Bleeding Cool

Damn. One of my favorite Marvel artists has passed away. Herb Trimpe was the first artist to draw Wolverine in a comic (in the final panel of Incredible Hulk #180 and then a full issue a month later) back in 1974. He gained my eternal devotion for his work on Marvel's Godzilla series back in the 70s as well as a great run on the Shogun Warriors. He was also the artist on the first issue of G.I. Joe. I had the pleasure of meeting him at last year's Stan Lee's Comikaze and had him sign my copy of Shogun Warriors #1. The encounter was... odd. But I was still jazzed to meet him.

R.I.P. Herb.

Darn, I know this is completely selfish of me but it reminds me that I have to start going to cons more before I lose the chance to meet some of these artists.

I was planning on commissioning him to draw an old school Godzilla for me at SDCC this year. Something I wanted to do last year but kept putting off.

I had been wanting to get his autograph at a convention but never got the chance. By far, the best classic Hulk artist.

The first time I encountered his work was on The Transformers, back when I was a kid. Transformers is what actually got me into comics back in the day.

RIP - never got to meet the man but enjoyed the work.

I've never been that big into signed comics but one of the few I have is a Hulk issue with Trimpe's signature. Rest in peace.

I used to have some of his GI Joe comics.

Still the artist I think of when it comes to the Hulk.

I used to have a TPB of the Hulk with that picture. It was a chain of issues dating from sometime after The Leader's death, and included the origin of The Abomination.

So a douchebag named Mark Meredith decided on Twitter to shit on a piece of Herb Trimpe's art from the mid-90s, which he had done in the style of Liefeld/Silvestri/Image comics. Said douchebag is tripling down on his assholishness, but the entire industry basically told him to fuck off. Out of all of this, a piece Trimpe wrote for the NYTimes was unearthed and it's fucking heartbreaking

That's a tough read. Herb really didn't fit in with the 90's style at all. Hell, he didn't really fit in in the 80's, either.

The sad truth is Herb's art really went downhill after the mid 70's. I don't know what it was, but even a fill in issue of the Hulk that he did a year or so after leaving the title didn't look right. His style had changed. His more detailed style of the late 60's and early 70's was completely gone. It was a streamlined, smoothed out, bland version of the Trimpe style, and it just didn't look good. I went from loving his art in the mid 70's to seeing his name in the credits and putting the comic down. In the 80's if Herb drew it, unless it was a a title that I just had to have, I skipped it. I suspect a lot of people did that when they saw Herb did the art on a comic in the 80's.

Having said all that, the way his comics career ended was horrible. For all those artists did for Marvel and DC, to have so many of the older artists just dumped like that in the 90's was inexcusable. It left them broke and unable to support themselves. There was no support system for them at all, and that was just wrong.

This is the comic industry unfortunately. It happened to the Golden & Silver Age creators and it hit a lot of them hard. Especially when DC fired a ton of them when they asked for health care. 30 years of work to be dropped like a rock. Happened again with the Bronze Age creators when the Image Era hit. Their art suddenly look dated and "unhip." The comic bubble bursting certainly didn't help for steady workers.

Nothing has really changed in the industry but creators do have more options now. But still, it's a very cold industry.

Creators has some options now with Kickstarters and cover art for variants and such, but like you said, it's a cold industry. Ed Brubaker mentioned this when The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series came out. Still, what was done to Herb was bad. I know Marvel was bankrupt back then, but with the success of Wolverine in movies, he should have been a millionaire.

Should Trimpe be a millionaire because of Wolverine? His only claim to Wolverine is that he drew the first published image of the character. He didn't create him and he didn't popularize him. In a perfect world all the artists and writers who helped make these characters what they are would be reaping the benefits, but even then there's probably half a dozen guys (at least) that deserve a cut of Wolverine before Trimpe.

Trimpe and Wein both co-created Wolverine. They deserve the money that came along with the character’s popularity. Byrne, Frank Miller, Claremont and others rounded up the character’s traits, but without Wein and Trimpe, there wouldn’t be Wolverine.

I think that, as a general rule, the writer and artist who wrote and drew the first appearance of a character are credited as the creators, so Wein and Trimpe would, technically, be the creators of Wolverine, even though Roy Thomas and John Romita are responsible for his traits and appearance behind the scenes.

You mean without Roy Thomas and John Romita there would be no Wolverine. I have nothing against Herb Trimpe, but Wolverine was Roy Thomas's idea, with John Romita designing the costume and Len Wein filling in the details. Trimpe drew what he was told to draw.

Yeah, the creators are the ones who actually, you know, CREATED the character, not the ones, necessarily, that did the first issue with that character.

Roy Thomas, John Romita, and Len Wein created Wolverine. Herb Trimpe didn't.

That's not taking anything away from Herb, who did a great job with that long run on the Hulk, but he didn't create Wolverine.