start drawing. So it actually was one of these books I probably spent the least time on, and I think it was probably the one that was selling the best during that period. So maybe there’s a lesson to be learned, there. Cassell: Did Marvel monitor and control the use of villains (such as the Rhino) like they did the A-list super-heroes (in terms of who could use them in which book)? Thomas: Yes, Marvel “monitored” use of villains to some extent—we had to keep things straight—but that became increasingly my province by the late 1960s. It was a rather informal process, since we had only a handful of writers. Cassell: You worked on some other comics with Herb, such as Ka-Zar and What If? Did you have any favorites? Thomas: I very much enjoyed doing What If #2 with Herb, who of course was the perfect art choice for the story. Ka-Zar was fine, too. Cassell: So, other than The Incredible Hulk, what do you think that Herb did best for Marvel? Thomas: Well, I think he had a nice touch to the war stories he did. Of course, he did a lot more of that outside Marvel. He was doing a little War is Hell and things of that sort. Cassell: He did a lot of Western covers, too, early on. Thomas: Right. He had a nice touch for those, when he did them. And certainly the Phantom Eagle story. He had a nice touch for aerial things, which is why we put the Phantom Eagle in a Hulk story once, which was fun. Trimpe drew the Hulk many times over the years, but when he stopped illustrating Banner’s monthly adventures, it fell to Sal Buscema to follow in his footsteps.

Buscema on Trimpe An Interview with Sal Buscema

When Trimpe left The Incredible Hulk, it was Sal Buscema who assumed the artistic mantle. In this interview with Aaron Sultan, Buscema talks about his experience with the jade giant and his predecessor Herb Trimpe. Aaron Sultan: Just to kick this off, can you give some background on when you got started in comics? Sal Buscema: Sure. I had been in commercial art for about 13 or 14 years and always wanted to do comic books. The industry was pretty much dead, and when I found out from John, my brother, that he was getting back into it, I thought, “Here’s the opportunity.” So, to make a long story short, I had to work for about a whole year at night after work and after dinner. My regular job at the time was working in a studio in Washington, DC. I had to learn how to do comics, because, except for the short stints that I had working with John in a rather limited capacity, I really did not know how to do them. Especially super-heroes. So we worked for about a year. That culminated in a six-page Hulk story that was very simple, just to show what I could do, whatever dynamics I could put into it, and so on. Stan Lee saw them, and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. Sultan: So that brings us to Herb Trimpe. I noticed that you and Herb, the two of you, your lives intersected fairly early on, when you arrived at Marvel. There were a couple of very early Hulk issues where Herb penciled and you inked with the Rhino and a few others. You mentioned to me you didn’t meet Herb until years later, but I know Herb was doing The Incredible Hulk right before you did. When you got the opportunity to ink him, what were some of the impressions of inking over his pencils? Buscema: Well, Herb was a master storyteller, and if I could just digress for a minute, I will give you this little anecdote. When I went up for my interview with Stan in order to acquire a steady amount of work, one of the first things that Stan showed me what he was looking for was from Herb Trimpe, and it happened to be a Hulk story that he did at the time. And Stan wanted me

to see how beautifully graphic and simple, yet dynamic his storytelling was. And that made an impression on me, and I said, “Certainly I will do my best to emulate him in that respect.” So I thought that was fascinating. That of all the people that Stan had working for him at the time, he showed me Herb Trimpe’s work. And I was always a fan of Herb’s. I understood at the time that he was probably one of the nicest people in the industry, a real gentleman, as well as being a consummate professional. As a side note, I didn’t meet Herb until a couple of years ago at a convention in Baltimore, Maryland. And that was the first time that he and I actually met faceto-face, and I have no problem saying that we embraced each other because we had talked on the phone several times, and it was just a real kick meeting him for the first time.

ABOVE: Sal and Joan Buscema from 2003 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. BELOW: Detail of the Leader from page 4 of The Incredible Hulk #124 by Trimpe and Sal Buscema. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

Trimpe pencils and Sal Buscema inks on page 5 from The Incredible Hulk #136. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Sultan: I bet. That’s fantastic. I’m just curious, because you and Herb have such a fan base and there’s a giant Hulk fan population out there as well, did any fans get to witness that first time reunion, so to speak? Buscema: I don’t know because he and I were so engrossed in conversation. And he was very busy with the fans, so I certainly didn’t want to take time away from him. Now, I was not a guest at the convention. I went to the convention because my dear friend Ron Frenz was going to be there, and

I told him that I wanted to go out to lunch with him. And then when I found out that Herb was a guest of the convention, I said, “My gosh, I finally get the opportunity to meet him.” Sultan: So you were on the SpiderMan book for a while, and then you were handed The Incredible Hulk, which turned into a ten-year run. Buscema: Yeah, right around 10 years. Herb and I hold the record for doing The Incredible Hulk longer than any other artists. I think that, combined, we probably were at 17 or 18 years. Sultan: Unbelievable. So when you took the handoff to begin your run on The Incredible Hulk, did you and Herb have any phone conversations at all? Buscema: Not one. That’s the way it works. I get a call from editorial one day and they said, “Herb’s going on to some other assignments. You have always shown an interest in doing The Incredible Hulk. Would you like to do it now on a permanent basis?” And obviously I jumped at the chance. And there again, as they say, the rest is history. Herb and I never talked about anything. And then, years later, we exchanged a few emails. Sultan: What made you so fond of the Hulk? What did you like about that character, that was different than all the other characters you’ve drawn? Buscema: I appreciate the question, Aaron, and I don’t mean to be smug about this, but the difference is obvious. He’s not your typical super-hero running around saving the world in Spandex every month. It’s a Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde character. Not exactly, but close to it. A Frankenstein monster type character. So unique, this unbelievably powerful creature with the mind of a six-year-old. Now, I know that’s changed in recent times. He’s become a Harvard graduate and God knows what else. He’s changed colors several times. But, to me, the Hulk is that character, the unbelievably invulnerable, totally powerful physically, that just wants to be left alone, and nobody will leave him alone because of who he is, and what he is. The uniqueness of the character is just glaringly obvious, and that’s what I absolutely love about

it. The possibilities of that character, to me, are unlimited. Sultan: In your ten-year run on The Incredible Hulk, were there any particular storylines that you look back fondly on? Buscema: Well, one of the stories that I enjoyed would be in the top ten all time of my books that I have done over the years. It was an annual that I collaborated with John Byrne on. He wrote the story, which I felt was a terrific story. I penciled and inked it, and just had a ball doing it, because it was such a good story. And I think John did the cover for it. That’s probably one of the issues that I would say is a standout in my mind so far as the Hulk is concerned. As far as the monthly book is concerned, I just enjoyed doing it every month. I worked with some of the best writers. Len Wein was a joy to work with. He was frequently late with the plots, so he would give them to me over the phone, and a lot of times we would kick ideas back and forth, and sometimes, the chemistry between us was uncanny. It worked very, very well. As a matter of fact, I believe he was the writer on the book when I first started doing it. Roy Thomas is another one of my favorite guys to work with. I learned an awful lot from Roy when I first got into the industry, because he was doing Avengers at the time. He wrote Sub-Mariner too, and we had a lot of fun with that one. Sultan: When you took over the Hulk, did you use any of Herb’s artwork as a model for what you would do, or was that based on your rendition of the Hulk from when you were doing The Defenders? Buscema: It was pretty much mine. I was probably influenced by several people, my brother being one, obviously, and Jack Kirby, the greatest comic book artist of all time. But when I started doing The Incredible Hulk, I had such an interest and a fondness for the character that I sort of did my own thing on it. Herb was very unique in what he did, and I wanted to do whatever it was that was going to come out of me. So that pretty much sums that up. Sultan: Is there anything else you would like to share about Herb? Buscema: Herb and I worked on an annual G.I. Joe along with Ron Frenz for IDW out in California, and Herb and I communicated a couple of times via email, and he and I are in total agreement that we hate this new scripting that, the way they’re working at Marvel now. We were influenced by Stan and his loose plots, and that’s the way all the writers worked back then, and

we loved doing that because it gave us so much freedom. This is one of the reasons why, frankly, I don’t want to pencil any more. I love inking. Inking is a joy. Penciling is a lot of hard work, and even though I enjoyed it so much—obviously, I did it for forty years or more—but Herb and I were in total agreement with that, and I found that out when we were working on that G.I. Joe job together. He really had to struggle with it, and I understand why he did, because I’d done a couple of small jobs that way, several years ago, for Marvel, and I didn’t enjoy that one bit. So, for whatever it’s worth, that’s one of the things that Herb and I agreed upon one hundred percent. And, outside of that, he’s just always been considered one of the nicest, true gentlemen in the business. And a very, very talented guy. A tremendous storyteller. In that respect, I would have to say that Herb was an influence on me, too, especially at the beginning, when I was really, really struggling to find my way in this industry. And to have had the opportunity to meet him, finally, in person, and to exchange words with him, was just a real highlight. I just enjoyed it so much. I hope he did half as much. Sultan: That’s fabulous. I’m sure Herb’s going to appreciate those sentiments. Buscema: Well, it’s meant from the bottom of my heart. It’s completely sincere.

ABOVE: Sal Buscema rendition of the Hulk from FOOM #2. BELOW: Panels from page 14 of The Incredible Hulk #136 by Trimpe and Sal Buscema. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Although the Hulk comprised a big part of Trimpe’s career, it certainly wasn’t the only character he drew at Marvel.

The Other Heroes While he may be best known for his work on the Hulk, Trimpe drew a lot of other characters for Marvel Comics, from the tiniest of heroes to Marvel’s flagship character. His tenure varied from a few months to several years, but in each case, he brought the character to life with his remarkable storytelling ability. Among the Marvel characters most influenced by Trimpe are Ant-Man, Captain Britain, Iron Man, the Defenders, and Spider-Man. He talks here about some of these Marvel characters (and some not from Marvel) that received the Trimpe touch.

ABOVE: Ant-Man from splash page in Marvel Feature #4 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Nick Katradis. BELOW: Close-up of Ghost Rider from issue #60 by Trimpe and Don Perlin.

Cassell: While you were working on The Incredible Hulk, you picked up some other artwork assignments as well, like Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. Trimpe: Well, at one point, the office was very close to our apartment in the city. I delivered the work by hand and sometimes came into the office to work since I was nearby. So, especially if you were close at hand, you could always pick up extra things to do. There was always something that had to be done or somebody who had missed a deadline or corrections to be made. It was pretty straightforward. Cassell: How did you get involved with Iron Man? Trimpe: I was living in England at the time and I was talking to John [Verpoorten] on the phone. I said, “Look, I don’t want to do The Incredible Hulk any more. I want to do something else.” He said, “Well, we don’t have anything else right now, but I can get somebody else to do the next Hulk.” And I was so tired of doing it that I said, “Okay.” So in the meantime, while I was waiting for something to come through, I did an inventory Iron Man [story] on my own and sent in the 20 penciled pages with notes in the columns, because I plotted and almost wrote the story in the columns. And John got kind of annoyed and pissed off. He said, “Don’t do that any more.” Luckily, it happened to fall right in the place where they needed an inventory in Iron Man. I think that was the reason, but the fact is they printed it in the run almost immediately. Cassell: You drew Iron Man a dozen times over the years. Did you enjoy drawing the Armored Avenger? Trimpe: I drew Iron Man a dozen times? Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. “Enjoy” is probably not the word, as those jobs were probably in a rush. I can remember in particular one story I

did in two or three days, penciled, if you could call it that, and inked. Including the cover, and it looks it. Nice thing about Iron Man is that the armor was fairly simple, something that I’m sure was a break for me considering some of the other more complicated stuff I was involved in. Cassell: Did living in England lead to drawing Captain Britain? Trimpe: I was in the UK, in Cornwall, actually, and I met up with Chris Claremont at some point, on the beach, walking and talking, and whether we had discussed Captain Britain, or that discussion only came later after we were back in the states, I can’t really say. Cassell: What was your next assignment? Trimpe: The next thing I got might have been the beginning of doing Defenders, Godzilla, and Shogun Warriors, all at once. I was doing three books at the same time—for two years in a row, I think. Cassell: Did you get involved with the Defenders because of your association with the Hulk? Trimpe: I don’t think the Hulk had anything to do with me drawing The Defenders. [It was] just another hole in the dike that somebody had to put their finger in. Cassell: What was your impression of them as a super-hero team? Trimpe: Back when I was doing The Defenders, which I enjoyed quite a bit, if someone had asked me what team I would choose for success between the X-Men and the Defenders, I would have said the Defenders, hands down. I’ve made many choices like that over time. Maybe it wasn’t the X-Men characters at all. Maybe it was in the name. Picture it. If the X-Men had been called the Defenders, and the Defenders called the X-Men, I believe things would have turned out differently. The Defenders were more varied and fun.

Cassell: What other comics did you work on? Trimpe: I had done a short series with Chris Claremont, War Is Hell, and of course I did the iconic and memorable Phantom Eagle with Gary Friedrich. Cassell: Did you create the character Son of Satan? Trimpe: I might have. I know I had the original model sheet I did. The thing is, creation was a gray area in comics in those days, and even today. If the writer comes up with the name, puts in some suggestions, it doesn’t matter how much the artist does. In my experience, the writer seems generally to get credit for the creation. If you were to count the artists’ first drawing of a character as the actual creation, then I would have created many, many characters. Cassell: I saw the Son of Satan model sheet. It was great. Trimpe: It’s 11 by 17 and it was a sketch of the character. I remember when I did it at the office at Marvel, and it was basically just a pencil sketch of the character. Then I didn’t have anything else to do, so I added color and I made a logo and it turned it into a pin-up kind of thing. It looked pretty good. Cassell: Was it ever published? Trimpe: No, that was never published. It wasn’t meant to be. It was basically to set up something in my head as to how the character would look. There was no posterity involved in it. I was just saving it for myself to use as reference, or anybody else that might need it for reference. Cassell: What about Killraven, the character that appeared under the banner of “War of the Worlds”? Trimpe: That’s right. Yeah, I remember the character well, and the title, but as for me getting involved in that, I have no idea. I probably had the time. Cassell: You also did a piece for Esquire Magazine back in the late ’60s, didn’t you? Trimpe: Yeah, I did a thing for Esquire on Gloria Steinem. She was a female activist during that time. Cassell: Sure, she founded Ms. Magazine, right? Trimpe: Yeah, Ms. Magazine, that’s exactly right. She worked for Playboy at one time. She was a Bunny for a day, or something like that. So, there was a three-page thing that I did for Esquire. You know, the weird thing is this: I just got an e-mail from somebody about two weeks ago. You know Linda Ellerbee from NBC? Well, they have a subsidiary show that she’s a head of, and the woman

that runs this other show e-mailed me and wanted to know if I had the artwork to that. Cassell: Oh, you’re kidding! Trimpe: No… or where they could find it, because they wanted to use it on TV and they had called Esquire. Esquire said, “Yeah, no problem, but you should ask the artist.” I don’t know why. Esquire owns it. But they got in touch with me anyway. And I said, “Yeah, I don’t care. I totally forgot about that.” And I don’t think I ever had the artwork back from it, but I actually think I have the printed pages somewhere around here. I was using them in my portfolio as samples years ago.

Panels from page 22 of Marvel Spotlight #12 featuring Son of Satan by Trimpe and Frank Chiaramonte. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

Splash page from the Trimpe story in Flo Steinberg’s Big Apple Comix.

Cassell: Did you ever do any underground work? Trimpe: The only thing I did was that one that Flo Steinberg did [in 1975], Big Apple Comix. The most interesting stuff during that rage of the super-hero, to me, was the underground stuff, which was outrageous back in those days. Anybody that was in undergrounds, they weren’t just drawing something to sell, it was very creative. This is my opinion. And a lot of it was sh*t, I understand that. But the thing is, people were really off the beaten track. Vaughn Bode and some of the others that were drawing then, in many ways, that was all cutting-edge stuff, or at least there was a format to reach out and just do whatever the hell you wanted to do.

Cassell: Were there other artistic opportunities like that, outside of Marvel? Trimpe: Well, between 1990 and 1995, before Marvel went belly-up, I got a call from an editor at Playboy and he wanted to know if I was interested in doing “Little Annie Fanny.” Do you remember that? Cassell: Oh, sure. Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder. Trimpe: Yeah… and I said no. And I’ll tell you one of the reasons. I had just been ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Church and I thought, “Jesus, I’d love to do that, but if I do that and the diocese in New York gets wind of it, there could be a conflict.” I mean the Episcopal Church is probably the most liberal segment of Protestantism that you can find. But I figured nahh … and it wasn’t really the hierarchy that I was worried about, it was my local church. If some of the old ladies in there got wind of it... Cassell: That’d be kind of hard to explain what you do for a living at the potluck dinner. Trimpe: Yeah, I know. They’d probably want to string me up. But first of all, I was kind of stunned that they were asking me to do that. I don’t know what he had seen, maybe it was the Gloria Steinem stuff, but he said they liked my style. They thought I could do it. And you know, I do a much better semi-cartoon style than I do super-heroes. I have to tell you, I just can’t stand drawing these moody, bipolar double-identity people, or whatever the hell they are, with the bulging veins and the muscles. I can’t stand that. Just give me Disney. That’s my favorite kind of thing, just the light stuff. I love Archie, I really liked Plastic Man because it was cartoony. It was a hoot. And luckily, I didn’t have to do a lot of the super-hero stuff, because I wound up doing all the licensing stuff, which were not really superheroes. Cassell: Yes, it’s true. But a road not travelled— Herb Trimpe on “Little Annie Fanny.” That would have been interesting. Trimpe: [laughing] It would have been good money, probably, too, you know? As noted, some characters Trimpe drew for longer periods of time than others, but for many of them, he made an important contribution to stories fondly remembered by fans. Next, we examine some of the short-term assignments Trimpe helmed at Marvel.

SPOTL I GH T ON

Ant-Man With Roy Thomas

Marvel Feature debuted in 1971 as a bi-monthly forum for trying out new characters (or more accurately new combinations of characters and variations on existing characters) before giving them their own book. It was in concept, if not in format, similar to DC Comics’ Showcase, which was first published in 1956. Former Marvel Comics editor and writer Roy Thomas explains the motivation behind a try-out book, “Stan wanted to do a bunch of them. Marvel Premiere, Marvel Feature, Marvel Spotlight. They were all his ideas, and his titles. In the early ’70s we were just trying to get an increased place on the [news]stand. That’s the period when we began to actually outsell DC in terms of number of books.” The first characters to appear in Marvel Feature were not new, but the notion of them working together was. The first issue of the title featured the debut of The Defenders, starring the Hulk, Doctor Strange, and the Sub-Mariner. Fan reaction to the team was positive, so after three issues in Marvel Feature, the Defenders got their own title. When the Defenders cleared out of Marvel Feature, Ant Man moved in. Ant-Man had starred in the split-book Tales to Astonish in the mid1960s and was a founding member of the Avengers, but his most recent solo appearance had been in a backup

story in issue #44 of Iron Man, six months previously. Thomas felt it was time to try it again, “I know that I had wanted to do Ant-Man more than most, because I just felt like he was a good character and I thought it’d be good to bring him back. I think at one stage I was actually hoping I could write it, but that proved impossible.” So Thomas tapped Mike Friedrich to write the new Ant-Man stories and artist Herb Trimpe to illustrate them. Thomas edited the series going forward. That Trimpe got the assignment was circumstantial, but he was glad to have it. “It was a matter of availability, [but] I really liked the idea of Ant-Man. I was crazy about The Incredible Shrinking Man, anything that put an individual in a place where everything was so gigantic and it takes half a day to cross the room—or anything to do with insects, for that matter. I loved fantasy writing where people rode the backs of ants. I think it all started with the New York Daily News years ago. They had a half page feature called The Teeny-Weenies. There was always like a cut-out of one of the characters that you could paste on cardboard and then fold back the base and they would stand up, so you could collect them from Sunday to Sunday. I had a whole lot of them and they lived in a microworld. They were big enough to sit in a thimble and they rode

tins cans down the river, which was really just runoff water from a rainstorm. They lived in houses in the woods up in what they considered to be trees, but to us would be considered weeds or bushes. I thought it was great. In fact, when I was doing a lot of writing, I actually came up with a story that was along those same lines. It was about a teenager that wound up getting really small and the battles took place between ant tribes. So when the prospect came up to do Ant-Man, I said, ‘Yeah, it’ll be great.’” Marvel Feature turned out to be a family affair, as Trimpe explains, “I liked working with it. And then my brother Mike, who at the time was a graphic designer, he got a little slow at work so he did the inking of two issues, maybe three, of AntMan. If I asked to ink the work,

ABOVE LEFT: Art from the retelling of Ant-Man’s origin in Marvel Feature #4 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Nick Katradis. ABOVE: Splash page detail from Marvel Feature #6 penciled by Herb Trimpe and inked by brother Mike. BELOW: Tag line from the cover of Marvel Feature #4.

