Last night I was reading an old issue of FANTASTIC FOUR UNLIMITED pencilled by Herb Trimpe. At first I didn't recognize his work (since I was expose to his older Hulk stuff before) because his stuff here looks very very similar to the Rob Liefeld/Extreme Strudios style.
This also reminded me of Tom Grinberg (not sure of the spelling) I have a Detective Comics Annual, armagedoon 2001 x-over and his stuff there were really good, a real Neal Adams clone, but then he did an issue of Silver Sable and his stuff here looks like Mike Mignolia.
Personally I love the older stuff of these artist, so I just wonder they had to change their style and immitate other people's style...
I read in a Neal Adams interview one time where he said that 'he doesn't have a style' and that if he did 'he would be doing something wrong'. I thought that was pretty clever. The great thing about Neal Adams is that he really can draw in any 'style'.
JB did a hysterical "fromage" of Liefeld's style in his 2nd She-Hulk run, down to Liefeld's action figure poses and full page layouts serving no purpose. It was an issue in the 40s...maybe 44? One of the funnier (and more savage) comic book satires I've read.
I can never understand the notion of an artist being
asked to imitate another artist's style like this. Being
influenced is one thing but the examples here are really
strange. Artists should be encouraged to be themselves
not carbon copoes of already established pros.
Neal Adams didn't help matters much with his line of
books that had every artist trying to draw in his "style"...
Herb Trimpe (at that point, I believe) was doing what he needed to do to get work. Marvel, and the buying public, in general, were seized with a brand of like-mindedness that surpassed reason. However, it is niether their fault, entirely, nor is it Neal Adams.
The tradition in comics of ghost artists and imitation goes all the way back, to the origins of comics in the comic strips. It was a way of pitching something, just as is has been in hollywood, book publishing and everything else.
I find it truly sad that the market became so narrow that it alienated--permanently--so many traditional comic book fans and consumers that they have left and never returned.
To see those books as indicative of Trimpe's later "style" is incorrect, but a sad statement about a talented man who was forced, really to produce work in that vein, just to keep working in the industry.
Why does this guy look like he's wearing a baseball cap?
*****
It's Drax the Destroyer, right?
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Yes, it is DRAX. He's a big fan of the Phoenix Suns? I've been doing a run of "cosmic" (generally Silver Surfer / Warlock-related) psuedo-avatars since I joined this saloon (among others, Surfer, The In-Betweener, Eternity, Galactus, Warlock, Ego, Pip (ok, thy're not all cosmic), Mephisto, Overlord, and Terrax. Apparently I like to be associated with mostly powerful dudes; possibly to compensate for my relative "cog in the machinery" anonymous daily existence?
Even though Herb Trimpe changed his drawing style it still didn't help him from being let go from his job. It's a shame, how he was treated.
This is a brief excerpt from Mr. Trimpe's journal from The New York Times, January 7, 2000. Entitled, Old Heroes Never Die, They Join The Real World.
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."
May 27: "Turned 56 yesterday. Sent in my application today to the State University of New York's Empire State College. The Center for Distance Learning offers credit for life experience and independent study for people like me, who can't attend regular classes. Not sure what I'll major in. Not art. Maybe history."
Aug. 10: "Accepted at Empire State. A mentor will help design a degree program."
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." - Herb Trimpe
Trimpe was never super popular but he did a lengthy and credible run on the Incredible Hulk in a non-showy style that still had power. It is sad but true that in almost every phase of "entertainment" the cut-off for consideration of employment seems to be getting younger and younger. In Hollywood, many (most?) writers can't find work once they reach their mid-40s, a time where theoretically they should be reaching their creative heights. You can probably count on two hands the number of tv writers working in their fifties. Most female actors in Hollywood (with ten or twenty rotating notable exceptions) are washed up by their early 30s. It's unconscionable that just as people are getting the life experience to really make a contribution, they are shunted aside for the latest flavor of the month.
...that might be the reason so many forms of entertainment are worse than ever. Because just as a creator is getting it all together so that he may be able to do more meaningful work, they're hiring some new guy who doesn't have the experience to do such work. I can't really seem to explain why mainstream music, mainstream film, and mainstream comics seem worse than ever. Looking at some of the "Year in Review" magazines has me shocked at how terrible a year and how little talent you must have to be considered the "Best" in your field that year.
...how have you managed to escape the fate of being starved out of the industry that so many of your peers, like Herb Trimpe, suffered as the years have gone by?
...how have you managed to escape the fate of being starved out of the industry that so many of your peers, like Herb Trimpe, suffered as the years have gone by?
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With only one monthly book to occupy my time at present, I sometimes wonder if I have!
