The Incredible Herb Trimpe by TwoMorrows Publishing

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.