RIGHT: Ant-Man’s new costume from page 13 of Marvel Feature #5 by Trimpe. BELOW: Trimpe was skeptical this tactic by Ant-Man would work. This scene from page 19 of Marvel Feature #4 also appeared on the cover by Trimpe. Courtesy of Nick Katradis.

I could ink it. So I just passed it on to him and he got a credit line. They were agreeable. I didn’t have particularly much clout. There were guys that were in much better positions than I was with the editors and the people in the company. But saying that, “My brother’s going to ink one of these issues.” They were,”Yeah, sure. Okay.” Can you imagine that now? So in those cases, there were Trimpe twice in the credit line. And actually, his inks were pretty good. But then he got work again and that was the end of that.” One of the noteworthy aspects of the Ant-Man stories in Marvel Feature was the redesign of his costume. The premise of the storyline, which extended through several issues, was that AntMan had become “stuck” in his shrunken form and could not grow to full size again. He fashioned a new costume and armed himself with a nail

as a weapon, forging on new adventures while seeking a cure for his condition. It was a thinking man’s Land of the Giants, with little more than his wits to fight a series of ruthless villains and enemies of nature. The re-launch of this classic Marvel hero was exceptionally well-written by Friedrich, with intelligent dialogue which was sharper, more sophisticated than what fans had read in Tales to Astonish, giving the finished work an almost cinematic feel. Ant-Man had to cope with being antsized for a prolonged period of time and it was presented as challenging and interesting, without becoming campy, as the stories tended to in Tales to Astonish. The design of the new AntMan costume was a collaborative effort, as Trimpe recalls, “He had some square button pattern on the front of his jacket and boots and a longsleeved shirt, colored red—I don’t know who designed that. It might have been John Romita or Marie [Severin]. I think the nail was my idea. It was probably something required in the story and I just worked it out that [it] was his standard weapon. I know it was used at some point when a guy was about to step on him, [and he had] the nail raised in the air, as if a 200-foot creature stepping on a nail is going to stop him.” (See the cover of Marvel Feature #4.) Marvel touted that Trimpe was drawing Ant-Man in Marvel Feature. Then after only three issues, for reasons lost to time, Trimpe left the book. In issue #7, the credits indicated that Craig Russell was “filling in for Herb Trimpe”, but Trimpe did not return to the book. Years

later, though, Trimpe returned to the Ant-Man character, as he elaborates, “When Ant-Man reappeared in Fantastic Four Unlimited, that redesign was mine. I did that completely and I thought it was so damned cool that Ant-Man was destined to get another title all to himself. Not only was I wrong, but I never even got credit for the costume design. His new outfit was just like an insect. It wasn’t just some stupid suit he was wearing. He actually had a helmet that had a mandible design and it was basically an exoskeleton which comes off looking like modern day armor, but that’s the way I drew it. I thought it was a super character.” Unlike the other series that debuted in Marvel Feature, AntMan did not get his own title, leaving one to wonder if things might have turned out differently had Trimpe remained on the book. As for why AntMan didn’t get his own title after Marvel Feature, Thomas speculates, “Chances are it didn’t sell as well as the other two. Ant-Man was never a big seller, or we wouldn’t have had Giant-Man, and Goliath, and everything else.” Ant-Man may yet have the last word, though. Ant-Man gets his own film in July 2015, serving as the first of Marvel’s “Phase Three” movies. Thomas believes the big screen may be the best place to try out the diminutive hero, “It was always a great idea for a movie, a better idea for a movie than it was for a comic book. I remember thinking the night I saw Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, ‘Well, now they can finally make an Ant-Man movie.’ And I’m sorry they didn’t do it in time to get him in The Avengers, but at least I’m glad to see there’s going to be one.”

SPOTL I GH T ON

Captain Britain With Chris Claremont

Captain Britain was created in 1976 by Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe to be the British counterpart to Captain America. Brian Braddock and his alter ego debuted in the first issue of Captain Britain Weekly, a magazine-sized anthology comic book that included reprints of U.S. comics, published by Marvel UK. Braddock transforms into Captain Britain by means of an “Amulet of Might,” given to him by a magician Merlyn and his daughter, along with a multi-functional staff. In the early issues of the title, Captain Britain faces off against villains created especially for the UK comic, such as Hurricane and Dr. Synne, while trying to maintain his secret identity and fend off an inquisitive Chief Inspector. Braddock’s sister Betsy was a supporting character, who later joined the X-Men as Psylocke. With issue #16, the Yanks exert their influence as Captain Britain teams up with Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D. to battle the Red Skull. Throughout his run on the series, Trimpe seemed to be channeling a combination of Jack Kirby and John Romita in a drawing style that was at once attractive and compelling, though not immediately recognizable as Trimpe’s. It was during this time period that Trimpe was learning to fly and so it is likely not an accident that Betsy is a pilot and several different air-

craft appear in Captain Britain stories during his tenure on the book. Claremont left the book with issue #10, replaced by Marvel stalwart Gary Friedrich. Trimpe penciled the first 23 issues, which were inked by Fred Kida. Trimpe also drew a few of the Captain Britain Weekly covers during his run. In this excerpt from his introduction to the Marvel trade paperback Captain Britain: The Birth of a Legend, Claremont talks about his artistic partner, “His name is Herb Trimpe and he’s one of the very best there is at what

he does. Marvel decided to try its hand at publishing original material for the British market. Stan Lee assigned me to write the series, and Herb to pencil it. I was English by birth and Herb was on sabbatical over there. Herb back then was one of the core talents on the Marvel art staff. He did quality work and he nailed his deadlines. To that, you must also add, he was a joy to work with. Among those few are stories I am most proud of, even today.” Captain Britain, who went on to lead the team Excalibur, remains an active part of the Marvel Universe.

ABOVE LEFT: Captain Britain teams up with his American counterpart in this panel from page 6 of Captain Britain #18 by Trimpe and Fred Kida. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. ABOVE: The battle of two Captain Britains by Trimpe commissioned by (and courtesy of) David Currie. LEFT: Splash page art from issue #12 of Captain Britain by Trimpe and Fred Kida. Courtesy of Rob Pickel.

S POT LI G HT O N

Iron Man

With Larry Lieber & Len Wein

ABOVE & BELOW: Panels from Iron Man #85 by Trimpe and Marie Severin depicting Stark donning his armor in a method similar to that later used in the movies. OPPOSITE TOP: Detailed pin-up of Iron Man (with nose) by Trimpe. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Cover of Iron Man #39 by Trimpe. Courtesy Grand Comics Database.

Few Marvel characters have surpassed the popularity of Iron Man in the 21st century. Boosted by three blockbuster movies plus a central role in The Avengers movie, Iron Man has become its own brand and an advertising juggernaut of global proportions. Created in 1963 by Stan Lee, Iron Man made his debut in Tales of Suspense #39, with script by Larry Lieber and the art capably rendered by Don Heck and Jack Kirby. True to the young Marvel Universe at the time, Iron Man’s alter ego was a rich millionaire named Tony Stark. Former Marvel Comics writer and artist Larry Lieber explains the beginnings of the Tony Stark character, “I had

been writing Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, Strange Tales, since 1958. Now, The Amazing Spider-Man came out in ’62, and these came out around that time. So between ’58 and ’64 , I had done a lot of stories, and by that time I had a feel for the names. So something like Tony Stark I probably just made up myself. I thought, I knew he was going to be an industrialist, and I figured he was rich, so I’m not going to call him Joe Cain or something. “Anthony” sounds like a nice name for a rich guy, and I thought “Stark” sounded good. It was short, it went with Anthony, and he has money, and he’s going to be involved in action. Anthony Stark, a rich

man of action, I thought. That’s the way it came to me.“ Over the next 20 years, Iron Man would gain momentum as a core presence in the Marvel Universe. He would become a founding member of the Avengers, branch off into his own series after a successful run in Tales of Suspense, and even have a cartoon series as part of the Marvel Superhero TV show in 1966. During this time, artistic legends Gene Colan followed by George Tuska would bring the character to new heights while collaborating with the likes of Archie Goodwin, Mike Friedrich, Gerry Conway and Len Wein. As fate would have it, the team of Len Wein and Herb Trimpe would again collaborate in 1976—two years after they changed the comic book landscape forever with the introduction of Wolverine. This time, in the pages of Iron Man #82-85, the team would excite Shellhead fans with bombastic battles with apes (a play on the film Planet of the Apes), the Red Ghost, the Walking Bomb, and the Freak. But these stellar tales may be overshadowed in the minds of many fans due to a mixup of epic proportions. Len Wein recounts, “Sweet mother of God, the nose. That’s one of the great “uh-ohs” of all time. Basically, Stan was walking through production one day, and John Romita, God bless him, was doing some punch-ups on some

artwork in an issue of Iron Man, and there was a profile shot of Tony Stark shelled in his armor, and Stan looked at the picture and said, “That’s wrong, John. It doesn’t look like he has a nose. There should be room for Tony Stark’s nose. Iron Man should have a nose.” And John came out of it and said, “Well, this is from Stan, so it’s gospel: we gotta add a nose to Iron Man’s costume.” And I was, “What? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” And everyone else said that, “It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” But John was adamant, “If Stan says he gets a nose, he gets a nose.” And we argued for two hours, and I said, “Fine.” One of the things I learned when I was in television was the phrase that Mark Evanier taught me. He said, “If you want to be successful in television, learn the following two words: ‘okay, fine.’” And so, eventually, after two hours of arguing with John, I went, “Okay, fine. We’ll give him a nose.” And so we did, and everyone went, “Well, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” And after, like, a year of this, I was editing for the company but I wasn’t writing the book any more, I finally said, “Every month everyone complains about the stupid damn nose. I’m gonna go talk to Stan and see if we can talk about it.” And I walked into Stan’s office. “Stan, we’ve got to talk about Iron Man’s nose.” And Stan looked at me and said, “Iron Man has a nose?” And I said, “Yes!” And I explained the situation. I reminded him of the story, and he thought about for a minute, and he said, “Heck, no! That’s not what I meant at all!” And I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “Well, I was looking at the shot John was

working on, and it was a profile shot. It was so tight against his face in that profile, there was no way that Tony Stark could have had a nose under that.” So all he meant was “move the armor forward a fraction, or an inch, so there’s room for Tony Stark’s nose under the helmet.” Len and Herb would also create a landmark moment in Iron Man’s history that would eventually become a lynchpin scene in today’s movies with Robert Downey, Jr. “I changed the armor, how he got into the armor, to some degree”, remembers Wein, “which I thought was kind of cool, the whole idea of it being pulled together electromagnetically. Back in the days of the simpler costume. I just came up with the premise that it would kind of slide on. It was loose, and he was wearing a wristwatch on one hand, an ID bracelet on the other, which were magnetic, and when he triggered the change, the uniform would just slide out. Going down to the wrist, everything would fill in. Actually, there’s a sequence, I think, in the first issue that Herb drew, where it all shows visually how the new premise was going to work. “ Whether the electromagnetic costume or the ironplated nose, Herb would go on to make his mark in Iron Man throughout the 1970s and ’80s. Bronze Age fans can also find Trimpe art gracing the pages of Iron Man #s 39, 93 and 94. Trimpe returned to Iron Man in the 1990s, bringing a new style to the Golden Avenger. Among the later stories was one featuring the Wrecker, a character created by Lee and Kirby in the pages of Thor, which had uncredited layouts by Herb’s son, Alex Trimpe.

S POT LI G HT O N

The Defenders

With Sal Buscema, Roy Thomas & Steve Englehart

TOP RIGHT: Panel featuring the Hulk from page 26 of The Defenders #68 by Trimpe and Pablo Marcos. TOP LEFT, BELOW & OPPOSITE TOP: Detail from the cover of Marvel Team-Up #111 by Trimpe and Frank Giacoia. ABOVE: Cover of The Defenders #67 by Trimpe and Bruce Patterson.

“The Defenders came about because Roy Thomas had this idea of a super-hero group that had issues,” explains legendary Marvel artist Sal Buscema, who was also the first regular artist on the title. “They were disparate guys, guys with some serious problems. In contrast to the Avengers who were pretty much on the same page, the Defenders were guys that didn’t like each other. SubMariner didn’t like the Hulk and the Hulk didn’t like anybody. They were strictly loners, which made this group unique. They were forced to take on problems and battles, not by choice.” Roy Thomas states, “The Defenders were born, in a way, when I had Sub-Mariner, the Hulk, and the Silver Surfer get together in a couple of issues of the former’s mag. Stan decided he wanted to make that team into a regular comic... except he didn’t really like anyone but himself writing the Surfer on a regular basis at that time, so he “suggested” I put in Doctor Strange in his place. That probably worked out much better, as Doc could become the focal point, trying to hold the non-team together in the early days. I wrote the first three Defenders stories in Marvel Feature, then turned the series over to Steve Englehart.” Steve Englehart recalls, “When I became a writer at Marvel, the first book they gave me was the Beast in

Amazing Adventures, and they liked that so much that the next month they gave me both Captain America and the Defenders. Cap obviously was an ongoing book. The Defenders was going to be the #1 issue, because Roy had done the three issues in Marvel Feature, so I was starting off with #1, with Sal [Buscema]. In terms of the Defenders, I just wanted to continue what Roy had started. I had no complaints about what was already there. I really liked everybody in that book and just wanted to try to do what I could with it. Obviously, as I started to do that, as I did my own month-after-month version of it, it started to go in directions that I wanted it to go. I added the Valkyrie, and I got the Silver Surfer into it.” The Defenders made their debut in 1972 and ran for 152 issues, ending in 1986. The team consisted of many different forms, starting with the Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Doctor Strange and morphing into a revolving cast of characters that included the Silver Surfer, Valkyrie, Hellcat, Nighthawk, the Beast, Son of Satan, and many others. Although most fans would point to Marvel Feature #1 as the first appearance of the Defenders, one could argue that The Incredible Hulk #126 contains the true origin of the group. This extraordinary book unites the Hulk and Doctor Strange, and features future Defender

Barbara Denton-Norris, a.k.a. Valkyrie. The importance of this particular issue cannot be understated as foundational to the Defenders universe. And it was drawn by Herb Trimpe. Just as he was at the epicenter of the Wolverine origin, credit for one of the Defenders earliest roots in comicdom can be given to Trimpe as well. In addition to the Hulk issue, Doctor Strange #183 and Sub-Mariner #s 22, 34 and 35 can also lay claim to providing groundwork for the beginnings of the Defenders. Herb would return to the Defenders after that unlikely beginning years later and take over the penciling from Sal Buscema, Keith Giffen and others. Starting with issue #67, Herb did covers and interiors for the book for two years, ending his run with issue #81. During that time, the Defenders squared off against the Nameless One, the Anything Man, the Unnamed, and Foolkiller, and continued to deal with issues and problems, such as the resignation of Nighthawk and losing their headquarters due to fire. It can be said that Herb was a natural choice to do The Defenders. With a character such as the Hulk as a core member of the team, each issue seemed to extend the excitement Herb created years earlier on his Hulk run. And they were certainly not your typical super-hero team.

LEFT: Splash page 14 from The Defenders #73 by Trimpe and Mike Esposito. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Detail from the cover of The Defenders #68 by Trimpe.

S POT LI G HT O N

Spider-Man With Ron Frenz ABOVE: Panel with SpiderMan and Wolverine from Marvel Team-Up #117 by Trimpe and Mike Esposito. BELOW: Cover to Marvel Team-Up #107 by Trimpe and Frank Giacoia. OPPOSITE TOP: Spider-Man commission drawing by Trimpe for (and courtesy of) Marvin Hoover. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: SpiderMan versus the Hulk in Marvel Treasury Edition #25 by Trimpe and Bruce Patterson.

The vast array of Marvel characters that were etched by the hand of Herb Trimpe over his incredible career were numerous. Perhaps the quintessential Marvel character that has become almost synonymous with the name Marvel itself is Spider-Man. Spider-Man is arguably Marvel’s signature character, and the drawing duties of the Webslinger did not escape the desk of Trimpe, in spite of his general disdain for super-heroes. Herb assumed

the penciling of Spider-Man in the pages of Marvel Team-Up in the 1980s, contributing to the series from issues #106118 and Annuals #3 and 4. Marvel Team-Up was created as a way to capitalize and extend the popularity of Spider-Man. The series debuted in 1972 and paired Spider-Man with another Marvel character in each issue. It was an honor to be assigned this book. Legendary Spider-Man artist Ron Frenz shared this point of view, “After stints on Indiana Jones, Conan, Kull and others, my first regular book was on Marvel Team-Up. What most people don’t realize is that being the artist on Marvel Team-Up was ground zero to the rest of Marvel. This was the only real avenue of being able to draw Marvel’s flagship character and having him interact with the rest of the Marvel Universe.” On more than one occasion, the series teamed Spider-Man with a non-superhero, as was the case in Marvel Team-Up #12 (Werewolf by Night) and #36 (Frankenstein’s Monster). During Trimpe’s run on Marvel Team-Up, the odd pairings did not disappoint and included the likes of Paladin, Dazzler, Devil-Slayer, Valkyrie, Quasar, and King Kull, in addition to the more standard fare with Captain America, the Defenders, Hulk, Power Man, Iron Fist, and Iron Man. One particularly interesting issue was #117, where Spider-Man

was teamed with Wolverine, who by now had become a definitive presence in the Marvel Universe and inseparably linked to Herb. The story brings together the unlikely duo by chance: after being attacked separately, Wolverine and Spider-Man team-up to combat deadly forces in a hidden castle, save innocent bystanders and battle a villain named Professor Power. And as a side note, the Marvel Team-Up assignment afforded Trimpe an opportunity to work with writer Tom DeFalco, with whom he became good friends. Around this same time, Herb also penciled Marvel Treasury Edition #25, titled “Spider-Man vs. The Hulk at the Winter Olympics”. A little known fact about the Treasury Editions is that only two issues (issues #25 and 28) contained all new super-hero material. The rest were essentially oversized reprints of past tales. [Issue #28 presented the second Spider-Man/Superman teamup, and is one of the sentimental favorites of fans of the series.] The Winter Olympics treasury coincided with the 1980 Lake Placid games and would capitalize on Marvel’s two most popular characters at the time, Spider-Man and the Hulk, both of whom had recently starred in their own prime-time TV shows. The story was full of action, both on the super-hero battle front and the Olympic side of things. One particularly memorable scene

included the ski jump competition with a large crowd, complete with Marvel characters dressed in their alter ego attire. The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, the Black Widow, Nick Fury, and even a cameo of Herb and Linda Fite were seen witnessing the event. Herb would go on to pencil Spider-Man several more times, including a three-issue stint on Spectacular SpiderMan a few years later. (Check out issues #97-99 for some great action with the Black Cat battling the Kingpin and villains such as the Hermit and the Spot!) Herb would once again

return to Spider-Man in the 1990s, penciling Double Trouble, part of a five-issue series produced under the direction of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, exclusively sold and distributed in Canada. These years only accentuated the versatility of Herb Trimpe. Ron Frenz continues, “Herb Trimpe is one of the unsung heroes of Marvel comics—every bit as worthy as Kirby, Romita, Ditko, Buscema, Severin, and Colan. He was prolific, and he was in the trenches with Stan and the bullpen producing the foundation of the Marvel Universe.”

