Herb as Sacrament

Just before I came back from Glasgow last Friday, after my trip to the Borders, I got my hands on this beauty, the latest in the Twomorrows series of publications on stalwart comic book artists of the Silver and Bronze Ages:

I'd love to see Twomorrows books on Dick Dillin, Jim Aparo, naturally and Mike Grell

 Herb is probably best-known as the artist who brought about the debut of Wolverine in the Hulk:

While those images are well-known, I enjoyed Herb's design of some of the Hulk's menagerie of grotesque opponents:

 This cover would have popped on the newsstands or spinner rack

 This is another comic I probably snatched from the grasp of Kid Robson by moments in East Kilbride. it was my introduction to the Evil Inhumans.

A Giant-Size Man-Thing 

  

There was a short time, thanks to Foom #8, that I thought this was one of the All-New X-Men. He- it- was renamed Darkcrawler in the 80s

 An early 70s riff on Moby Dick. My last US Hulk of the 70s!

A protoype of the original Spider-Woman- not to mention Wolverine? 

Surely the most freaky of the Hulk's adversaries?

Herb also drew other characters in the Silver Age. I have a fondness for the Thomas and Robbins continuity implant team, Freedom's Five, so here's Herb's Phantom Eagle.

This faintly kinky Subby cover comes from the Avenging Son's brief sword-and-sorcery phase, which prefigured Conan ( under-dressed king wins back kingdom from evil forces-possibly magical? Come on!)

After Ol' Greenskin, for me, Herb's signature character in the Bronze Age is our own Lion of London, Brian Braddock.
Trimpe, living in Cornwall, was Marvel's go-to gut for the early adventures of Captain Britain. Oddly, while I don't hold with Scotland's continued membership of the United Kingdom, I love its 1976 homegrown hero and his lumbering antagonists:

A few years later, Herb was pencilling one of my brother's favourite series of his very early teens:

And speaking of the FF, Trimpe was reunited with Roy Thomas  in the early 90s for Fantastic Four Unlimited, a series in which his style morphed to mimic the Image brand- particularly woeful Perez copyist, Rob Liefeld. I only sampled this one issue- my favourites, the Inhumans, being the USP.

But it's the Sixties and Seventies Hulk that I most associate with Trimpe and that's the image I want to end on today, with the giant comics that straddled those decades and gave me a glimpse into the early days of the House of Ideas:

Coming soon: 'It's Saturday tea-time in 1977 all over again' The new prose adventures of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor.

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