Comics Artists: An Accidental Rediscovery

[dewline]

I didn't know until today that Herb Trimpe has a website now.

Comments

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

Sorry to be the heretic, but I never liked Trimpe's work. At all.

People used to recommend his FF or Hulk work and I'd look at it and try to see why I'd been recommended it... to this day I'm still wondering...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

No heresy accusations here, Lee.

Personally, when I was younger, I had similar issues: Trimpe's style seemed too close to Jack Kirby's for me to feel truly comfortable with. Certainly, there was energy there, but both artists seemed too...blocky in their visuals for my tastes of the moment. Trimpe, I later found, needed the right inkers to solve that issue for me, particularly the likes of Bob McLeod (http://bobmcleod.com/), as I found in G.I. Joe(Marvel v.1) # 1. Kirby? Well, it took his earlier work from the early 1960's to get my appreciation.

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

Well, apart from the framing of the panels, I just never liked Trimpe's faces (all his superhero work seemed to have grimaces on them that were as bad as Leifeld's) or hands.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

So, do we credit/blame Trimpe as one of Liefeld's influences?

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

I would, but then I'm a bad, bad person.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Anyone else want to weigh in here? Not on Lee's "bad/good person" status(we'll leave that to Lee's own LJ), but on the Trimpe/Liefeld angle.

[jcoville.livejournal.com]

I don't know where Liefeld got his influences from.

But I do know in the 90s an editor told Trimpe to make his art look more like Liefelds, telling him it would boost sales on the book and make him more popular.

He tried. To say the results looked horrible would be an understatement. His career as a comic artist was effectively killed.

He then became a teacher and now he's writing.

Oh and thanks for pointing this out Dwight, I'm now interviewing Herb Trimpe for next issues CollectorTimes.com :)

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can think of far better ways to depress myself than to ask THAT question on my blog :)

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Glad to be able to help, Jamie.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

We've now settled that question...and I'm not sure we want additional excuses for depression. Especially after today's Bad Signal installment.

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

There was a Bad Signal today?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

In my inbox at GMail today, as of half an hour ago.

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

I didn't like Trimpe as much as I liked some later Hulk artists, even Sal Buscema, but he was a good match for the subject. And I hope that Marvel tosses some cash his way occasionally for co-creating Wolverine. (After all, Cassaday is using a Wolverine costume that's closer to Trimpe's for AXM...)

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

Ah, the one called "So. Tired."? Got it late for some reason...