A Finger in the Dike ABOVE: Son of Satan from page 27 of Marvel TwoIn-One #14 by Trimpe and John Tartaglione. Courtesy of Brian Sagar. BELOW: Cover of War is Hell #5 by Trimpe and Frank Giacoia. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

It may surprise some people to read the interview with Herb Trimpe and find that while he remembers a lot about working at Marvel and drawing The Incredible Hulk, he does not necessarily remember the details about the four issues of Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD that he drew in 1969. The fact is that for his generation of artists, and the ones that preceded it, drawing comics was fundamentally a job—a fun job, mind you, but first and foremost a way to pay the rent and put food on the table. As Trimpe himself said, “We just didn’t think in those terms. It was just, ‘Oh, it was a job? Okay. What’s next?’” So, asking Trimpe if he remembers creating the villain Bulls-Eye for Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD is a little like asking William Shatner why they beamed down to the planet in episode 26 of Star Trek. In Trimpe’s own words, it was “just another hole in the dike that somebody had to put their finger in.” But the fact is, even on his shorter assignments, Trimpe often made a meaningful contribution to Marvel comic book canon. This, then, is a slightly more detailed examination of some of the comic book titles in this time period, other than The Incredible Hulk, for which Trimpe provided “a finger in the dike”.

N ic k F ury , Ag ent of SHIE LD As mentioned, Trimpe drew four issues (#s 8, 13, 14, and 15) of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, and an equal number of covers (#s 13, 14, 15, and 18) for the book. He had tough shoes to fill, following Jim Steranko, Frank Springer, and Barry Smith on the title. The story layouts by Trimpe reflect a continuation of the dynamic panel designs first put to such effective use by Steranko. And Trimpe co-created the villain Bulls-Eye for issue #15, which proved to be the last original story in the series. While not the same Bullseye that plagued Daredevil, the two villains did share more than a name. Both were assasins, both used a bullseye on their costumes, and both had unerring aim, although the former Bulls-eye owed his accuracy to his weapon. The former Bulls-eye also died in the same issue in which he was introduced. One

other item of note is that Trimpe’s first pencils in Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, in issue #8, appeared only a few months after he took the reins from Marie Severin on The Incredible Hulk.

S ilver S urfer This is perhaps both the most brief, and most interesting, interlude in Trimpe’s career in comics. John Buscema was responsible for penciling most of the covers and all of the interior artwork for the first 17 issues of the landmark Silver Surfer series. But in 1970, Trimpe drew the covers for issue #s 17 and 18, and the latter bore the interior pencils of Jack Kirby inked by Trimpe. Taking nothing away from the definitive art of Buscema, this final issue of the series was reminiscent of Kirby’s masterful introduction of the iconic character in The Fantastic Four, and it is some of the most prized artwork of the late Silver Age.

War is H ell The comic book War is Hell started out in 1973 as a reprint book, at a time in which the Vietnam War was still fresh on everyone’s minds. With issue #9, a series of new stories began featuring John Kowalski, a dead solider whose spirit could possess the bodies of living people, similar to DC Comics’ Deadman. Chris Claremont was the writer for the series. Trimpe drew covers for the first and last issues of the series, as well as issue #5. He penciled the interior stories for issue #s 13 and 15, the final issue. Although not a long tenure on the book, noteworthy is the fact that Trimpe inked his own pencils. This was a genre Trimpe enjoyed drawing, as is obvious in the artwork.

S on of S atan The character Son of Satan debuted in issue #2 of Ghost Rider, written by Gary Friedrich, before moving to Marvel Spotlight for what would prove to be a fairly long run. So Jim Mooney was actually the first to draw Son of Satan, but Trimpe refined the look and feel of the character in Marvel Spotlight #12, where he drew

INSET: Cover of Silver Surfer #17 by Trimpe and Dan Adkins. LEFT: Cover art to issue #13 of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD by Trimpe and Sam Grainger. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Panel with the SubMariner battling Doctor Doom from page 15 of Super-Villain Team-Up #4 by Trimpe and Jim Mooney.

el The War of the Worlds. Trimpe began penciling the covers with issue #19, and the stories with issue #20. He continued to pencil the interiors through issue #24, returning for issue #33. This “finger in the dike” is interesting in that it neither started nor ended with Trimpe, but his work on the series is well respected and valued by fans.

S uper -V illain T ea m-U p

RIGHT: Cover art to issue #20 of Amazing Adventures featuring Killraven by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Silver Surfer commission drawing by Trimpe. Courtesy of Sean Rutan.

Not to be outdone, Trimpe supported the bad guys in Super-Villain Team-Up, which featured Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner. Trimpe did the layouts for issue #4, which were finished by Jim Mooney, and then Trimpe penciled the next three issues. The stories included guest appearances by the Fantastic Four and the Inhumans, as well as cameos by Spider-Man, Daredevil, the Hulk, Thor, and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. This storyline also featured the introduction of the super-hero called the Shroud.

Machine Man

both the cover and the first solo story in 1973. Trimpe penciled the story for issue #13 as well, before turning the reins back over to Mooney. However, given the model sheet of Son of Satan, which Trimpe describes in the interview, it seems likely that he was originally planned to have a longer tenure on the series. Trimpe did return to the character once more in a pairing with the Thing in Marvel Two-In-One #14.

Killraven (Amazing Adventures: War of the Worlds) Amazing Adventures started out in 1970 as a split book, with the Inhumans and Black Widow sharing the spotlight. Issue #11 saw the focus change to the Beast, former member of the X-Men, who first sprouts his blue fur in this series. Then, with issue #18, the title becomes a showcase for Killraven, an original character set loosely in the framework of H.G. Wells’ classic nov-

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In 1984, Trimpe lent his storytelling skills to an outstanding Machine Man mini-series written by Tom DeFalco and penciled by Barry WindsorSmith. The mini-series was based on the character created by Jack Kirby in 1977 in issue #8 of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the story was set in the year 2020. Trimpe provided breakdowns for the first three issues, which Windsor-Smith then finished, an unusual combination with excellent results. Other short-term Marvel assignments for Trimpe included established titles like Captain America, Ghost Rider, Astonishing Tales (KaZar), and Marvel Two-in-One. He also contributed to several titles in Marvel’s black and white magazine line. In addition, he helped launch new comic book series such as Spitfire and the Troubleshooters, which was part of the New Universe and somewhat resembled Shogun Warriors. It is further evidence of Trimpe’s remarkable ability to fill in wherever needed, and do an admirable job in the process. While they may have been just “fingers in the dike” to Trimpe, his contributions to such a variety of comics over the course of his career speaks volumes regarding his versatility and adaptability as an artist. It is no wonder Trimpe has so many loyal fans of his diverse body of work. Another aspect of Trimpe’s varied contribution to the field of comics lies in his sense of humor.

A Sense of Humor During the 1970s, Trimpe also contributed to some Marvel humor titles, notably Spoof and the fledgling CRAZY magazine. Trimpe proved very adept at illustrating in a humorous style, something he enjoyed doing. He penciled and inked a piece entitled “An Independent Survey Today Announced...“ in the debut issue of CRAZY, depicting newspaper clippings from the future. He also inked the parody of the television series “Kung Fu” in issue #7, over Marie Severin’s pencils. He later returned to contribute a tongue-in-cheek Army enlistment advertisement to issue #68 of the humor magazine. Trimpe inking Marie’s pencils was not unusual. That is how he got his start with The Incredible Hulk. And when it came to humor in comics, no one could top Marie. Marie drew a piece entitled “Th-The—F-F-Frogs!” for issue #3 of the Marvel

humor comic book Spoof, which was inked by Trimpe. Trimpe also inked the cover to issue #5 and interior story “Nut Gallery”, a parody of the Rod Serling television series “Night Gallery”, both over Marie’s pencils. Trimpe brought his humorous illustration to bear in other venues as well, among them the 1971 issue of Esquire magazine mentioned earlier, where he drew a colorful tongue-in-cheek tribute to activist Gloria Steinem. You can also see that sense of humor pop up in the other comics Trimpe has drawn over the years, including The Incredible Hulk. But when it comes to drawing the comic book adventures of action figures and toys, it’s no laughing matter, as Trimpe explains how he began his long association with licensed characters.

ABOVE: Detail from splash page to “Nut Gallery” parody in Spoof #5 by Marie Severin and Trimpe. LEFT: A little dinner party humor from page 14 of The Incredible Hulk #142 by Trimpe and John Severin. RIGHT: “Cheap Shrills” advertisement parody from Not Brand Echh #13 by Trimpe.

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Black & White Magazines vided a format for more adult storylines and more explicit artwork. As demonstrated by Warren Publications with titles such as Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, this format lent itself to the horror genre and Marvel capitalized on it with titles of their own that included Dracula Lives!, Monsters Unleashed, and Tales of the Zombie. The black and white stories were frequently done in ink and wash, to provide texture and tone where color was lacking. Artists included many of those currently drawing Marvel comics, as well as others who specialized in the magazine format. While certainly not his specialty, Trimpe did contribute to several magazines in the Marvel black and white line—providing another “finger in the dike”— the most notable of which would be:

D eadly H ands of Kung F u Special A lbum Edition #1 Splash page from part 2 of “The UFO Connection” in Marvel Preview #13 by Trimpe and Pablo Marcos. Courtesy of Paul Handler.

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Over the years, Marvel branched out into other formats for their comic stories, among them black and white magazines. In the mid-1970s, Marvel had an entire line of black and white magazines, some based on existing comic book characters and others featuring new characters. The black and white magazines were not bound by the Comics Code and therefore pro-

In 1974, Trimpe worked with writer Chris Claremont on a story featuring the Sons of the Tiger in a one-shot Special Album Edition of the black and white magazine Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. This new martial arts story served as the centerpiece of a three-part epic that also included Iron Fist and Shang Chi in an 84 page issue.

R am pa gin g H ul k #8 The Rampaging Hulk magazine

began as a forum to tell stories about the early days of the Hulk encountering adversaries like the original X-Men and the Sub-Mariner, while accompanied by his friend Rick Jones. But the magazine moved away from that premise, even as it switched from a black and white format to full color and changed the name to simply The Hulk! with issue #10. The eighth issue, which was illustrated by Trimpe, featured the Hulk, Jones, and their alien companion Bereet doing battle against a Krylorian Expeditionary Force bent on invading earth. Along the way, the Hulk encounters a Krylorian “transformer” disguised as Iron Man, as well as the original Avengers. Trimpe would have seemed like a natural to contribute to the magazine version of the Hulk on an ongoing basis, but this was the one and only issue he drew.

Marvel P revie w #1 3 UF O Connection Years before the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the depiction of contact with alien life forms was generally pessimistic. In 1977, the same year the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released, Marvel published a one-shot black and white magazine called “UFO Connection!” under the banner of Marvel Preview #13. The two-part story was conceived, written, and edited by David Anthony Kraft, who describes

his own childhood UFO experience in the introduction. The story follows a father and daughter who travel from New York to Egypt while trying desperately to survive in the midst of a hostile alien invasion. The 37-page story, told from the perspective of the daughter, was well rendered by Trimpe. The first part was inked by Klaus Janson and the second by Pablo Marcos.

and anything good that’s left in the world.” Trimpe made a few other contributions to black and white Marvel magazines over

the years, including a story entitled “Let There Be Life” in Bizarre Adventures # 31 that he did with Tom DeFalco, depicting a unit in the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

S ava g e T ales The Savage Tales that debuted in 1985 was the second black and white Marvel magazine to bear that title. As discussed, it was intended to be a vehicle for creators to showcase their creativity with new stories full of daring adventure, more explicit language, and more graphic violence (at least by the standards of the day). Contributors included veteran artists John Severin, Dick Ayers, and Gray Morrow, among others, as well as writers like Archie Goodwin and Chuck Dixon. Trimpe’s contribution was an ongoing series called “Skywarriors” that ran for the first four issues, written and illustrated by Herb. Among other things, the series afforded Trimpe an opportunity to draw a variety of airplanes, thus combining his two great loves into a single end product. In issue #31 of Marvel Age, Trimpe talks about the post-nuclear war premise behind Skywarriors, “What these people find is that society has regressed into tribal existence. All modern weapons have been destroyed and vintage airplanes are being used by a force dominated by a fanatical leader. The Skywarriors are all that stand between this evil dictator type

AB OVE: From the end page of the black and white magazine Rampaging Hulk #8 featuring the Avengers by Trimpe and Alfredo Alcala. LEFT: Splash page to “Let There Be Life” from Bizarre Adventures #31 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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Licensed Characters ABOVE: Detail from Shogun Warriors #19 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Splash page art from issue #7 of Godzilla by Trimpe and Fred Kida. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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Other than The Incredible Hulk, the comics Trimpe was most closely associated with were based on characters licensed by Marvel Comics from toy manufacturers and movie companies, such as G.I. Joe and Godzilla. The advantage in publishing comics based on licensed characters was instant recognition among readers already familiar with the original product. In this interview, Trimpe talks about how he started illustrating the licensed characters, which ones he enjoyed (and which ones he didn’t). Cassell: How did you get involved in drawing the licensed characters? Trimpe: I’ve got a feeling these are going to be the tough questions because they weren’t major long-term bits of business… but let’s see. I wasn’t that interested in super-heroes. I didn’t actually draw many super-heroes. It was mostly the Hulk, which is not a super-hero, due to personality and all, which suited me fine. I did a lot of

licensed work of various toys—like Godzilla and G.I. Joe and Transformers and Shogun Warriors, and I was quite happy about that. And I think that’s probably why I got it. When I was substitute teaching, I was always getting called into the middle school. I knew all the teachers, so I said, “Why am I always in the middle school? I never get calls for the high school. “ They said, “It’s because you’re willing to do it, that’s why. A lot of people don’t want to work in the middle school.” So that’s why I think maybe I wound up with all the licensed stuff, because nobody else wanted to do it. They weren’t cool. Toys, you know? It wasn’t cool stuff. But the laugh is on them, because now, all the licensed stuff I did, they make movies out of. Cassell: Were the licensed characters easier or more difficult to do? Trimpe: The things that were most difficult were when I started to do some of the licensed stuff and you had these multiple characters. To me and just about every artist, that was a nightmare— nothing against the characters themselves on an individual basis, but doing the group stuff, especially if it involves a lot of high tech and a lot of reference like G.I. Joe or Transformers did, then it was just horrible. Cassell: What about Godzilla? Trimpe: Godzilla, I don’t know [how I got it]. It was another licensed character and I probably picked that up because I needed work and/or nobody else wanted to do it. The licensed characters did not appeal [to some artists], especially to a lot of the newer guys. Nobody wanted to rehash Godzilla. So most of the work I wound up with, especially on the secondary characters, had to do with availability. I was there and they needed somebody to do it. There wasn’t a whole lot of thought [to it] and nobody was particularly ear-

marked because they were very interested in giant lizards or something like that. It just didn’t work out that way. Did Doug Moench write that? Cassell: Yes. Trimpe: That was good. I enjoyed Doug Moench as a writer. He was a journeyman. He just worked at it and he came up with good ideas and we worked well together. There weren’t really any writers I didn’t work well with, but Doug was special. Jeez, I should have kept notes. Each one of these books you’re mentioning now, at one time or another, somebody will ask me about and they were of such brief duration—well, not really. I mean two years doing Godzilla, that’s not that short a period of time, or even two years on [GI Joe] Special Missions. But it just was a matter of availability. Cassell: Well, I don’t know if you remember, but you did a Godzilla western one time. Trimpe: Yes, not to mention the miniature Godzilla— Cassell: Yes! Trimpe:—and he was rat-sized. And there was a Godzilla western, yeah. Cassell: I have a model sheet you did for the supporting characters in Godzilla. Did you typically do your own model sheets when you started a new series? Trimpe: I did model sheets, yeah. I’ve done a number of model sheets for characters. Usually if they were incidental characters, I just made it up as I went along. Cassell: Was it always the game plan when you did Godzilla that it was going to include SHIELD and the Fantastic Four and the other Marvel characters? Trimpe: No, that just came along as the stories were developed, as the issues popped up. I have no idea why, but it’s like, hey, what would be cool to put in here that nobody else is using this month? Or what could be a good crossover? Actually, it seemed pretty natural that SHIELD would become involved if there was a giant dragon running around in your city, you know? They had all this really heavy duty hardware and high

tech stuff and things that were as big as Godzilla. So yeah, I think it was just a natural tendency to go ahead and do that. Cassell: What about Shogun Warriors? Trimpe: I loved doing it. That was fun. I thought it was far more sensible than Transformers because there were actually people controlling these things. It’s not like the Transformers, who are an alien species and just happened to be able to turn into a 1990 Dodge Caravan, you know what I mean? See, there’s where I was wrong again. It doesn’t make any sense. You know, I hate the Transformers. I hate ‘em, and they were an awful big draw, but Shogun was cool, man. They actually changed character robots into flying machines, airplanes that made sense, and rockets. And it was somebody inside, controlling them. I thought, “This is great. Nothing could do better than this. This is so cool, kids are going to

ABOVE: A shrinking Godzilla from page 27 of issue #17 by Trimpe and Dan Green. Courtesy of Gareth Gaudin. BELOW: Model sheet by Trimpe featuring supporting characters in Godzilla.

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S POT LI G HT O N

G.I. Joe With Larry Hama

TOP RIGHT: IDW edition of G.I. Joe with Trimpe art. ABOVE: Panels from page 29 of G.I. Joe Special Missions #13 by Trimpe and Andy Mushynsky. Courtesy of Rob Pickel. BELOW: Action panel from page 29 of G.I. Joe Special Missions #11 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Rob Pickel.

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Hassenfeld Brothers introduced G.I. Joe in 1964 and “America’s movable fighting man” enjoyed tremendous success until 1978, ultimately succumbing to the high cost of petroleum required to manufacture the 11 ½ inch action figure. But in 1982, spurred by the success of Kenner’s Star Wars line, Hasbro reintroduced G.I. Joe as a 3 ¾ inch action figure, together with a new enemy, Cobra. Key to the advertising strategy of the company was the simultaneous launch of a new G.I. Joe comic book, published by Marvel Comics. The new Marvel comic book, G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero, was written by Larry Hama, beginning an association with the Joes that continues to this day. The relationship between Hasbro and Marvel was somewhat unique in its flexibility, which afforded Hama a tremendous amount of creative license. Hama recalls, “I was left pretty much alone, character and general story wise, on the GI Joe book. I did write all the file card bios on the backs of of the packages, so even if I didn’t design the physical look of the Joes, I created their backgrounds, characterizations, described their skillsets, personalities and figured out their interpersonal connections. I also scripted nearly all of the complete run of G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero, and G.I.

