Underrated Artists I Love #2: Herb Trimpe

This has been a long time coming, and, for me, an obvious choice! You can see #1 here.

Ah, Herb Trimpe. Some people actually don’t like Herb’s work—and some people dismiss him simply as a “Jack Kirby Clone”. These people are horribly & completely wrong. I found Herb in the mid-’70s, as a little kid, in UK reprints of his Hulk stories via the weekly Mighty World of Marvel. In spite of initially reading his last name as “tripe” (yeah, yeah, those people above would agree!) (I was just learning to read at the time), I immediately took to his work—and I’ve never changed my mind.

Incidentally: as any real fan knows, Herb’s last name rhymes with shrimpy.

If you’re with me thus far, I’ll assume you agree that Herb Trimpe was an awesome Hulk artist. Here’s Herb’s back cover for Marvel Treasury Edition #5 (1975), which is a fine example of how good a match H & H were…

Someone made him angry…

I still have vivid memories of seeing this book, bearing a striking front cover by John Romita of Hulk charging through a brick wall (see it here), displayed on a newsstand inside the Mander Centre in Wolverhampton, while out shopping with my Aunt Winnie sometime in ’76. The Hulk—the “sympathetic monster” version—had a lot of appeal to me as a Monster Kid and a huge King Kong fan. Anyhow, more about Herb…

Although Herb is generally thought to be a Kirby-influenced artist, his earliest and strongest foundational influence was Jack Davis, of EC Comics & MAD Magazine fame. I think the Davis influence is loud & clear through his entire career, but especially in the 1960s up to, say, the mid-’70s. Some of his self-inked work on Hulk almost kinda looks like Jack Kirby inked by Jack Davis…

Here’s a good example—the classic “Two Hulks” cover of Hulk #156 (1972). It has large, chunky anatomy that suggests a strong Kirby influence—but the rendering and cross-hatching is pure Davis. It’s a lovely mix of influences and, for me, works beautifully.

Two Hulks are better than one!

When Herb started out at Marvel, initially he did more inking than pencilling. He inked Marie Severin (who probably deserves an entry of her own here, if I do more of these) on Doctor Strange briefly, then on The Hulk. Inking Marie clearly had a very big influence on Herb’s own version of the Hulk; the two artists also got on very well and forged a lifelong friendship.

Herb’s first work on the Hulk was inking Marie Severin—page 5 of TALES TO ASTONISH #96 (1967).

Herb got the Hulk artist gig with #106 (1968)—for his first four issues he worked over layouts by Marie Severin and Frank Giacoia, but in #110 he did the full pencils solo, nicely inked by Marie’s brother John (who would ink Herb’s Hulk books on-and-off for a couple of years). His version was great from the outset, but was also continually evolving and developing—it would take 2-3 years for it to become “my” Hulk.

The cover of HULK #189 (1975), pencilled & inked by HT—this is “my” Hulk.

Herb stayed on the title (while also doing odd bits of work on other books) until Hulk #193 (1975)—just as I was getting hooked on his Hulk work in UK reprints, his run was coming to an end! The last few issues of his Hulk run were inked by Joe Staton. I don’t mind Joe’s inking on Herb (although I think he meshed better with Herb’s replacement, Sal Buscema), but I sure do prefer Herb inking himself.

Bruce “Bob” Banner changes for the final time during the legendary Trimpe run—HULK #193 (1975). Inks by Joe Staton.

For me, the Hulk fully became the Hulk I know and love during Herb’s run. Say whatever else you want about Stan Lee, but my feeling about the Hulk is that Lee did not really “get” the character, or even like him much. When he was writing the Hulk’s dialogue, it was all over the place. Roy Thomas helped to nail down the sympathetic angle and make it more consistent; and Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart and Len Wein, during the latter half of the Trimpe run, solidified things.

I digress a little, but… I actually hate what later writers, such as Bill Mantlo and Peter David, did with the character. Mantlo, after writing two years of the most boring, disinterested “monster of the week” scripts, finally started monkeying with the Hulk in 1982. David later took it to a whole new level. I have no patience for this psychobabble horseshit. If you don’t like a character, don’t fucking write it. Digression over!

Of course, as well as being a brilliant run, the Trimpe era of Hulk also made history by introducing a certain short Canadian hero by the name of Wolverine. No one would’ve guessed how big Logan would become, or how damn expensive his first appearances (#180-182) would one day be—but, in actual fact, the books he first appeared in happen to be good comics, believe it or not!

The covers of HULK #180-181—the debut of Mr Logan, but also pretty decent books.