Joe Special Missions.” G.I. Joe Special Missions was a second G.I. Joe comic book series that began in 1986. Hasbro had an ulterior motive for the comic book, as Hama elaborates, “The thing to understand, is that the only reason the comic existed, was so that Hasbro could produce four animated commercials for four specific issues in the first year’s run. The commercials were supposedly for the Marvel Comic, so by dint of the First Amendment, the network could not dictate how many seconds of animation it contained, the way they did with toy commercials. Of course, the comic commercial was really a stealth toy commercial, as it contained all the toys and figures Hasbro wanted to push that month. I designed the four covers that were used in the ads and I had a list of the characters and vehicles that had to be in that issue, so I had to make sure those issues coincided with the commercials. Other than that (which was highly beneficial to the sales, so how could I complain?), I had almost free rein with the stories—much more than anybody else had in working on a licensed property book. The big plus was that the people I worked with from Hasbro totally knew what they were doing and “got” it right away when we explained nuances of the com-

ic end. Bob Prupis, Kirk Bozigian and Ron Rudat where the guys I dealt with, and they were a fine and sterling bunch.” Herb Trimpe was integrally involved with both Marvel G.I. Joe comic series from the beginning. Hama explains, “On Special Missions, I am pretty sure Herb drew every issue and he may have even scripted one. He did script at least two of A Real American Hero issues.” Trimpe drew many of the early A Real American Hero issues as well, interiors and covers. Hama and Trimpe also produced a four-part mini-series in 1986 called The G.I. Joe Order of Battle, which was an exhaustive inventory/catalog of the characters and equipment in the G.I. Joe “universe.” Trimpe also illustrated a G.I. Joe and the Transformers mini-series, which was written by Michael Higgins. More recently, Trimpe has drawn the covers for the new IDW Publishing version of G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero, which is written by Hama. Hama and Trimpe have enjoyed a good relationship, as reflected by Hama’s reply when asked what he thought of Trimpe’s work, “That’s a terrible question to ask! Don’t you know that the comics community is like a close-knit small town where everybody is related? That’s like asking, ‘what do you think of your mother’s cooking?’ or ‘Do you think your

INSET: Cover to issue #171 of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero published by IDW featuring Trimpe art from a Larry Hama layout. Courtesy Grand Comics Database. LEFT: Splash page art from G.I. Joe Special Missions #26 by Trimpe and Danny Bulanadi. Courtesy of Rob Pickel.

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G.I. Joe: Order of Battle trade paperback wraparound cover by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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cousin Myrna looks too fat?’ In this case that’s okay, since I’ve known Herb personally for well over 40 years, know the family, etc, so on and so forth. I always liked and admired his work, and I have worked with Herbie on projects other than GI Joe, most notably Machine Man that was a collaboration between Herb, Tom DeFalco and Barry Winsor Smith. When I put together the anthology title Savage Tales, I called

upon Herb to do an aviationthemed story for it. I think Herb really settled into a nice groove with his art on G.I. Joe Special Missions. One of the things I love about working with Herb, is that I don’t have to explain what stuff is: ‘They get in a C-130’ or ‘they load up the Ma-Deuce’, or ‘Everybody piles into the back of the deuce-and—a-half.’” When asked what is the secret to the success of G.I.

Joe in comics, Hama pleads ignorance, “Beats me with a stick. If I knew, and I had control over it, I’d keep doing it.” Truthfully, though, Hama himself is likely much of the key to that success, breathing life into the action figures for the enjoyment of multiple generations. For his part, Trimpe has appreciated his opportunity to be involved with Hama and the Joes.

SPOTL I GH T ON

Godzilla With Doug Moench

The origins of Godzilla lie on the island of Japan. In 1954, Ishiro Honda directed the first Godzilla film, which depicted the giant reptilian monster as the fire-breathing by-product of nuclear radiation. Godzilla was a hit, both in Japan and abroad, and Toho Co., Ltd. produced a total of 28 films starring the “King of the Monsters.” Marvel Comics had a long tradition of publishing comic book stories based on monsters. So it is perhaps logical that during the late 1970s, when Marvel Comics was latching onto numerous licensed properties as a way of expanding their readership, they should turn to the infamous monster for inspiration. Doug Moench was the writer Marvel chose to pen the Godzilla series, as he explains, “I was up there [at Marvel] to talk about something else, maybe Moon Knight, but I saw

Stan Lee in John Verpoorten’s office, and Stan turned to me and said, ‘Hey, Doug, do you want to write Godzilla?’ I don’t know what prompted it, but I said, ‘Let me think about it.’ Then I went to Stan’s office and said, ‘Stan, I know I have this reputation of doing more adult-type writing than the typical super-hero thing, but if I were to do Godzilla, I would deliberately try to flip that on its head and do it for a younger audience, more like my son and all of his friends, who are Godzilla-crazy.’ I would try to do it in a way that adults could also enjoy, like the best children’s books, but I would definitely aim towards that age. And Stan hesitated a little bit, and then he said, ‘You know, you’re exactly right. Go for it.’” Rather than depict Godzilla wreaking havoc in his native homeland, Marvel chose to bring the monster to the United States, making his path of destruction more recognizable and relatable for its readers at the time. And unlike many of the other licensed properties, such as G.I. Joe and Indiana Jones, Godzilla was introduced into the Marvel Universe. What that meant was the creature would encounter the likes of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Fantastic Four in its trek from west to east coast. Moench explains the rationale, “One of the main goals was to ‘Marvelize’ it. Be true to Godzilla, but don’t forget this is Marvel Comics. I

think that was worked out as part of the deal with Toho. This was not like Star Wars. When Marvel got the rights to Star Wars, they had to do it just like the Star Wars universe and not have anything to do with the Marvel Universe. But Agents of SHIELD were perfect antagonists for Godzilla, pursuing Godzilla all over the place. And we’ve seen Godzilla stomp Tokyo again and again, but now we could set him loose on America. So much opens up if you did it that way. And why repeat what the movies have already done? We’ve seen him stomp Tokyo. Let’s have him trash Mt. Rushmore. It was very ripe and rich for a Marvelized version.” In fact, Toho gave Marvel a remarkable amount of leeway in adapting the character to comic books. Moench notes, “I assume Toho had final approval, but there was not one time where one change in anything was ever requested. I didn’t have to change anything, ever. All I can assume is they either loved it exactly the way it was, or they took the attitude, ‘Well, maybe these crazy Americans know what they’re doing,’ but, one way or another, they never asked for a change.” The only restriction from Toho was with regard to the villains. Marvel could do with Godzilla as they saw fit, but they could not use the other supporting characters from the Godzilla movies. Moench elaborates, “The deal did not include Mothra or any

ABOVE LEFT: Schematic of Red Ronin from page 7 of Godzilla #6 by Trimpe and Fred Kida.. Courtesy of Gareth Gaudin. ABOVE: Godzilla #1 by Trimpe. BELOW: Cover art to Godzilla #14 by Trimpe and Dan Green. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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ABOVE: Detail from page 2 of Godzilla #1 by Trimpe and Jim Mooney. Courtesy of Gareth Gaudin. BELOW: Art from Godzilla #17 story “Of Lizards, Great and Small” by Trimpe and Dan Green. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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of the villains. That’s why I had Toho-Godzilla-villain-like creatures, but I made them up. We couldn’t use the actual ones, but we could do ones in that vein. So, I made my own names, like Batragon.” One of the best-loved antagonists from the series was the brainchild of editor Archie Goodwin. Moench recalls, “[Archie]’s the one who said, ‘You know these giant robots?’ And I said, ‘Oh, yeah, you mean like the Shogun Warriors?’ And he said, ‘Yeah. You should think about doing a giant robot in Godzilla. Make up your own, create a brand new one, but that would be a good idea.’ Archie was the best editor ever. He never interfered, but would every once in a while offer an idea to ponder. He never forced you to do anything, but it was like, ‘Hey, have you thought of this?’ It was great.” The robot was Red Ronin, which debuted in issue #6 of Godzilla. Moench has a special attachment to Red Ronin, as he explains, “The guy who operates Red Ronin in Godzilla is my best friend from high school, Rob Takiguchi. [laughs] I put him in there, but in the comic, he was younger than he was when I met him my freshman year. I think he was about ten in the comic. But it’s him. We’re still friends to this day.” That Herb Trimpe was tapped to draw Godzilla is not really a surprise, given his predilection toward non-super-hero

stories and licensed characters. The appearance of Godzilla had changed over the course of the various films. Trimpe used the early, traditional appearance of the character as the basis for his monster in Marvel Comics. Moench does not recall his first meeting with Trimpe, but he does recall the most memorable one, “Herb called up out of the blue one day when we were doing either Godzilla or Shogun Warriors, I can’t remember which. I live out in the country in Pennsylvania, and he lives out in the country in upstate New York. The phone rings, and it’s Herb, and he says, ‘It’s a beautiful day. I was thinking, if I flew down the Hudson River Valley, I might be able to find your house in my airplane.’ And I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘Oh, you didn’t know? I’ve got this World War II biplane, and I just got my pilot’s license. I can fly on my own now, and I was thinking that would be a great flight to take.’ And I said, ‘Well, sure. There’s a little landing strip about two miles away. If you could make it there, just give me a call when you land.’ And he did, and I drove out there, and there it was, a beautiful green biplane. And there was Herb, with his long silk scarf, looking just like Enemy Ace. And then we drove back to my house and had

coffee and talked for a while, and then he said, ‘Oops, I’ve got to go now, before it gets dark. I’ve got to be able to land when I get back up there.’ It was a very short visit, but a very memorable one. He tried to talk me into going up, and I looked at this thing, and it was a totally open cockpit. And I said, ‘When did you get your license?’ ‘Oh, Tuesday.’ And I said, ‘Herb, I think I’ll pass this time.’ [laughs] It looked like such a flimsy thing. But, as he took off, you know how planes wiggle side-to-side to give you a wave goodbye? He did that, and there he goes off into the sunset.” As was often the case in the movies, Godzilla was depicted as a sympathetic character. The early stories introduced a trio of Japanese characters, who had studied and understood the misunderstood monster, and who endeavored to help their American counterparts. (One of the characters was the aforementioned Rob Takiguchi.) The role of these supporting characters waned over time, but the theme of an unfairly maligned creature persisted. One of the more compelling stories involved Godzilla trekking through the western states and literally stumbling upon, and unwittingly thwarting, a cattle rustling scheme, as the genres of science fiction met western. It also gave Trimpe a chance to bring to bear those skills he picked up early on

drawing covers for Kid Colt Outlaw. Moench and Trimpe made a good team, staying with the monster for two years, with Herb drawing all but two of the stories in the Godzilla’s 24issue run, and most of the covers. This tenure with the

character enabled a consistency in storytelling, even as the monster went from being captured by aliens to being shrunk to the size of a toy. As Moench notes, “[We did] the whole run except for a couple of fill-ins Tom Sutton did. I think it worked every way we did it.”

The success of the 2014 Godzilla film directed by Gareth Edwards suggests that the popularity of the creature has not waned, further evidenced by the variety of Godzilla comics produced since the 1977 debut of the Marvel incarnation. It seems Godzilla remains “King of the Monsters.”

ABOVE: Godzilla western splash page from issue #16 by Trimpe and Dan Green. BELOW: Most common reaction to Godzilla, from page 15 of issue #2 by Trimpe and Frank Giacoia. Courtesy of Gareth Gaudin.

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ABOVE: Color print by Trimpe featuring his best known characters. BELOW: Wraparound cover art to Transformers Universe #2 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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go nuts over this.” No, they go nuts over Transformers. Shogun Warriors, bye-bye. They had a great team, too, in Shogun Warriors. Cassell: I do think it made it more interesting because it combined both the robot and human characters. Trimpe: Yeah, I don’t know, maybe because there’s so much high-tech communication now where there’s no real organic contact. But to fall in love with a Transformer just because it talks. I just don’t see it. There’s no soul. There’s no life to it. They can write all the sob stories they want about what happens to this Transformer or what happens to that one. But in the Shogun thing, you’ve got actual people and kids. Oh, I don’t know if they were all kids, but there was the Asian kid and a woman was one of the drivers too. And maybe the scientist, the old guy was the driver of one of the Shogun Warriors. But they had personality. I don’t see the Transformers having personality; but people, they’re not interested in personalities. So you know you’re in a dead end to begin with. Cassell: Did you get models or action figures of the Shogun Warriors and the Transformers? Trimpe: I did. I had four of them. They’re about three feet high apiece. Cassell: Oh, wow. Trimpe: They’re still around. They’re at shows. But when I got them, they were direct from Japan and they weren’t allowed to be sold in the U.S. because they were considered a hazard for little

kids because of all the spring-loaded stuff they shot. They shot these little rockets that were about an inch long out of their fists and they shot things out of their chests and they were considered safety hazards for small kids. True, if some two-year old swallowed one of those little rockets, that would be the end of that, I guess. Cassell: They sound really cool. Trimpe: They were—they were great toys. They were excellent. And it’s the same with the Godzilla. I don’t know if the plastic Godzilla came from the same outfit or not, but I got a plastic Godzilla from Japan, equally as big. I’ve seen them around, they go for a good price now and it did things too; shot its fist and all. The Japanese, they don’t fool around. When they give you a spring-loaded toy, it just doesn’t go a foot and a half and then flop on the floor. These things will wing across the room. It’s like the dude in [the movie] A Christmas Story, “You’ll put your eye out!” So they, of course, went the way of BB guns. I don’t think you can buy those any more. Cassell: Yeah, I think you’re right. Trimpe: And everybody—I mean everybody had a BB gun when I was a kid. I had a friend and we actually would set up these two and a half inch plastic soldiers that you could buy cheap in a bag—in his house—down this long hallway. We set them up on a blanket, so they wouldn’t put a mark on the wall, unless you missed, which we did frequently. And while his mom and dad were out working, we’d be in that hallway, pinging away inside the house with a BB gun that’s only going to be ricocheting all over the damn place. That’s more fun than a video game, I’ll tell you right now. Cassell: How did you get involved with G.I. Joe? Trimpe: At that particular point, I didn’t have an airplane yet, but everybody knew that I liked airplanes. So, I knew Larry [Hama] pretty well and then when they got the license to do the title, it was like, “Trimpe likes to draw that kind of stuff so see if he wants to draw G.I. Joe.” That was basically it. It’s clear that my reputation for being able to draw technical stuff or military stuff was primarily the reason. Cassell: When you would tackle a project like G.I. Joe, a licensed property, did you get model sheets from Hasbro? To what extent were you expected to make it look like the action figures? Trimpe: I had at least one set of model sheets in one of those ringed binders. They’re 3-inch rings filled with stuff, which kept getting added to. It was horrendous, plus I was getting the toys which if I had any sense at all, I would have kept

them in their blister packs and taken them to a show and sold them at some major point. Instead, the kids played with them and I gave them away and so there’s hardly any of those left. But I had a small closet actually filled with boxed toys. I must have had about 80 action figures in a box I stored the stuff in. Some of them weren’t ever opened. I don’t know where they went. I donated a lot of that stuff. I used to take comics to the dentist’s office or the hospital, but they all went, the way that a lot of things seem to go if you’re not a collector. Cassell: If Hasbro was coming out with something new related to G.I. Joe, did they send that to you with the idea that it would end up in a comic book story? Trimpe: No. Larry was working very closely with Hasbro. I don’t know how much they oversaw the actual production of the book itself, but of course he was responsible for designing most of that stuff. As far as I know, the characters were primarily his. He may have designed some of the vehicles. But no, I don’t think there were any rules about, “Okay, we’re coming out with a new one so we want to advertise it and show it in a comic book story.” I don’t think the direction was that tight, to tell you the truth. Nobody told me, let’s put it that way. Cassell: Did you have to send the art for approval by Hasbro before publication? Trimpe: I don’t know. If they did, they never had any serious problems. Somebody may have looked at the work, but I kind of doubt it. I would be surprised, actually, if they didn’t, because if somebody were using my franchise, I would like to make sure that they didn’t show any of the characters in a way that wasn’t consistent with G.I. Joe philosophy as far as they were concerned. But I tell you, I think we had more control over the G.I. Joe philosophy than they did. The storylines, the characters and the story, interacting with one another in various ways—I think that was all Larry’s stuff. I don’t think they got involved in that at all. I think they might have looked at the story and said, “Yeah, this is fine.” But of course, if you’re doing a license, you’re paying for it. So there had to be some semblance of autonomy, otherwise it would get bogged down if it had to go before committees and all. For instance, I did the IDW G.I. Joe covers for a while and they did, I believe, pass those covers on to Hasbro. I think I remember one of them saying, “We’ve got to get this in because we’ve got to get it reviewed.” Never had a problem. Yes, they

did have a problem with one thing that I did on one of their covers, now that I think about it, and I think it was Hasbro that spotted it or maybe one of the people at IDW, but on one of the helmets of one of the G.I. Joe characters where they were portraying real soldiers or something, it had the letters “F”, “I”, “G”, “M”,and “O” which was, for short, called “FIGMO,” but it had a different meaning that came out of the Vietnam era, actually. Cassell: Did you create any new characters? Trimpe: At the beginning of the G.I. Joe stuff I was doing—I don’t know if it was parallel to what Larry was doing—but I think I was asked to design characters like Hawk and Duke and some of the other characters, because I did model sheets on about six characters. Cassell: Oh, really? Trimpe: Yeah, but I don’t mean fantasy soldiers with weird uniforms that don’t make any sense. My G.I. Joe characters—which I’ve had the model sheets for and sold them to collectors— were more standard. They were like standard G.I. outfits pretty much, with some distinguishing characteristic; a scarf or sunglasses. But it was mostly traditional military stuff and they were rejected. So I don’t know if that’s when they went

ABOVE: Cover of G.I. Joe Special Treasury Edition by Trimpe and Bob McLeod. BELOW: G.I. Joe Classified File on Scarlett by Trimpe and Al Milgrom from G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #1. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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RIGHT: Unpublished penciled page 22 from issue #17 of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones by Trimpe. Courtesy of eliotrbrown.com. BELOW: Cover to NFL SuperPro #8 which featured Captain America and the villain Crossbones. Courtesy Grand Comics Database. OPPOSITE TOP: Detail from page 13 of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones #15 by Trimpe and Vince Colletta. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Cover art to issue #15 of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones #15 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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to Larry or whether we’d both been working on something at the same time. Cassell: When you were drawing artillery or weapons, were you making them up or were you trying to follow something close to what they had? Trimpe: No, it was all based on their toys. That’s why a lot of the toys were taken out of the packages, so I could set it in front of me and draw the thing. There was no question that everything had to look like one of the toys they had, unless they were fighting the Russians or somebody like that or some organization that inadvertently, within the story, used the wrong modern day hardware. But, as far as the Joes went, everything that they used was an authentic part of their toy line. Cassell: You also drew the Indiana Jones comics for a while. Were you a fan of the movies? Did Marvel have rights to expand on the storylines (but not use the likenesses)? Trimpe: Loved the movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark especially. A tough act to follow. Don’t know about the Marvel rights one way or another. All I know is Eliot Brown and myself had just started to get rolling when we got dumped. No idea why, probably typical office bullsh*t, “No, we don’t

want this guy, we want my buddy, here. He’s hot and they’re not.” Cassell: As I recall, you had a chance to draw some airplanes in the Indiana Jones comics. Trimpe: When I was doing Indiana Jones, I did a page of Indy and Marion at an airshow in 1930 and all my favorite air racers from that time, going around the pylons. Eventually, I gave it to Eliot Brown, who was working on the story at the time. I said, “Here’s a souvenir from the stuff we were working on.” Cassell: You plotted (or co-plotted) a number of the stories you worked on, but you actually wrote an Indiana Jones story and a G.I. Joe story, as well as the Skywarriors stories in Savage Tales. How did that come about? Did you enjoy doing the writing? Trimpe: With Indy, Eliot was very open to ideas and had no problem when I suggested a story centered around 30s Hollywood. Unfortunately, my likenesses were not so good. [It was a] good story, though. With Joe, it was pretty much the same thing with Larry. He wasn’t the editor, but he was the boss, as he had designed all the characters and bios for Hasbro. He had extreme knowledge concerning the Joes, and had no problem giving up a story or two. Good stories as well, I think. Skywarriors, of course, was completely up to me, as that was the basic philosophy of Savage Tales—the contributor takes the ball and runs with it. It was fun, not bad stories, but a little overworked on the artwork. I have to say this: I’d rather write than draw. I believe I am a better writer than an artist. It’s the one place I can equal or knock the sh*t out of anyone in the business. I do good stories. ‘Nuff said. Not all of the licensed properties Trimpe illustrated were a resounding success. One licensed property Trimpe briefly contributed to was NFL SuperPro. Trimpe penciled issue #8 of the short-lived title, which featured a guest appearance by Captain America and the villain Crossbones. Another licensed property of a sort which Trimpe helped launch was U.S. 1, a series about a cybernetically enhanced trucker, which was designed to help promote a U.S. 1 truck racing set by Tyco. One of the big hits for The Byrds was the song “The Times They Are a-Changin” and at no time or place was that more true than in the hallowed halls of Marvel at the end of the 1980s.

SPOTL I GH T ON

IndianaWithJones Eliot Brown In 1981, George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars franchise, created a new action hero to pay homage to the movie serials of the 1930s. The hero was Indiana Jones, portrayed on the silver screen by actor Harrison Ford, and the idea spawned a total of four movies, a television series, books, video games, and theme park attractions. It also inspired several comic book series, including The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones by Marvel Comics, which debuted in 1983. The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones was not an adaptation of a George Lucas film, but rather an extension of the characters and concepts created in the first movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Eliot R. Brown was the Marvel Comics editor for The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, and he relates how Marvel acquired the license to extend the Indiana Jones stories beyond the movie, “We did and we didn’t. The hardest part was coming up with plots that didn’t affect the past nor predict the future. If we came up with an ‘obvious’ plot point, but it may or may not be in the upcoming movie, then it was out. That forced the writer, David Michelinie, to often re-write something. So whatever you did see in the books was often arrived at from the result of several tries’-worth of plots and scripts.” That said, Lucasfilm allowed Marvel a fair amount of

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ABOVE: Cover art to issue #16 of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. RIGHT: Detail from page 6 of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones #15 by Trimpe and Vince Colletta. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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leeway, with one important caveat. Marvel did not have the rights to use the likenesses of the movie actors in The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones. Aside from that, however, most of the restrictions on the Indiana Jones comics were imposed by Marvel, as Brown explains, “There were some clashes in the different levels of horror, blood or violence we could show in comics versus what the movies could get away with. And of course, there were the limits of the still panel of a comic versus the lively screen. The best example is when the Nazi’s heads melt away or explode— that sort of thing is hard to do

well in comics. That’s where the need for text to convey some horror lost in the tableau of a panel. In comics we really weren’t supposed to show blood. It was part of the Comics’ Code. But occasionally, there are some black splotches, which stylize it to the point of ‘art.’” Brown first encountered Trimpe when he started working at Marvel in 1974. That burgeoning friendship grew into an opportunity to collaborate in later years, as Brown recounts, “I ran into him several times. Herb and I hit it off with small conversations about old aircraft and aviation in general. I had always wanted to have Herb on the [Indiana Jones] book. Herb was perfectly upfront about wanting to do the pencils, inks and write his own and I was fine with that. I was making use of David Michelinie until the next Indiana Jones movie came out. This would allow him to take advantage of any blip in comic sales that might accompany a movie. My artist woes were many; shirkers, deadline panic, the use of sublime stand-ins (Steve Ditko and a host of inkers who exulted at inking him), using a dreaded “inventory” book (Fin-Fang-Foom’s stand-in!), it seemed like it would never end. Finally I was perhaps actually crying to Herb one day about the horrors of editing a cursed book and he agreed to come on ‘early.’ By that, he meant without inking or writing, but penciling. My editorial debt to Vinnie Coletta, for inking the Mazzuchelli inventory pencils, had not expired yet. That was how Vinnie inked a few Herbpenciled books.” Trimpe’s storytelling ability was well suited to the

Indiana Jones stories and Brown was impressed with the results. Brown recalls, “What’s interesting about Herb is that he is tall and ‘rangy.’ And that’s how he draws his characters, which I think looks terrific. His story-telling is superb and his ability to draw the ‘world’ is ideal. Finally, everything lined up for him to take over the whole book. I liked his story concepts, when he said, ‘Trust me, you’ll like it,’ I had no problem with doing just that.” Unfortunately, the partnership of Brown and Trimpe on The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones did not last long. Another editor took over for Brown and Trimpe left the book shortly thereafter, with a tenure of only a half dozen issues. Even so, those issues brimmed with the action, excitement, and humor that characterized the legendary films by Lucas.

SPOTL I GH T ON

Shogun Warriors With Doug Moench As the Godzilla series was drawing to a close, Trimpe and writer Doug Moench found themselves drawn into adapting another Japanese export to comic books, Shogun Warriors. Unlike their monstrous counterpart, however, the Shogun Warriors were based not on a series of movies, but rather a line of toys. Moench explains how he got involved, “I think I was bribed. [laughs] I came in and there were these three Japanese businessmen, and they had this big sack, and it in were all these toys. Some of them were gigantic, like Raydeen, one of the Shogun Warriors, it was about a twoand-a-half foot toy. And they started pulling them out and offering them. They had very limited English, and I had no Japanese whatsoever. At some point, I realized I was being offered the book that was going to be based on these toys. And I could be wrong, but I think at that time, as far as I knew, there was nothing but the toys from Japan. I don’t think there was a comic, or an anime, TV show, or a movie, or anything. But with the toys, each character had a little background description of combat tricks divided into five different things. So there was enough there to do an American version of it and that’s what we did.” The Shogun Warriors are occasionally confused with

the Transformers. In fact, issue #18 of Shogun Warriors featured a character called Megatron, which was the primary villain in The Transformers. But there are several key differences in the two series. Although both have Japanese origins, the Shogun Warriors predate their robotic cousins by five years. Both comic book series were based on a line of toys, and some Shogun Warriors could transform into other things, but the Transformers were of alien origin, while the Shogun Warriors were the product of the earthly “Followers of the Light.” Most importantly, though, the Transformers were autonomous robots, while the Shogun Warriors were operated by human pilots, chosen from among the best and brightest the world had to offer, to combat evil. In that regard, the Shogun Warriors had more in common with Red Ronin from Godzilla than they did the Transformers. The human operators of the Shogun Warriors were an American stuntman, a Japanese test pilot, and an oceanographer from Madagascar. In the debut issue, all three were involved in piloting the Shogun Warrior Raydeen, but in subsequent issues, they each were given their own robot, the other two of which were Combatra and Dangard Ace. Collectively, they were nicknamed the “Invincible Guardians of World Freedom.”

The Shogun Warriors comic book was designed to mirror the functionality of the toys upon which it was based, as Moench explains, “I came home with a load of the toys for my kids. Raydeen has got his spring-loaded fist, and you press the button and the fist comes flying out like a big bomb. And another one had rockets in its chest, so I could see what each of these characters could do from the toys, and I made damn sure that they did all of that stuff in the stories that I wrote. They were really great toys, for the time.

ABOVE: Detail from page 16 of Shogun Warriors #16 by Trimpe and Mike Esposito. Courtesy of Robert Razavi. BELOW: Splash page art from Shogun Warriors #11 by Trimpe and Jack Abel. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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TOP: Cover art to issue #19 of Shogun Warriors by Trimpe featuring the Fantastic Four. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. RIGHT: Detail from page 16 of issue #4 of G.I. Joe and the Transformers by Trimpe and Vince Colletta. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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The highest quality toys of that type that I’d ever seen.” Although the Shogun Warriors were technically based in the Marvel Universe, generally speaking, they seemed more independent than Godzilla. Only rarely did you see other Marvel characters involved in a Shogun Warriors story. Moench explains, “That was a function of the fact that with Godzilla, right off the bat we had agents of SHIELD being co-stars, so you had all these Marvel characters built-in. With Shogun Warriors, it was just every once in a while there was a guest star Marvel character.” Most notably, the last two issues featured the Fantastic Four. However, like Godzilla, Moench and Trimpe enjoyed great artistic freedom with Shogun Warriors and did all but one issue together. Notes Moench, “[It was] exactly the same thing [as Godzilla]. I assume there

was [script approval], but I was never asked to change anything.” The Shogun Warriors toys were produced in the United States by Mattel and the line included more than the three robots featured in the Marvel comic book. However, Mattel ran into difficulty with consumer protection groups complaining that the projectile parts were dangerous to small children. The objections led to design changes that made the toys safer, but less entertaining. The end result was that by the early 1980s, the Shogun Warriors had virtually disappeared from toy stores and newsstands. By all accounts, the Shogun Warriors should have been a far greater success than the Transformers, but as the saying goes, timing is everything. As for Moench, he appreciated his opportunities to collaborate with Trimpe, who regarded Moench as one of his favorite writers. Notes Moench, “I enjoyed working with Herb. It was different with Herb from all the other artists I’ve worked with. I never did get to work with Jack Kirby, but to me, Herb was the same kind of storyteller. He was very solid, but not flashy, not gimmicky. It was conventional storytelling. It was sort of like John Ford or Howard Hawks as opposed to Orson Welles. Very solid storytelling without calling attention to itself. You always knew exactly what was going on, but you were unaware of any storytelling, per se. Herb is a great guy. Not just a great artist, a great guy.”

T ransfor m ers Although not a favorite of his, it is worth noting that Trimpe

made a meaningful contribution to the Transformers. He drew interiors, covers, or both for over a dozen issues of Marvel Comics’ The Transformers in the mid-1980s. Many of those issues were later reprinted in digest form. He also drew covers for the four issues of The Transformers Universe, which featured profiles on each of the Transformers. In addition, Trimpe drew the limited series featuring the Mattel toy crossover, G.I. Joe and the Transformers, published in 1986.

R oboti x As a further footnote to the spotlight on Shogun Warriors, it should be noted that Trimpe worked on another comic book about robotic characters based on a toy. Robotix toys were sold by Milton Bradley from 1984 until 1994 and it was made into an animated television series in 1986. The comic book Robotix, of which there was only one issue, was roughly based on the early episodes of the series. What makes it novel is that it was written, penciled, and inked by Trimpe.

Changing with the Times There came a time in the early 1990s when Herb deliberately changed his drawing style to more closely align with the popular artists of the time. The result was interesting, but bore virtually no resemblance to the traditional Trimpe drawing style from the 1970s and 1980s. Still, his adaptability likely prolonged his tenure with Marvel and won over new fans. Alex Trimpe recalls the change in his father’s drawing style: “I read things on occasion about the last years at Marvel where his style

changed kind of dramatically. And I’m sure he’d say this himself, but he seemed the most into comic books then that I can remember; he was jazzed. First of all, he got anatomy books and studied anatomy. Because he was looking at art by Rob Liefeld and he was into it. He would say, “This is like Jack Kirby. This is very exciting stuff, but the anatomy is all wrong and what if you did it, but with correct anatomy?” I don’t really love all of that stuff, but it was nice that he was really into it.”

ABOVE: Detail from page 17 of Thor #415 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Jeff Jaworski. BELOW: Double page splash art from Avengers Annual #21 by Trimpe with inks by Charles Barnett and Brad Vancata. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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Avengers (#333), which was written by his G.I. Joe compatriot, Larry Hama, as well as Avengers Annual #21.

T he Mi g hty T hor Trimpe illustrated stories written by Tom DeFalco in several non-contiguous issues of The Mighty Thor between 1989 and 1991. He also illustrated two Thor Annuals, one written by DeFalco and the other by Roy Thomas. Noteworthy is The Mighty Thor Annual #16, for which Alex Trimpe did the layouts of a story about Thor of 2591, costarring the original Guardians of the Galaxy.

T he ‘N a m Trimpe illustrated four stories in the ongoing war comic series, The ‘Nam. He inked his own pencils in three issues and did the finished artwork over Alex’s layouts in the fourth. This genre was well suited to Trimpe’s new style and his fondness for war comics.

N ic k F ury , Ag ent of SH I ELD

Trimpe drew several different Marvel titles in his new style. What follows is a brief examination of each title and the contribution to it by Trimpe.

A ven g ers West C oast ABOVE: Cover of The ‘Nam #75, penciled by Trimpe in his later style and inked by Dan Panosian. RIGHT: Page 58 from issue #3 of Fantastic Four Unlimited featuring layouts by Alex Trimpe, pencils by Herb, and inks by Steve Montano.

Trimpe inked his own pencils in the Avengers West Coast stories he drew, which were written by Roy Thomas. He also penciled one issue of The

Trimpe’s association with Nick Fury dates back to when Fury was still a Sergeant and Trimpe drew several covers and at least one story about Fury and his Howling Commandos. As mentioned previously, he also drew several issues of the first iteration of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, in 1969. So, perhaps it was only natural that he returned to the title in the 1990s to draw several issues of the now space-bound Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, in his new artistic style.

F antastic F our U nli m ited Fantastic Four Unlimited was a quarterly 68 page title that began in March 1993. Roy Thomas and Herb Trimpe collaborated on all but one issue of the 12-issue series. Alex Trimpe did the layouts on the story “Back to the Negative Zone!” in issue #3. Roy Thomas notes, “I especially enjoyed Fantastic Four Unlimited, although I would have preferred to see Herb’s art in less of a Rob Liefeld vein. However, I understand why he did that... he did it well... and it certainly worked for him at the time.” Versatility is an important trait, particularly among comic book artists, and Trimpe demonstrated his ability to effectively adapt his drawing style. But artistic styles weren’t the only things changing at Marvel. And no amount of versatility or adaptability could fend off the effects of a change in leadership.

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Leaving Marvel As the saying goes, “All good things must come to an end.” In 1996, Marvel did the unthinkable and let Trimpe go, after more than 29 years in the Bullpen. In this interview, Trimpe talks about the circumstances that led to his leaving Marvel Comics. Cassell: I gather things changed at Marvel in later years. Trimpe: Yes, but Tom DeFalco was particularly supportive in keeping me working even before the sh*t hit the fan. I became a nonentity to most editors, but in their defense, there really wasn’t much work available during the dark days. Cassell: What happened at Marvel? Trimpe: After Cadence, it went downhill. When it got in the hands of Revlon, they just totally bled the company dry. Tom, when he was EditorIn-Chief, told me an interesting story. He was at a board meeting with all the suits from Revlon and they’re doing marketing ideas and so-on and so-forth. They didn’t really know anything about comics, so they were trying to sell it like you sell cereal. If something sells, you just sell more of it. So their idea was to do more spin-offs and more titles with the successful characters and just dump everything else, or at least sideline it or support it with the profits that were made off the books that were selling. And Tom said he was sitting there and he laughed because he thought the guy was kidding. He said, “Two weeks later, I was back as a writer again and I was out as Editor-In-Chief at Marvel Comics.” So that’s the kind of mentality that had started quite a while back and eventually, it led to Marvel’s Chapter 11. I always thought that one of the saving graces had to do with the numbers published and the philosophy that Stan had. Usually, if a book went one or two sales periods, two monthly periods, and it didn’t do well, it was cut. It was dropped or reduced somehow and they didn’t fool around with it. But what these guys were doing, in my understanding, they were supporting some of their lesser successful titles, with the money they were making off Spider-Man and the Hulk and X-Men. Now what that does is it stops the creative turnover. Everything goes stale. It’s like status quo, dead in the water. And I think it’s not

only numbers that sink you, it’s attitude. They had the corporate attitude that’s so prevalent today in so many corporations and that’s minimize. Get the most for the least. And any of the beneficiaries, cut them off as best you can and still keep them going for you. I think that they probably have learned their lessons since then, but I’m not really sure that any of the titles in the Marvel publishing end bailed itself out. I think it was the popularity of the movies that happened to be coming out along through that period that

ABOVE: Detail from page 18 of The Incredible Hulk #136 by Trimpe and Sal Buscema. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BELOW: Back cover of 1975 Marvel Con program by Trimpe.

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S POT LI G HT O N

The New York Times Article Excerpts from the January 9, 2000 Article O T H ER G EN ERAT I O NS: S T ART I NG O VER; Old Super-heroes Never Die, They Join the Real World By Herb Trimpe

ABOVE: Panel with the Thing from a reimagining of Marvel Two-In-One #9 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Brian Sagar. BELOW: Trimpe from the 1970 documentary “Herb Trimpe, We Love You.” Courtesy of Jon Riley.

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In 1996, after 29 years as an artist for Marvel Comics, I got fired—56 years old, two children still in college and no job. Things had started to get shaky two years before. The American comics industry was taking hits from changing tastes in the youth market —teenage boys had plenty of other entertainment options, mostly electronic—and Marvel couldn’t seem to lure the general population. Never mind that in Japan comic books sell in the millions to all ages. It also didn’t help that Ronald Perelman’s acquisition binge overextended the company, or that Marvel flooded the market with spinoffs and endless No. 1 issues, devaluing the collections of the faithful. By 1995, a new wave of artists and writers had supplanted the older pros, and my employer was giving me less and less work. I had joined Marvel in 1967, after a year in Vietnam and three years as a student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Stan Lee, then the editor in chief, hired me as a production assistant. I would draw comics, including the Incredible Hulk and the Fantas-

tic Four, over the next three decades—the last two from my home studio in Kerhonkson, 120 miles from Manhattan, where I live with my wife, Linda Fite, a writer (“Claws of the Cat”) I met at Marvel. I have kept a journal more for therapeutic reasons than anything else. These excerpts recount my journey, from Hulk to seventh-grade art teacher. March 15, 1995: F.F.’s been cut. Fantastic Four Unlimited is the only regular comic I’m drawing. With pages reduced, my work is cut in half. Called Nel, who apologized. He’d try to get me more work to meet the four-page weekly quota, but things don’t look good. There’ve been a bunch of firings. April 1: I’m beginning to hate drawing comics. It becomes harder and harder to compete with the new creative “stars.” Experience doesn’t seem to matter.

Nov. 20: F.F. Unlimited was canceled this week. No warning. Went down to New York yesterday. All the editors either in meetings or out to lunch. Talked to human resources at Marvel today. The lady seemed embarrassed. Said maybe I should consider retiring. I told her I wasn’t going to hold the gun to my own head. They’d have to shoot me themselves. With a family, I need the health care benefits and income. Dec. 15: No matter what I say or who I call or write at Marvel, I can’t get assigned to another book. I’ve tried reason, outrage, guilt trips and begging. Nada. I haven’t been able to scrounge together enough work to meet my monthly quota. The place is a shambles. When I press, they admit sales are down and so is morale. The scuttlebutt is that more layoffs are coming. Feb. 16: Marie called. They have “terminated her contract.” The blade swings closer. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop—right on my drawing board. May 1: Lo and behold, got a call from Marvel! A message about a job on X-Factor—breakdowns. Six months of nothing, and now this—a one-shot job of loose pencil drawings. The call is upsetting. May 13: Well, the wait is over. Today it came, via Federal

Express. I got fired by mail, effective June 8. No warning, no phone call. The letter was delivered with another package I was expecting from Marvel. You couldn’t tell what it was by the envelope. A stealth termination. Opened it up. Bang! Gotcha! Ha! I’ve been waiting a long time, and still they caught me off guard. June 10: It hits me today about this being the first weekday of no official job. It is the first time since before the Air Force 34 years ago. An interesting sensation. Like hanging over the edge of a cliff. But maybe I can fly.

LEFT: Trimpe at the 2001 National Convention in New York City. BOTTOM: Art imitates life in this illustration of a biplane from page 6 of Marvel SuperHeroes #16 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

June 26: Went to a job interview at a company that makes sports memorabilia and other stuff. They want an artist with experience in Quark and Photoshop and all that computer stuff. Hey, I can draw rings around your Adobe Illustrator! They don’t know or care. July 20: Met with the Eldred superintendent, Candace Mazur. I sat on the front steps for a few minutes before the meeting, and I noticed the sign in front was painted in the school colors—green and gold, the same as my high school. Their mascot is a yellow jacket, ours was a hornet. I was my usual overtalkative self, but she didn’t hold it against me. She offered the position. Seventh-grade art, remedial math and a class with special-ed kids. It feels nice to be wanted. I feel pretty good about teaching in a public school, like maybe I can make a contribution. That’s corny. Sept. 13: Monday morning. Man, it’s early. Forgot my lunch,

my wallet and my money. My lessons are organized, but my life isn’t. Bruce, the high school art teacher, says I should put my car keys and wallet in the fridge with the lunch bag. He’s got 30 years of teaching experience, so I listen to everything he says. The class came up with rules for conduct. Assigned a dictionary person. If an unfamiliar word arises, that person will look it up. We’ll keep a list. Also, introduced the riddle of the week. We get until Friday to figure it out. Winners get a fancy refrigerator magnet.

expecting that the next day the crash will come. You brace yourself for the impact, only to find that things have leveled out at treetop height, and you climb and enjoy the remainder of the flight. Dec. 1: Feeling very positive the last couple of weeks. Administration and staff very supportive. Got my varsity jacket today. Full circle. For the full text of the journal, see The New York Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/ library/national/010900edlife56-edu.html

Oct. 15: Teaching is like flying a plane. You leave school one day feeling like you’re spiraling down toward the trees,

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Pin-up art of the Recorder from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Courtesy of Jeff Jaworski.