As I have discussed previously, Hulk #182 (Logan’s third, brief appearance) is one of my all-time faves. You can read my review here. Inked by Herb himself (Jack Abel had been regular inker for a while up to this point), it’s an all-round classic.

After the Hulk, Herb worked on the early stories of “Marvel’s first British superhero”, Captain Britain! Chris Claremont’s scripts were OK fun. Herb, for once, went all-out with the Kirby mannerisms, which is fine & dandy, but it is not his best. Then he worked on Marvel’s Godzilla series—another big green brute! He did a nice job on this book. Various other gigs followed as we head into the 1980s, including occasional Hulk-related projects, but he was clearly cruising on auto-pilot… so simple and disinterested was some of this material, almost no trace of the once-prominent Jack Davis influence was evident.

One more go at ol’ Greenskin in Hulk Annual #12 (1983), which he co-plotted and self-inked, was a shot in the arm for HT. The story was a return to Jarella’s World, as created by Harlan Ellison and introduced back in 1971’s much-loved Hulk #140 (“The Brute Who Shouted Love At the Heart of the Atom”), and it was a pretty nice job, easily his best of the period… but no more Hulk would follow. A handful of truly dreary issues of Indiana Jones (some inked by Vince Colletta!) was perhaps the nadir of the ’80s…

Herb got some of his mojo back for 1983’s HULK ANNUAL #12—pages 29 and 31 are shown here… but Indiana Jones & Vince Colletta loomed…

That said, before the ’80s would limp to its weary conclusion in mediocre fashion for our man, a minor miracle happened, and produced some of the best work of Herb Trimpe’s later career. In 1985, Marvel decided to revive their 1970s B&W magazine Savage Tales. The original run had been 11 issues; this new run lasted only eight. But it contained some fine work by the likes of Archie Goodwin, Denny O’Neil, Steve Skeates, Chuck Dixon, Robert Kanigher, John Severin, John Buscema, Ralph Reese, Sam Glanzman and Gray Morrow, plus a couple of stories by Doug Murray & Michael Golden which would lead into their famous, critically-acclaimed 1986 series The ‘Nam. In short, it was a pretty good roster of talent!

But let’s get to Herb. After studying at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, Herb had joined the US Air Force in the early ’60s. He remained an aviation enthusiast for the rest of his life. According to Jim Shooter, he owned a 1939 Stearman biplane. His depictions of various planes and flying machines, through his career, were always particularly well-drawn—alongside Alex Toth, he was one of the better drawer of planes in comics. One of his earliest pencilled stories for Marvel, in 1968’s Marvel Super-Heroes #16, was “The Phantom Eagle”, a heroic WWII fighter pilot.

Somehow, someone had the genius idea to ask Herb to write, pencil, ink and letter his own series for Savage Tales. And so, “The Skywarriors” debuted in the first issue and continued until #4. The strips ran 10-12 pages each, and… well, it’s like nothing else Herb ever did, and certainly in a different solar system to the other work he was doing in the mid-’80s.

Two pages from Herb’s strip in SAVAGE TALES #2 (1985)—like nothing he’d done before or would do again.

Not only does this work shine in the beautiful, loving drawings of aircraft; Herb’s use of chiaroscuro is very fine indeed. The above samples are maybe not the best—maybe I’ll scan some more from my copies of the magazines sometime. But you get the idea. This is not the Trimpe we all know and love. And it’s a great shame we never got to see him again.

As the ’80s drifted into the ’90s, Herb continued to tread water. There was a nice pinup in Hulk #393 in 1992. Odd flashes of the old style. Then Herb tried to shake himself up by adopting a more “contemporary” approach. In other words, he started drawing like Rob Liefeld. The less said about this the better; I find it quite painful. In 1996, Herb and Marvel parted on less than wonderful terms—he didn’t work for them again until 2008, when he did a short story for King-Size Hulk #1. It was OK. Nothing special, but at least his work looked like Herb Trimpe again.

In later years, he mostly did commissions, and I always did plan to get him to draw me a Hulk. My intentions and my finances never dovetailed, sadly. We corresponded a bit by email, and in 2010 he drew a pic of Orson Welles for me, as a gift. (See below.) Sadly he passed away suddenly in 2015, of a heart attack, aged 75.

I never got a Trimpe Hulk, but this is a pretty cool consolation prize!

To end this post, let’s have a handful of classic Trimpe covers, shall we? Thanks for reading!

HULK #171 (1973).

HULK #172 (1973).

HULK #178 (1974).

GODZILLA #1 (1977).