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boosted interest in the characters and increased sales in the publishing area. I’m not sure that would have ever happened without the movies. Cassell: I think you’re right. Trimpe: But there are egos on all sides, even the nicest people. There’s the management, all the creative elements ... and really, the most important part of the comic book is still the printer. Cassell: That’s true. Trimpe: And they’re unionized and they don’t give a sh*t how important you think you are. All they want, if you’re on a schedule to get that book in, you’d better get it in or “we’re going to charge you a thousand dollars a day for each day that you’re late,” that kind of thing. That was very big back then. Cassell: So, how did you end up leaving Marvel? Trimpe: When I didn’t have any more work at Marvel, they considered my contract terminated. As I pointed out, I didn’t have a contract. I talked to a publishing lawyer, actually, and he said, “Once you work according to a certain unspoken agreement over a period of time, it is as if it were a contract.” I don’t remember what that period of time was. It just fell into place and I worked that way for almost 30 years with Marvel. Cassell: Did being under contract make a difference? Trimpe: It didn’t matter one way or the other. When I left Marvel, there was about an inch worth of paperwork to sign, to release them from any responsibility. They were very good in a way, because I was able to keep benefits, like health insurance, for another six months after I left. (It might have even been extended to a year, to tell you the truth.) Cassell: That’s good. Trimpe: In order to benefit from that, there were certain restrictions on the “separation agreement.” One of the things I had to agree to do, or not to do, is discuss any details of my working conditions or my separation agreement with anybody. No media, no public discussion. I wasn’t supposed to talk about it, or give opinions as to what I thought was going on or who I thought was not the nicest person. Cassell: I understand. Trimpe: I needed to do that in order to end it. Since I was on a quota, and I wasn’t getting work at the end, I kept getting deeper into the hole as far as work I owed. But my argument was “that’s your responsibility, not mine. If I’m employed and you don’t give me the work, that’s not my fault.” Cassell: Yeah, that’s true.

Trimpe: I think they deducted the amount that I owed from the separation money. But as far as the discussion went, I freely talked. I did an article for The New York Times about the whole thing and nobody came back to me. What’re they going to do, throw you in jail? I didn’t give a sh*t, one way or the other, what they did. And frankly, I was really happy to get the hell out of there. It was just not a nice place to work and that’s one of the things they didn’t want people to hear. Cassell: If there’s a clause like that in an agreement, it’s usually because there’s a reason. Trimpe: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It was stated that I was completely free to solicit work on an individual freelance basis from the editors. It’s just that the contractual agreement, the one that really never existed, was done. But it was not like, “Don’t ever come back again.” Well, they were filing Chapter 11 and so what was the point? The person you were talking to today could be gone tomorrow. Cassell: While you were working under this sort of non-existent contract, was it implied that you would not do work for any other company? Trimpe: No, but I have a sense of loyalty. I wouldn’t have done work for any other company. I know contractual employees were told, and it was written in their contracts, that they couldn’t do work for any other company. But nobody ever told me, “You can’t do work for another company.” To this day, I doubt if anybody in management—top person all the way down—understands the arrangement I was involved in. I think I was the last man standing in that kind of freelance/verbal contract arrangement. I just took that as an opportunity to depart and try to put as much space between me and comics as I could, which I really tried to do for about four years. And it obviously it didn’t work. Cassell: Any parting thoughts on Marvel? Trimpe: All those in the bullpen were just a great bunch, a close knit collection of lunatics in the beginning—Stan, of course, Marie, John, Roy, Tony, Morrie, Stu, Danny, Sol, Flo, Big John, Mary, and many others as the bullpen roster changed. I was lucky. There was life after Marvel. Before crossing that bridge, though, we take a moment to reflect on other things Trimpe was involved with during his tenure at Marvel, including advertising and promotional work, animation, and newspaper strips.

CH A PTE R TH R E E

Advertising & Promotional Trimpe worked on a number of advertising and promotional items, both for Marvel and for other companies, some of which licensed Marvel characters, including fan clubs. In some cases, the companies simply re-used previously published images drawn by Trimpe because of brand recognition, particularly when it came to the Hulk. Trimpe talks about some of his advertising and promotional work. Cassell: Did you ever do any advertising work? Trimpe: I did a Fritos ad for an ad agency. A friend had a friend who was an art director there. As I remember, I’d just moved in to this apartment on 89th Street and it was color work. I can’t remember if it was a mini-storyboard or—I think it was a one-illustration magazine ad with the Frito—was he a mouse or something? Cassell: Right! Trimpe: Something like that—Frito Bandito. I did a full color comp with markers and they liked it, and then I wasn’t too sure about the price. But when they saw it, they said, “Do a finish on it.” And there was a bag of Fritos that I had to illustrate, and you had to make it look like it was inside cellophane. That kind of thing is not always the easiest thing in the world. You really need to be an accomplished painter to do it, but I actually pulled it off somehow. Somewhere, I think I still have the freaking print ad for that. This was a Madison Avenue ad agency, and my friend and my ex-wife at the time, they had been college schoolmates and she married this guy Brendan who was an Irishman and he was an art director, handling that particular account. So I was in comics and he said, “Yeah, let’s get Herb to do it.” So I did it and I remember when they quoted me the price. The thing is, the ad was small. It was smaller than an 8x10 and I did it printsize, pretty much. Maybe I did it a little bit up. The whole ad had word balloons, lettering, a bag of Fritos, and a mouse on it. And I remember he said, “We’re paying 750 for this.” Now I just came into Marvel Comics where I was getting $35 a page or less, maybe $25 dollars a page. So for the size, as compared to a comic book page, I thought they were talking—I just came down from Peekskill, you know—$7.50. I thought it was $7.50 for this little color

illustration. So I get this check in the mail for $750 for something that I could have done ten of them while I was doing a comic book page, and I thought, “Holy sh*t. This is big money.” Of course in the late ’60s, that was quite a lot of money to get for a job, and it ain’t that bad now either, when you think about it. Cassell: You did some other work for UK comics, too, right? Trimpe: I’ve done some stuff overseas for an English company [Eaglemoss] that held licenses to Spider-Man and I did some short 10-page stories for them within the past six or seven years. Cassell: How did you get involved with drawing the Mars Attacks cards? Did they have specific scenes they wanted you to illustrate? Trimpe: I felt so out of my element with those. I am so glad I didn’t have to do the finishes or coloring. It was one of those jobs in which, at least for me, there is no level, not one shred at all, of believability. Cassell: Did you enjoy doing the Legends of NASCAR comic book? Trimpe: The first one, yes. And the second, as well. Especially the covers—Bill Elliot and Richard Petty in particular. After that it got to be a drag, no pun intended. Not that I lost interest, but I was trying to squeeze it in between Marvel stuff, and the pay wasn’t so good, and as a consequence it wasn’t my best work. I always tend to do that. Cassell: Did you ever get involved with any promotional things for Marvel? Trimpe: A promoter convinced Stan to do a show in Carnegie Hall, which we did. Cassell: The “Marvelous Evening with Stan Lee” at Carnegie Hall in January 1972? Trimpe: Yeah. I thought it was pretty good. It was kind of fun.

ABOVE LEFT: Cover of the 1968 Fantastic Four Big Little Book “The House of Horrors” with art by Trimpe. ABOVE RIGHT: Splash page from Captain America and the Campbell Kids by Alan Kupperberg, Trimpe, and Dan Green. BELOW: Debut issue of the 1991 NASCAR promotional comic, The Daytona 500 Story, with interior art by Trimpe.

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TOP LEFT: 1990 Marvel Universe trading card featuring cover to The Incredible Hulk #181, signed by Trimpe. Courtesy of Stephen Branson. TOP RIGHT: Cover to the promotional comic for the U.S. Department of Energy, Captain America and the Campbell Kids. BOTTOM LEFT: 1974 Book and Record Set based on The Incredible Hulk #171 by Trimpe. BOTTOM RIGHT: 1975 back cover advertisement from issue #23 of the Marvel UK comic The Super-heroes featuring the Hulk by Trimpe.

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Trimpe: No. Unless there was food there. Cassell: I know you’ve been going to a lot of conventions in recent years. Did you go to conventions back when you were still working for Marvel? Trimpe: Not really, no, I didn’t. There was one that they held in the Commodore Hotel, next to Grand Central Terminal on the corner, somewhere on 42nd Street I think. I think I went maybe once or twice and that was it. Cassell: The reason I asked about the convention was that you did the back cover for the ’75 Marvel Con program. It shows the Hulk sitting on the back of a caboose. Trimpe: Oh, yeah! I remember that. The convention scene [then] was an entirely different thing. It didn’t seem like there were that many people there, nobody was drawing for money. Oh, and one [convention], I had to leave because my wife was having a baby at the time, my son Alex. I think it was early in the morning the next day, now that I think about it, but Linda was in labor and had to go to the hospital. The only [other] appearances I did were something set up by Stan. Cassell: Like what? Trimpe: They had to do with media events. We were at some sort of a fundraiser in New York that Stan got contacted about and I can’t remember what the exact event was, but there were artists up there and there were fairly wealthy New Yorkers who had their kids there. It was in a hotel on the top floor and I think we had dinner and all. And then I went to Washington, D.C. with him once. The Carter Administration had a fundraiser on the White House lawn. Jimmy wasn’t there, but his wife was there and his kid was there. So we went in and we did drawings for kids—I don’t know if they were people off the street or whether they were Senators’ and Congressmen’s kids or who the hell they were, but we did sketches for kids. Cassell: When you did the thing at the White House, did they have people dressed up as the characters? I’ve seen pictures of Stan with Jimmy Carter’s daughter and the Hulk and Captain America. Trimpe: I think they did, yeah, but I don’t think that we brought them from New York. Maybe Stan did arrange it, I don’t know, but I thought it was a separate, independent acting group that was just hired to do that, like the people at Disney. Cassell: It probably was.

Trimpe: And then I did a show in London with Stan once, too. I happened to be living there at the time and he came to London, and they got in touch with me, and said, “Come on up to London, do this show with Stan.” So while Stan narrated this one little bit of shtick we did, I drew on an overhead projector, sketches of the characters for the audience. It was in Prince Albert Hall. You’re making me think of all these places I’ve been—Prince Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, the White House—all because of comics.

Results of Fleer Corp. from the 1992 Marvel Annual Report as told by Gambit and the Fantastic Four, rendered by Trimpe.

Advertising and promotional work wasn’t the only way in which Trimpe branched out. He also tried his hand at animation.

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C HA PT E R F O UR

Animation Years ago, when an aspiring artist went to art school, there were typically several career options available. Some artists went into illustration, a la Saturday Evening Post. Others gravitated toward newspaper strips or comic books. And some went into animation. Over the course of his career, Trimpe tried his hand at them all. In this interview, Trimpe talks about his experience bringing art to life with animation.

TOP LEFT: Detail from animation cel for the Hulk Honeycomb cereal television commercial designed by Trimpe. TOP RIGHT: Background drawing of Toothopolis by Trimpe for the Crest Team and the Cavity Creeps television commercial advertising campaign for Crest toothpaste. RIGHT: 1980 model sheet of the Crest Team jets by Trimpe. OPPOSITE TOP: A very civilized Hulk eating Honeycomb cereal with a spoon in this presentation drawing by Trimpe. Courtesy of Bill Peckmann. OPPOSITE CENTER: Presentation cel for the Hulk Honeycomb cereal television commercial based on the design by Trimpe. Courtesy of Bill Peckmann. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: Pencil drawing of the Hulk by an animator based on the design by Trimpe.

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Cassell: You did some animation work in the mid-’70s? Trimpe: Yeah, I did. I had a friend, Bill Peckman, up at SVA. He liked comics. We were all EC readers, not buyers necessarily, but we were into EC and Jack Davis and Wally Wood and all that stuff, but he wound up in animation. There was an outfit called Zander Animation Studio in New York, run by a guy by the name of Jack and his son. He was a great old guy that lived in Connecticut. When they needed someone to work on a campaign for Crest—I don’t know if it was a rush or they couldn’t find anybody or what—but they wanted it in comic book style, so Bill, my friend, suggested to Jack that he knew a guy that worked in comics. So I did seven storyboards

for one thirty-second commercial featuring The Crest Team versus The Cavity Creeps. I did the storyboards and I did the backgrounds for most of those commercials. Cassell: I loved those commercials. Did you draw the background and then somebody else painted it? Trimpe: No, I drew the backgrounds and I colored them. I made a lot of money on that, so that’s when I bought my airplane. Even then they were paying three to five thousand dollars for the work I was doing. Now, it would probably be triple that amount. But the work was easy, storyboarding was like doing comics. It was a piece of cake. I came up with The Crest Team and The Cavity Creeps. Somebody pointed out

that you can find them on YouTube, but they’re not very good copies. They were very short commercials. They might not even have been 30 seconds, but I think they were. It was kind of cool. Cassell: Did you do any of the individual drawings for the cels? Trimpe: No, I didn’t do any of the animation cels. If you look at them, they’re very crude, but when it’s all set in motion, you don’t notice it. Cassell: Yeah, that’s true. Trimpe: It’s amazing. I looked at some of those cels. They ink and then they put the color on the back of the cel. You kind of have to work in reverse. And just the line itself, the ink line that defined the shape and the character, was just crude as hell. They looked like they did it with the end of a matchstick or something. But you do ten or 24 frames a second, it’s amazing. Cassell: The other one that I’ve heard you associated with was the Post Honeycomb Hulk commercial. Trimpe: Yeah, I did one of those. I think I just did storyboards on those. I don’t think I did any background work at all. In fact, I think my friend Bill did the backgrounds. Cassell: It bears a resemblance to your Hulk, but it’s simplified. Trimpe: Somebody showed me a copy of a cel that they had at a show and said, “Did you do this?” I said, “Jeez, I don’t know.” But the more I looked at it, the more I realized it was my style. It was fun and it paid a lot better than comics did. Cassell: Did you get the artwork back from the commercials? Trimpe: They sent me everything back [from the Crest commercials]. When I sold all my comics to a dealer in the ’80s out on the West Coast, I sold all the cels too. I had a box that was eight feet long, filled with cels and the background art. Cassell: Oh, wow. Trimpe: I do have some remnants yet. I have some layout animation paper with some sketches on it and a couple of backgrounds that were never used, which are just in pencil. But I was a total idiot. I felt bad until I heard what some of the other guys were doing with their artwork. But the thing is, at the time, it was worthless. There was no market for it. The market grew after the guys got rid of it. And you can’t criticize the dealer or the collector that buys it because they’re taking a chance. They don’t have a crystal ball that says, “Hey, this stuff is going to be worth millions in 30 years.” Nobody knew that. I wouldn’t have to work now if I had all my stuff...

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Peckmann on Trimpe An Interview with Bill Peckmann

You might not recognize the name Bill Peckmann, but if you grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, you would certainly recognize his work. Peckmann was trained at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City, developing lasting friendships with Trimpe, John Verpoorten, and Stu Schwarzberg. But while his peers gravitated toward a career in comic books, Peckmann made a name for himself in animation with Phil Kimmelman & Associates (PK&A). In this interview, Peckmann talks about his friends and his work with Trimpe on some classic television commercials. ABOVE: Detail from Schoolhouse Rock animation. BELOW: Animation cel from television commercial advertising campaign for Crest toothpaste featuring the Cavity Creeps, based on designs by Trimpe. Courtesy of Chuck Costas.

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Dewey Cassell: Did you meet Herb, John, and Stu at SVA? Bill Peckmann: John Verpoorten and I became friends in high school (School of Industrial Art in Manhattan) in 1956 and stayed the best of friends until his very untimely death in 1977. It was our mutual admiration for the Duck Man, Carl Barks, which got the friendship ball rolling in school. (We didn’t even know Barks’ name at that time.) John and I later made annual trips to

Southern California to visit the very gracious Carl Barks and his wife Gare. Being the fanboys that we were, John and I always thought we had died and gone to heaven. Cassell: How did you end up in animation when John, Herb, and Stu went into comics? Peckmann: When we all finished our two year “Cartooning” course at SVA, our portfolios had both print and animation samples in it. At that time in 1961, there were more animation studios than comic book houses in NYC. It was also around this time that John Verpoorten, who was torn between going into comic books or following his dream of becoming a radio announcer, grabbed his reel-to-reel tape recorder and screwed up his courage and interviewed the one and only Jack Davis. We found out that Jack was having a hard time finding comic book work, Atlas/Marvel was only paying him ten bucks a page. If that was happening to one’s idol, what would we be up against? It made the comic book field look pretty bleak in those days. Also back then, the animation industry had a pretty good in-house training system for us wet-behind-theears kids, which made it a doable way to earn your stripes of becoming a pro. Herb and Stu were a year ahead of John and me at SVA. When Herb finished school, he went on to become an apprentice for our comic book art teacher Tom Gill. Tom ran a shop that supplied art to Western Publishing. The book titles were the Lone Ranger, Cheyenne, etc. When Herb left Tom Gill studios to go into the Air Force in in 1962, John took his place at the studio. Another reason for me choosing animation, besides that comic books were in the doldrums in those days, was that the form of animated cartoon drawing came easier

to me than sweating bullets over getting all of those super muscles right!!! Cassell: How did Herb get involved with the Hulk Honeycomb and Crest television commercials? Peckmann: As for Herb getting involved in the Hulk Honeycomb commercial, I’m pretty sure that we, the production animation studio Phil Kimmelman and Associates, recommended Herb to the ad agency to design the spot and then Herb got to do it. I don’t know how Herb got involved with the Crest Toothpaste commercials. The advertising agencies always gave approval to who was going to design a commercial. It was really fun in those days when the ad agencies went looking for high profile cartoonists, designers and illustrators to design their TV animated commercials. We would get to work with a lot of our idols. You can’t believe how cool that was; it was like studio musicians doing sessions with big name singers. Cassell: When were the commercials done? Peckmann: The commercials were done in the 1970s. Hulk/Honeycomb was done first. It could’ve been the first TV commercial Herb worked on. Print cartoonist Herb Trimpe took to the mechanics of cartoon animation like a duck to water. Cassell: What studio produced the Hulk commercial? Peckmann: The Hulk spot was done at PK&A. (If I remember correctly, actor/retired prize fighter Rocky Graziano was the voice of the Hulk.) Cassell: How did you get the license to use the Hulk in the Honeycomb commercials? Peckmann: The ad agencies took care of all of those legal steps. Cassell: What role did Herb play in the Hulk commercials? Peckmann: We took care of the production storyboards, Herb then came in with character designs, he would also do color models and pencil layouts, but from there on the animation studio would do the actual animation and take it to the final finished color film. Cassell: How many Hulk Honeycomb commercials were made? Peckmann: Only the one. Cassell: How did the Crest commercials come about? Peckmann: Herb started designing the Crest characters and commercials for Zander [Animation Studio in New York] as a freelance designer before the ad agency pulled the campaign from

Zander and came to us, PK&A, to do two of the spots. I can’t remember if the agency went back to Zander again. Cassell: Which Crest commercials did you do with Herb? Peckmann: We did two Crest spots with Herb at PK&A, they were “Crest Fighters” (Crest tube jet planes) and “Crest Submarine”. These were produced after Herb had already done his first Crest commercial(s) with Zander. After we closed our doors at PK&A in the early 1980s, I gave all of the production cels of the two Crest spots to Herb. Cassell: What guidelines was Herb given when it came to developing the Crest commercials? Peckmann: If there were any guidelines given to him, they were taken care of when Herb started with Zander. Herb understood the production steps of animation, character design, storyboards, lay outs and doing backgrounds, so well! Cassell: Did Crest have to approve the storyboards? Peckmann: The agency would come to us with an agency storyboard, which was used to sell the idea of the commercial to their client, in this case the Crest people. We would then take that board and turn into a “production” board, a board where all animation staging and scene breakdowns were thought out completely so that these boards would become the basis for the upcoming layout drawings of the commercial. Cassell: Did Crest ever have any objections? Peckmann: The ad agencies would approve every step of animation, so if there were objections, they would be corrected and then on to the next step. The steps were storyboarding, character designs, pencil layouts, animation, pencil test, doing the color, inking/xeroxing cels (in those days), and finally filming/shooting the final color version. Cassell: Well, they were great commercials, very creative. Peckmann: Thanks. Cassell: On a personal note, you worked on Schoolhouse Rock, right? (I loved that show. My wife can still sing the songs.) Peckmann: Thanks. They turned out to be our pride and joy. We didn’t know it at the time, but they are what everyone remembers the most of our work! Just as it is gratifying to see your work on television, most artists also long to find work in the funny pages.

Character designs by Trimpe for the supporting cast in the Hulk Honeycomb cereal commercial. Courtesy of Bill Peckmann.

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LI S T O F

Crest Commercials

ABOVE LEFT: Animation cel of the Crestmobile as designed by Trimpe. Courtesy of Chuck Costas. ABOVE RIGHT: 1980 model sheet of the Crest Kids and dog by Trimpe. BELOW: Animation cel of the Crest Team as designed by Trimpe, encouraging viewers to brush regularly with Crest toothpaste. Courtesy of Chuck Costas.

There were at least ten different Crest Team and the Cavity Creeps commercials produced in the 1970s and 1980s. The initial commercial was 60 seconds in length and the remaining commercials were 30 seconds. Some of the footage, such as the Crestmobile racing to the rescue, was reused in multiple commercials. The commercials did not have titles and the exact release dates are not known, so they are listed here in approximate chronological order with a brief description of the “plot” of each commercial: 1. The Cavity Creeps float up on rafts to attack Toothopolis and the Crest Team are called in their headquarters to help, arriving in the Crestmobile. This was the first Crest Team commercial and the first appearance of the Cavity Creeps and their mantra, “We make holes in teeth!” The early commercials did not in-

clude the Crest Boy or Cresty the dog. 2. The Crestmobile is patrolling at night and discovers the Cavity Creeps attacking the Wall of Teeth, chasing them down as they try to escape on motorcycles. 3. A giant Trojan birthday cake enters Toothopolis, filled with Cavity Creeps, who are defeated by the Crest Team. 4. The Crest Boy sees the Cavity Creeps enter Toothopolis through a manhole cover and alerts the Crest Team, who brush them away down the manhole. First appearance of Crest Boy and Cresty the dog. 5. The Cavity Creeps use catapults to get on top of the Wall of Teeth, but the Crest Boy calls the Crest Team on the Hot Line and they come to the rescue in the Crestmobile. 6. The Cavity Creeps attack Toothopolis in aircraft, but the Crest Team launch Crest Fighters to repel their attack and the Creeps parachute out saying, “Foiled by Crest, but we’ll be back!” This was one of the PKA commercials, entitled “Rockets” by PKA, and the first that featured the Crest Girl. 7. The Cavity Creeps attack Toothopolis by boat and the

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Crest Team launch the Crest Gel Sub, destroying their boat with a gel toothpaste torpedo. This was the other PKA commercial, entitled “Sub” by PKA. 8. The Cavity Creeps use jet packs to attack Toothopolis and the Crest Team responds with the “All-New Advanced Formula Crest” hovercraft. 9. The Cavity Creeps use scuba gear to attack Toothopolis and the Crest Team fights back in an “All-New Advanced Formula Crest” hydrofoil. 10. The Crest Team uses a battery of Crest Advanced Formula Gel to fight off the Cavity Creeps, who attack Toothopolis after spying on them with binoculars. The last three commercials were evidently made after the 2 PKA ads.

Television commercials created for Procter & Gamble by the D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles advertising agency, including the Crest Team ads, were digitized from the 16mm preservation film prints and are held in the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at the Duke University Libraries at http:// library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adviews_crest_70s/. The Crest Team was also used on stickers, t-shirts, and film strips.

CH A PTE R F I V E

Newspaper Strips For many comics artists, the epitome of success was illustrating a comic strip. A comic strip meant steady employment and greater recognition, since newspapers were read by millions of people, predominately adults. It was something many comic artists aspired to and Trimpe was no exception. In this interview, he talks about one local strip he did and another one that almost made the big leagues. Cassell: Did you ever do any newspaper comic strips? Trimpe: Yeah, I did a strip for a Long Island newspaper, Newsday, and they had an offbeat approach. They did a lot of local news and I don’t know if they were soliciting, but they had a page that was really a showcase for comic artists and you could do anything you want with it. Somebody must have talked to me, maybe Stan came around the office and said, “Anybody want to get involved in this?” But comic strips were always my prime objective, even though I didn’t do a whole lot about it once I was working at Marvel. I did a strip for them, about twelve installments, Sunday installments. Somewhere, I still have the originals to that. It was called The Eternal Soldier. It was in the ’70s, and I had gotten back from Vietnam, and I liked military stuff, liked the hardware and especially airplanes. But somehow, I was compelled, I guess just by the popular

thought at the time, so it was generally an antiwar commentary. You’ll look like a fool if you try to do anything that looks like it’s pro-war, you know? So it is kind of an anti-war comic strip during a period after everything has collapsed. They were done in a large size. I think they’re even bigger than 11 by 17. I don’t know if you ever saw it. Cassell: No, but you’ve intrigued me. And it was a weekly? Trimpe: Yeah, it was a weekly and there were other artists that were contributing at the same time. And then when the people that I was working with, the other artists who were working concurrently, when we stopped, another batch would get in there, so they did quite a bit of stuff over a fairly short period of time. Cassell: And you wrote and drew it? Trimpe: Yep. It was nice, but it’s not the kind of thing that a major national newspaper would pick up.

ABOVE: Detail from the “Chicken Scratch” newspaper strip created by Trimpe. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. LEFT: First installment of the newspaper strip “The Eternal Soldier” created by Trimpe. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.

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Newspaper cartoon from volume 1 of the Herb Trimpe sketchbook “Odds and Ends” commenting on personality types.

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Cassell: Had you ever thought about doing more comic strip work? Trimpe: Sure. I did a comic strip when things were failing at Marvel, I was going back to school and all that. I did six weeks of dailies and the appropriate number of Sundays to cover that period and it was called Chicken Scratch, I think, or something like that. It was a humorous strip about a minor league baseball team. I still have a lot of those, actually. It was good. It was pretty funny. In fact, who’s this syndicate that handles Shoe and some of these other offbeat ones? Cassell: Is that King Features? Trimpe: No, not King. King sent it back without opening it. Not United, they tend to do offbeat stuff that becomes very popular. But I got a call, or a letter, after a few weeks from a woman who was in the Reviewing department and she said, “We all agree at this level that you’ve got a possibility here.” And she said, “We’ll let you know in about a month how it goes, but they’re going to send it up to the next level, the next group of people a little higher up the ladder to take a look at it.” And then she came back and she said, “Mmm, they’re not interested now,” but she was very encouraging. She said, “Don’t give up on this. Their sum opinion was that it needed further development.” I don’t know what further development is—especially when you read some of the stuff they print, except for the older strips. How far do you develop a comic strip? The gags have to come up one day at a time, and you’re also building story at the same time, and introducing characters. The manager of the minor league team—I think it was called Chicken Scratch because the name of the team was The Chickens and the manager of the team

was really disheveled—not suggesting that he was a drunk or anything, but he always needed a shave and was always pissed off at the kids, the players. But the thing is, since it’s the minor leagues, he didn’t make a lot of money, so he moonlighted. He was also a local cab driver and sometimes he’d get calls in the middle of the game to pick up a fare and he’d have to leave. Cassell: Oh, that’s great! Trimpe: It was pretty good. It was a good idea and like I say, the syndicate was very interested. The woman who handled the process, she was very enthusiastic. She thought it was really nice, really good. And I tell you, it was better than Blondie. I can tell you that right now. Maybe not in the old days, but much better than it is now. The other thing about the manager was he was divorced from a real bitch lady, who was constantly coming to interrupt practices. She’d show up in the middle of a game, because his alimony checks were late. So, you know how prudish comic strips are for some reason, when everything else is going to hell. It might have been the subjects like alimony that just rubbed people the wrong way. Maybe they said, “Naw, we can’t be talking about alimony in a family comic book section.” And one of the players was a total womanizer, screwing up all the time because he was talking to some good-looking girl in the seats, totally distracted from the game. It had all that kind of stuff in there, it was pretty good. Cassell: It sounds great. Trimpe: Yeah, I could have maybe pursued it, but I never touched it again. At that time, I probably needed a wife like Stephen King had, that pulled Carrie, or whatever that book was that he couldn’t sell, out of the trash and made him stay with it until he finally sold the thing. Cassell: I know it’s hard to get a syndicate to pick up a strip. Trimpe: Oh, yeah. It’s very difficult. I was hanging up the rejections on the wall. There’s not that many syndicates, but there were a half a dozen or eight or something like that. Everybody else responded, every single one except King. As far as writing and storytelling goes, I’ve dabbled in all of it, but I don’t have much of a follow-through. I’ll just get to the end of a certain point and just don’t want to go back to it again, you know? Cassell: I can understand that. Trimpe: And then I start thinking about all the negative stuff like “supposing you did sell this,

do you really want to get trapped in this for the next year or two or three or four, whatever?” Nah, it’s a character deficiency here somewhere. I just have a problem with it, I really do. Cassell: Well, I have heard a lot of artists say that the schedule for producing a strip is just grueling. Trimpe: It’s horrible, yeah. If anybody would have been good, schedule-wise, it would have been me, especially when I was younger. I was always good at making deadlines and I could budget my time and I never let a thing slide, for any reason, whether I was sick or not. But I’d probably have a lot more problems with things like that nowadays, when I really should have the discipline now because every penny counts. You know, when you’re making steady money, it doesn’t matter so much. I had some in a portfolio when I went out looking for a job at The Savannah College of Art and Design. Cassell: Did you ever do any other work for newspapers? Trimpe: Oh yeah. There was a paper that my exwife worked for, the Times-Herald Record, which was the three-county paper and had a couple of hundred thousand circulation. It was one of the bigger papers outside of New York and I’ve done article as well as illustrations for her paper. I did illustrations for it on a regular basis, some of which I still have. I think they paid seventy-five bucks for an illustration and they paid seventyfive bucks for an article. Cassell: Were they comic-related illustrations? Trimpe: Yeah, they were like cartoons. Some were more serious, but I did them all like cartoons. Most of it was just straight comic book style artwork. Some was like funny animal stuff, others were political with cartoon characters, some were spot illustrations. I remember I did a cosmetic illustration for the Sunday paper, in the

Record, in the Arts and Entertainment section of that paper. It was an article on female cosmetics so I drew a woman with a face, makeup on, lipstick tubes, eyebrow pencils and things like that, and that was in color. A number of them, I didn’t color. The Times-Herald Record was a tabloid format, like the Daily News, but they weren’t as sensational. It wasn’t like a Daily Mirror or anything like that. It was a little more serious tabloid. And there was a Sunday section that they had which I did color covers for, as I remember. Not to mention the odd illustration for a local school or the odd t-shirt design for the local run. In more recent years, Trimpe wrote and drew an internet-based comic strip called “Firehawks,” which debuted in 2012. Not surprisingly, the strip is aviation themed, “forged in the flames of World War II,” and one of the characters bears a striking resemblance to a certain artist who used to draw the Hulk.

ABOVE: Humorous newspaper strip “Chicken Scratch” created by Trimpe in which the baseball team coach is also a taxi cab driver. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. BELOW: Page 3 from the online WWII aviation newspaper strip called “Firehawks” by Trimpe. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.

The newspaper strips did not prove to be a viable alternative for Trimpe, so what remained was what to do after Marvel.

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C HA PT E R S I X

After Marvel When he left Marvel Comics, Trimpe found a new calling as a teacher and began passing on his experience and expertise to a new generation. But it wasn’t long before the call of his fans brought him back to comics, doing commissions and attending conventions across the country. In this interview, Trimpe talks about how he got away from, and back into, comics.

ABOVE LEFT: Trimpe and wife Patricia at the Baltimore Comic Con. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. ABOVE RIGHT: Commission drawing of the Hulk nemesis the Abomination by Trimpe. Courtesy of Thomas Suhling. BELOW LEFT: Volume 1 of the Herb Trimpe sketchbook “Odds and Ends.” BELOW RIGHT: Trimpe surrounded by eager fans at a comic book convention. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.

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Cassell: What did you do when you left Marvel? Trimpe: I went back to school, I got a B.A. and an M.A. in Education and taught for two years. I did a couple years at local community colleges and then I taught in public school for two years. And the commute was pretty long, but it was fine. When I got the job at Eldridge Central School District, up in Sullivan County, New York, I was 60 at that time and I had just spent almost four years back in the educational system, collecting Unemployment and getting money from the New York State G.I. Bill. And I went from

getting up when I wanted to, basically, to getting up at 5:30 in the morning, grabbing my lunch in the dark, which I’d prepared the night before, and then going out the door and driving for 55 minutes to school. And I didn’t mind it at all. School was out, of course, around 2:30 and about the time you finish up, I was getting home around 4:00 or 4:30 and I’d go out and do my jog or if there was any kind of pressing issues with school stuff I had to do, I’d finish that up, and I did that for two years. But I had no problem making the switch after working in comics, previously, for 30-plus years. I amazed myself, actually, when that happened. But when I started to do more commissions, I didn’t really have time to do them full-time because of the school job, so I quit the school. I quit after two years, but that was a good deal. The money was good, there’s all kinds of benefits. The Teachers Union is still one of the best surviving unions in the country. And so the deal was pretty good,

and I liked the work. I liked the teaching, basically. Cassell: Did you teach Art? Trimpe: I taught grades 7 through 12 Art, I taught Remedial Math to eighth graders, I taught Topography, and I taught Special Education to three kids. Cassell: Oh, wow. Trimpe: I had three special ed kids in a daily class. One of them particularly couldn’t handle a classroom so they sent him to vocational school, and he couldn’t handle that so they sent him back to me. There were some difficult times, but we did well. I’m not certified to teach special ed. But it’s a tiny district, so the head of the special ed department could authorize another teacher in exceptional cases to handle special ed kids, so that’s what I did. They’re within reasonable distance themselves from the school and they would visit once in a while. Cassell: It sounds like you taught quite a diverse group. Trimpe: Yeah, we had everybody. It was freakin’ awesome. I just met a kid in New York [at a convention]; a guy came in, a young man, and he comes up to the table and with this big smile, he said, “Hey, Mr. Trimpe, I’m Matt Donnelly. Remember me from Eldred?” And I said, “Damn!” I said, “Matt, look at you!” Oh, my God, I couldn’t believe it. I talked to him for quite a long time. He had friends there, he put me on the phone with one of the other kids that was in the class. This guy’s graduated and he’s 28 years old now. So that was quite an amazing thing. The weird thing is that I ran into three former students at the show in New York, two others besides himself. Cassell: Wow! What are the odds of that? Trimpe: Yeah, the other two went to Poughkeepsie Day School, which is a private school where my wife taught. I did a sixteen-week workshop on Wednesdays there, teaching comic book art, and two of the girls, unbeknownst to each other, were at the show. One of them was in costume in sort of goth, purple and black. She was at the show and another one was working with one of the people that ran a booth. And they both came over at different times, it was really amazing. Cassell: Well, that’s great. Trimpe: So I get the benefit, like a lot of longterm teachers, of seeing at least a couple of kids. I’ll tell you, teaching is awesome. I remember my dad driving me to the train station in the morning after high school, when I was commuting to School of Visual Arts in New York. And he worked

in the Peekskill School System as a custodian. But he said, “Herbie, why don’t you become a teacher? It’s a good job, you got all kinds of benefits.” I said, “Nahhh, I’m going to be a cartoonist.” It’s funny. Cassell: Did you ever work with younger kids? Trimpe: Well, I was very close to the district because we were involved in it, our kids were in it and they knew what I did and our teacher would have me in and talk to the kids or do workshops and things like that. I’ve done that in my own kids’ high school and the elementary schools in the district. I went to some other schools that weren’t in the district. I was in Poughkeepsie once at a middle school there, Arlington Middle School, that was like a mini-residency. It was like three times a week. Cassell: Oh, really? Trimpe: It didn’t go on for forever, but I did sixteen weeks, once a week, at [my wife] Patricia’s when she was teaching at Poughkeepsie Day School. I did a workshop with those kids each Wednesday, and we designed characters and then they set them into story form and did a comic. One girl did about a thirty-page story in color. Cassell: Holy cow!

ABOVE: Heaven Can Wait— a prophetic cartoon by Marie Severin. Courtesy of Linda Fite. BELOW: Trimpe sketch of another Hulk villain, the Rhino.

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Ironic panel featuring the Twin Towers from page 27 of The Incredible Hulk #193 by Trimpe and Joe Staton. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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Trimpe: And one of the younger classes, when they were working in groups, they turned out full pages that were bigger than the old comic pages were, 15 by 20. Cassell: Oh, really? Trimpe: Yeah, they did about six or eight pages, all in full color. I had the kids put all their artwork up. We put it up all in the hall. The entire hall just came alive with this color. Some strips were really stark black-and-white and then there were strips in color, and oh, my God, it was great. There was this one kid—she did this little three-page penciled strip that she didn’t like that was really cool and it had something to do with an angel falling—thinking that he was, or she was, flying and they really weren’t flying, they were falling. And it had this kind of dramatic end to it. But she had the pencils and threw it in the trash. I said, “What are you doing? What are you throwing this away for?” “Because I don’t like it,” typical kid answer. And so I said, “Do you mind if I take this?” “Naw, I don’t care.” So I inked it. I brought it home or I inked it in the class, while they were doing something else. But I inked it and I still have it somewhere or copied. And when I inked it, I didn’t add anything to it, I didn’t embellish it or feather it or anything like that. I did it exactly, just clean. It was very clean inking and it looked great. And when I showed it to her, she flipped. I said, “You see? This is good. This is awesome.” Cassell: How did you get back into comics related stuff? Trimpe: The requests continued to flow in for artwork and show attendance. And my wife, Patricia, said, “You know, you’ve got to start paying attention to this stuff because you worked in the business a long time and there are people that want to talk to you and they were your fans. It would be nice if you kind of continued along that way.” Cassell: Well, you certainly have a lot of fans. Trimpe: No. Well, okay. I mean I can accept it because I had to. I go to shows and get a lot of recognition, there’s no question about it. I have fans, I have people who have become very good friends, actually, people that we have visited, people who have been here. Very good friends who are fans that have supported what you’re saying. I certainly fit in at a critical time in comic book history. I think that’s true. And I think everybody that was in that position benefitted from it to one degree or another. It was a good time to come in as things were growing and developing. I realize I had a little maybe too much dependency

on the super-hero genre. But you know, it carried us along and paid the rent and mortgage and put the kids through and all. So in that regard, great thanks to God and whatever other higher power might be involved here. There’s no end to the thanks that I have for being in that position. It is a lot of luck, it was very fortunate and I always managed to stumble in to stuff that turned out to be beneficial—for instance, in the licensed characters and blockbuster movies. I really made out on that deal with the licensed characters. I benefitted greatly. The same fans who bought the comics are now buying original artwork and when they thank me for the work I did, I say, “Listen, who owes the greater debt? You, that have kept a roof over my head from the time I came into comics; or me, who’d just sit here and draw silly pictures, which is easy for me to do, and it doesn’t cost me anything, and I’m still making money doing it.” So I said, “Without you guys, there’s no ‘us guys’.” Simple as that, you know. And every time that happened, you know, G.I. Joe movie, I’m selling G.I. Joe stuff. Godzilla, I’m selling Godzilla stuff; Transformers, I’m selling Transformer stuff, not to mention Wolverine. That’s like the Money Tree, basically. So for this, I am thankful because otherwise, I’d be in Florida with a red jacket in Wal-Mart or something like that, because I wouldn’t know what the hell else to do. So we—my wife and I, my family, my kids growing up—we were very fortunate and I’m very thankful, especially towards the fans. As I said before, without them, what have you got? You got nothing. No comics, no fans—no fans, no comic artist. It’s kind of a circle. Cassell: So what is your favorite convention? Trimpe: Mexico City. It is a three-day show there. That was a real comic book convention. It was just great. It was on about four floors in a convention hall there. Not a large convention hall, but when you consider the number of floors it took up, it was very good, very colorful, very exciting, very user-friendly is the best way I can put it. And of course, when you go to Mexico, they don’t let you pay for anything. You don’t make as much money, maybe, but that doesn’t become the issue. The issue is basically the treatment and how they see comics as a cultural phenomenon like Europe has been doing for years. And they’re just crazy about characters like Wolverine. Cassell: Really? Trimpe: Way more than I would say any given group of that size in the U.S. They’re very proac-

SPOTL I GH T ON

The Power of Angels September 11, 2001, is one of those dates for which most people can recall exactly where they were or what they were doing. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, left an indelible mark on Americans everywhere. People all over the country gathered in churches to pray and held fundraisers to send money to the families of those injured or killed in the attacks. This terrible tragedy brought out the best in people, especially New Yorkers, who rallied to support friends and strangers alike. Trimpe was one of those New Yorkers who was moved to help, though he chose to do so in an especially meaningful way. In the aftermath of the disaster, workers put in long hours sifting through the rubble, recovering the bodies of victims, and taking them to the temporary onsite mortuary for examination and identification. Trimpe was a Deacon in the Episcopal Church and he volunteered to serve at “Ground Zero” as a chaplain. For eight months, Trimpe toiled alongside the other dedicated workers, praying over the remains of those lost to the devastation, providing dignity to the dead and comfort to the survivors. Trimpe later wrote a book about his experiences during that time period entitled The Power of Angels: Reflections of a Ground Zero Chaplain, published by Big Apple Vision Books in 2004.

The book is a moving tribute to the heroism of everyday people coping with the aftermath of an unthinkable disaster. In the book, Trimpe notes, “I saw the spirit of giving revived not only in myself, but demonstrated by many, many others, when I started serving at Ground Zero. People came to the site not knowing exactly what would happen. Their only predisposition was a willingness to be a pipeline through which the gifts of God would flow. It’s amazing when you see this in one person; but when you see it in many people all at the same time, it becomes contagious.” In the Foreword, Trimpe explains the genesis of the book, “The Power of Angels is based on an extensive journal I kept during the time I served at Ground Zero. The journal was written as a form of therapy in order to process the many physical and emotional experiences in around the site.” In the book, he recounts stories about many people that he met during his service, including Medical Examiners and other clergy, as well as EMTs and firefighters, many of whom had lost friends there. The chaplains who served at Ground Zero were ultimately organized and operated under the authority of the American Red Cross. Bringing his artistic skills to bear for this humanitarian cause, Trimpe designed a special bumper sticker for the chaplains and a patch for the tireless EMS workers who served at Ground Zero. The Power of Angels is an intimate account of the remarkably courageous actions of many people in the wake of such devastation. Trimpe dedicated the book to “all EMS members, particularly the EMS members and medical examiners working at Ground Zero.” He also noted the fallacy in referring to the site as “Ground Zero,” observing that the phrase “implies utter desolation, a vast emptiness devoid of life and hope. The World Trade Center site is anything but that.” Trimpe was awarded the 2002 Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award for his work as a chaplain at the World Trade Center site following the September 11 attacks.

ABOVE LEFT: A patch designed by Trimpe, which he had made for EMTs serving at Ground Zero after 9-11. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. ABOVE RIGHT: Cover of the book, The Power of Angels, written by Trimpe about his experiences serving as a chaplain at Ground Zero after 9-11. LEFT: Trimpe (center, in blue next to the fire chief) standing where the Twin Towers used to be. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.

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tive. Everybody that comes to the table, every family, every kid in the family, wants a photograph with you. It’s as if you’re a movie actor or something. It’s amazing. And of course the people, they’re very generous and sweet. Mexicans don’t like to let you do anything alone, you know, including crossing the street. Somebody always wants to help or be there or carry something. They’re amazing. For an artist, way better than San Diego. Not even close. Even though it’s like one-tenth the size. Cassell: Do you speak Spanish? Trimpe: Oh, yeah. My wife Patricia is from Colombia. I have kind of a tourist’s knowledge of Spanish, so I can get around pretty much. Everybody there speaks English anyway, to one degree of expertise or another, but if you have kind of a solid basis for small talk, you can communicate pretty nicely. Cassell: That’s great. Speaking of conventions, have you seen Stan lately? Trimpe: I saw him at a show. His comment to me at this show in Baltimore was, “I can’t stand it when somebody looks better than me.” And the previous time that I saw him—that was last year and it was more of a lengthy conversation, when I introduced my wife, and he said to me, “Trimpe, you look good, but she looks better”. Cassell: He is amazing, like the Eveready Bunny, keeps going and going. It’s hard to believe he’s 90 years old. Trimpe: Yeah, I know. And evidently, he’s doing well. After we saw him in Baltimore, I can’t believe that he’s got a pacemaker. He came charging in, the plane was two hours late and the panel was

A quiet moment as the Hulk takes a break from smashing to fish in this drawing by Trimpe.

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waiting for him. And we were all talking and waiting and keeping the crowd at bay until he showed up, and he comes charging in like a bull and went for an hour and a half, just a mile a minute. I said, “Jesus, this guy is too much.” Cassell: So, looking back, what do you think has been the biggest change in comics over the years? Trimpe: When I was a kid, you did not bring a comic book to school and hide it, let alone show it. That was like a capital offense to be caught reading a comic book because there was the whole Frederic Wertham thing in the ’50s and he put a whole perverted spin on the ball, so they were not favored. Not only that, but the Society of Illustrators in New York, they had all kinds of representative commercial art and comic strips in there. But back in the ’60s, they had no comic book work in there at all. Now, the tables are turned, which is kind of a satisfying thing, and it’s really comic books that have the clout now. If you mention that you work in comics, or worked in comics, people are wide-eyed with interest and fascination by the whole thing and it’s just an amazing topic of conversation. It’s quite a switch. I’d go so far as to say that Marvel, led by Stan, had a lot to do with changing the perception of comics, as opposed to being total trash. Older people were starting to read them. We used to get tons of letters from college kids and up back in the ’60s and ’70s. It was simply a complete turnaround that had taken place and now, it’s golden. Everything [about comics] is like the Golden Egg now.

Herb Trimpe Gallery The following pages provide a sampling of the varied artwork Trimpe has done over his lengthy career.

ABOVE LEFT: 1972 Silver Surfer pin-up by Trimpe from the first issue of the fanzine Second Foundation. ABOVE RIGHT: Herb Trimpe at work, from the 1970 Marvelmania Bullpen Photo Set. LEFT: Commission drawing of Wolverine and the Hulk by Trimpe. Courtesy of Thomas Suhling.

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Cover art to Kid Colt Outlaw #140 by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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ABOVE LEFT: Storm commission by Trimpe from 2004 Uncanny Dave Cockrum Tribute. INSET: “Hulk smash!” pencil sketch by Trimpe. LEFT: Commission drawing montage of Marvel heroes and villains illustrated by Trimpe. Courtesy of Michael Finn. RIGHT: Killraven commission sketch by Trimpe.

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TOP: Back cover from the 1978 Hulk calendar featuring the friends and foes of the Hulk by Trimpe. BOTTOM LEFT: Instruction booklet illustrated by Trimpe for the 1974 Aurora Comic Scenes model kit featuring the Incredible Hulk. BOTTOM RIGHT: Marvelmania poster of the Incredible Hulk by Trimpe. OPPOSITE PAGE: Son of Satan pin-up model sheet art by Trimpe. Courtesy of Jeff Jaworski.

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145

Hostess Fruit Pie advertisement featuring the Fantastic Four attributed to Trimpe..

146

TOP LEFT: Cover art to War is Hell #1 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Jeff Jaworski. TOP RIGHT: Cover to issue #92 of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos by Trimpe. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BOTTOM: Art from Special Marvel Edition #6 featuring Sgt. Fury by Trimpe. Courtesy of Jeff Jaworski.

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TOP LEFT: Trimpe as the Phantom Eagle as painted by Jack Davis. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe. TOP RIGHT: Splash page to the feature on Gloria Steinem by Trimpe in the October 1972 issue of Esquire magazine. BOTTOM LEFT: 1975 drawing by Trimpe from issue #12 of the fanzine CPL showing another side of the Hulk. BOTTOM RIGHT: Splash page to “Nut Gallery” parody in Spoof #5 by Marie Severin and Trimpe.

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Splash page art from Godzilla #6 by Trimpe featuring SHIELD. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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150

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Doublepage splash of Trimpe penciled art from What If? #2. Courtesy of John Morrow. ABOVE: Hulk model sheet by Trimpe for the Honeycomb cereal commercial. Courtesy of Bill Peckmann. LEFT: 1981 Hulk western pin-up by Trimpe. Courtesy www.romitaman.com. RIGHT: 1972 Hulk pin-up by Trimpe from the first issue of the fanzine Second Foundation.

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Cover art to The Incredible Hulk #146 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy of Stephen Moore.

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ABOVE: Justice Society commision by Trimpe. Courtesy of Michael Dunne. BOTTOM LEFT: Splash page art from the Ant-Man story in Marvel Feature #4 by Trimpe. Courtesy of Nick Katradis. BOTTOM RIGHT: Cover of Rolling Stone #91 featuring the Hulk by Trimpe, published September 16, 1971.

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TOP LEFT: Poster by Trimpe advertising magic act for nephew Mark Trimpe. Courtesy of Mark Trimpe. TOP RIGHT: Poster by Trimpe for the 1970 concert film “Keep on Rockin’.” BOTTOM LEFT: Cover art to Monsters on the Prowl #17 by Trime. Courtesy Heritage Auctions. BOTTOM RIGHT: Variant cover to New Avengers #9 by Trimpe.

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Index of Herb Trimpe Art This index includes first occurrences of stories and/or covers penciled and/or inked by Trimpe in professional published comic books and magazines. It does not include fanzines, advertising, newspaper strips, or commissioned drawings. This index reflects primarily U.S. publications. Stories by Trimpe have also been (re)printed in the UK, Mexico, Germany, France, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, Italy, and Sweden.

Detail from page 4 of The Incredible Hulk #108 penciled by Trimpe over Marie Severin layouts and inked by John Severin. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

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Publisher

Title

Issue(s)

Year(s)

Pencil/ Ink

Amurol Products Aurora Big Apple Productions Dark Horse Dell Dell Devil’s Due Publishing Eclipse Hearst

Bubble Funnies Mini Comics [Incredible Hulk and Captain America] Aurora Comic Scenes [Incredible Hulk]

2, 3

1981

P/I

184

1974

P/I

Big Apple Comix

1975

P/I

B.P.R.D.: War on Frogs Four Color [Mysterious Island and Bonanza] The Lone Ranger

1 1213

2008 1962 c1962

P/I I I

G.I. Joe: America’s Elite

2008

P/I

Dinosaurs Attack! Esquire

1991 1971

P P/I

IDW

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

1 455 161-165, 168-174, 177-181

2010-2012

P/I

IDW

155 1/2

2010

P/I

IDW Image Image Marvel Marvel Marvel

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero [Free Comic Book Day Edition] G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Annual Crack Comics Savage Dragon Amazing Adventures Amazing Spider-Man, The: Double Trouble Astonishing Tales

1 63 156 19-24, 30, 33 2 7,8

P P/I P/I P/I P P/I

Marvel

Avengers Annual, The

6, 19, 21

Marvel Marvel Marvel

Avengers West Coast, The Avengers, The Bizarre Adventures Magazine

75, 83 73, 333 31

Marvel

Captain America

134, 184, 291

Marvel Marvel

Captain America Annual Captain America and the Campbell Kids

9 1

2012 2011 2010 1973-1975 1993 1971 1976, 1990, 1992 1991, 1992 1970, 1991 1982 1971, 1975, 1984 1990 1980

P/I P/I P P/I P/I P/I P

Publisher

Title

Issue(s)

Year(s)

Pencil/ Ink

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

Captain Marvel Chamber of Darkness Conan the Barbarian Crazy

11, 60 2 33 3

P/I I P/I I

Marvel

Crazy Magazine

1, 4, 7, 68

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

Creatures on the Loose Crypt of Shadows Daredevil Defenders, The Draft, The Epic Illustrated Magazine Fantastic Four Annual Fantastic Four Unlimited Fantastic Four: Atlantis Rising Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, The G.I. Joe and the Transformers G.I. Joe Order of Battle, The G.I. Joe Special Missions G.I. Joe Yearbook

10, 11 7 70, 72-76, 78 67-81 1 32 25,26 1-7, 9-12 2 15-18, 23, 24 1-4 1-4 1-21, 23, 25, 26, 28 1,4

Marvel

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero

1-4, 6-8, 14, 17, 50, 99, 119

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

Ghost Rider (1967 series) Ghost Rider (1973 series) Godzilla Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Annual Gun-slinger Heroes for Hope Starring The X-Men Hulk Hulk: Broken Worlds

7 50, 60 1-24 28 2 3 1 23 1

Marvel

Incredible Hulk Annual, The

6, 12, 16

Marvel

Incredible Hulk Special, The

2-4

Marvel

Incredible Hulk, The

106-193, 204, 205, 227-229, 231, 393

Marvel

Iron Man

22, 39, 82-85, 91, 93, 94, 113, 199, 246, 251, 252, 255

1969, 1979 1969 1973 1973 1973, 1974, 1980 1971 1973 1970, 1971 1979-1980 1988 1985 1992, 1993 1993-1995 1995 1984 1986, 1987 1986, 1987 1986-1989 1985, 1988 1982, 1983, 1986, 1990, 1991 1967 1980, 1981 1977-1979 1992 1992 1973 1985 2010 2009 1977, 1983, 1990 1969, 1971, 1972 1968-1976, 1978, 1979, 1992 1970, 1971, 1976-1978, 1985, 1989, 1990

Marvel

Kid Colt Outlaw

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

King-Size Hulk Kung Fu Special Magazine Machine Man Marvel Comics Presents Marvel Feature Marvel Preview Magazine Marvel Spotlight

134, 135, 138-141, 146, 147, 149-156, 226 1 1 1-3 45 4-6 13 10, 12, 13

P/I P/I I P/I P/I P P P P/I I P/I P P P/I P/I

TOP: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #119 by Trimpe. Courtesy of www.ComicLink.com. MIDDLE: The Incredible Hulk #122 by Trimpe. BOTTOM: The Incredible Hulk #170 by Trimpe.

P/I P/I P/I P/I P P I P P/I P P/I P/I P/I

P/I

1967-1971, 1978

P/I

2008 1974 1984 1990 1972 1978 1973, 1974

P/I P/I P P/I P/I P P/I

157

TOP: Cover of 1981 Bubble Funnies mini-comic featuring Captain America by Trimpe. MIDDLE: The Incredible Hulk #114 by Trimpe and Dan Adkins. BOTTOM: The Incredible Hulk #152 by Trimpe and John Severin.

Publisher

Title

Issue(s)

Year(s)

Pencil/ Ink

Marvel

Marvel Super-Heroes (1967 series)

16, 19, 75

P/I

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

9 106-118 3, 4 5, 25

I P/I P P/I

1976

9, 14 1-6, 12-15 17 49-51, 75 9 8 16-19 8, 13-15, 18 13

1975, 1976 1968, 1971 1972 1990, 1992 2005 1992 1990, 1991 1969, 1971 1969

P P/I P/I P/I P/I P P P P/I

2008

6, 9, 14

1983,1984

P/I

1987

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

Marvel Super-Heroes (1990 series) Marvel Team-Up Marvel Team-Up Annual Marvel Treasury Edition Marvel Treasury Special Featuring Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles Marvel Two-In-One Mighty Marvel Western, The Monsters on the Prowl Nam, The New Avengers NFL Superpro Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1989 series) Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD (1968 series) Not Brand Echh Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (2008 series) Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, The (1983 series) Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, The (1985 series) Outlaw Kid, The Planet of the Apes Magazine Rampaging Hulk Magazine Rawhide Kid Rawhide Kid Special

1968, 1969, 1978 1992 1981, 1982 1980, 1981 1975, 1980

Marvel

Rawhide Kid, The

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

Ringo Kid, The RoboCop Robotix Savage Tales Magazine Sgt. Fury (1963 series) Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos (1974 series) Shogun Warriors Silver Surfer, The Special Marvel Edition Spectacular Spider-Man, The Spitfire and the Troubleshooters Spoof Star Wars Starblast Strange Tales Sub-Mariner Super-Villain Team-Up Tales to Astonish

Marvel

Thor

Marvel

Thor Annual

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

Marvel

158

2-8 21, 26-28 8 1-4 1

1970, 1971 1976, 1977 1978 1985 1971 1967, 1968, 60, 62, 64, 65, 67, 1971, 82, 84, 86, 108, 112 1970, 1973 4-11 1970, 1971 11 1991 1 1986 1-4 1985, 1986 92 1971

P/I P/I P P P/I

154, 160

1979, 1980

1-20 17, 18 6 97-99 1, 2, 5 3, 5 17 1, 2 157-160 9 4-7 94-98 329, 336, 410, 415, 426, 431 15, 16

1979, 1980 1970 1972 1984, 1985 1986, 1987 1973 1978 1994 1967 1969 1976 1967 1983, 19891991 1990, 1991

P/I P/I P/I P P I P P I P P I

P/I P/I P/I P/I P/I P/I

P/I P/I

Publisher

Title

Issue(s)

Year(s)

Pencil/ Ink

Marvel Marvel

Tower of Shadows Transformers Universe, The

1970 1987

I P

Marvel

Transformers, The

4 1-4 11, 12, 15-20, 22, 24-26, 43

1985-1988

P/I

Marvel

Two Gun Kid

89, 94, 96-100

P/I

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel

U.S. 1 Uncanny X-Men Annual, The War Is Hell Western Gunfighters

1, 2 16 1, 5, 13, 15 1, 2, 4-6

Marvel

What If?

2, 14, 23, 26, 32

Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel Marvel UK Marvel UK Moonstone TwoMorrows Publishing

Wolverine Wolverine Battles The Incredible Hulk Wolverine: Origins World War Hulk: Gamma Files X-Factor X-Men, The Captain Britain Mighty World of Marvel, The Phantom: Ghost Who Walks, The

66 1 39 1 126 42 1-23 57 3

1967, 1970, 1971 1983 1992 1973, 1975 1970, 1971 1977, 19791982 2008 1989 2009 2007 1996 1968 1976, 1977 1973 2009

Streetwise

2000

P/I

Vortex

Daytona Special No. 1: The Daytona 500 Story Legends of NASCAR, The

1991

P/I

1991

P/I

Rolling Stone

1971

P/I

Boris Karloff Thriller 2 Big Little Books [Fantastic Four and Incredible Hulk]

1963

1968, 1980

P/I

Vortex Wenner Media LLC Western Whitman

P/I P P/I P/I P/I P/I P/I P P P I P P P

This index was compiled from the best information available from a variety of sources, including the Grand Comics Database (www.comics.org), The Comic Book Database (www.comicbookdb.com), and Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who in American Comic Books (www.bailsprojects.com).

TOP: Cover of The Incredible Hulk #127 by Trimpe. MIDDLE: The Incredible Hulk #159 by Trimpe. BOTTOM: Splash page art to part two of The Incredible Hulk #146 by Trimpe and John Severin. Courtesy of Stephen Moore. LEFT: Slightly altered panel from The Incredible Hulk #109 page 18. Art by Trimpe and John Severin.

159

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