Herb Goes West!

Herb Trimpe was always one of my favorite Bullpen artists and despite his untimely passing some years ago, he still is. Famous for his definitive run on The Incredible Hulk soon after old Jadejaws got his title (for the second time), Trimpe went on to become a Marvel stalwart. He drew series as diverse as Ant-Man, G.I. Joe, Iron Man, Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD, Godzilla, Shogun Warriors and many more.

But one of the things I most remember Trimpe for was his delightful spate of covers for Marvel's western comic reprints of the early Bronze Age. Trimpe had a knack for portraying sprawling scenes of action with a strange ability to keep all the disparate figures in focus. Here's a heaping helping of some Trimpe classic covers. Enjoy!

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Gil Goes West!

Once upon a time Gil "Sugar Lips" Kane was the main cover artist for Marvel Comics. His images dominated the newsstands as he cranked out cover after cover for the "House of Ideas". While not all of them are gems, they are all full of the particular energy Kane could bring to his imagery. He seemed able to find that singular moment when the potential action was at its most compressed.  Something about the westerns though seemed to bring out his best dramatic work as evidenced by this score of covers from that vintage Kane era. Enjoy!

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Out In A Blaze Of Glory!

To be honest I almost forgot about this revisionist history of the Marvel wild west from the turn of the century. John Ostrander and Leonardo Manco came to the western heroes of Marvel and they found a story with some unusual depth. Blaze of Glory tells a tale of a tiny town named Wonderment which was the home for former slaves seeking to find some sort of life on the frontier.

The town is put upon by night riders, a gang of white racists who are not satisfied with the outcome of the Civil War.  To protect against these gangs, the people of Wonderment, one Reno Jones (of Gunhawks fame) in particular seek out gunslingers to help protect the people.

What they find are not the shining heroes we're familiar with from scores of Marvel Comics. Those adventures were apparently the stuff of dime novels. The real men known as Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, and Kid Colt are less heroic and more gritty and bit more murderous than the legends relate.

This stark presentation makes the story sting with a realistic violence that often the vintage Marvel westerns, limited by the rigors of the Comics Code could not indulge in.

These are not "good guys", only better guys than the villains who seek to pillage the homes of innocent folks and murder them to boot.

There are twists and turns and all kinds of doing, including the appearances of lots more vintage Marvel heroes as well as some real world variations of famous western names. It's a rousing tale of revisionist history, by the slippery standards of the 90's not bad at all.

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Beware! The Rawhide Kid!

In many ways it can well be said that the Marvel Age of Comics began with the Rawhide Kid. With the seventeenth issue of that comic, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby took a character from the Atlas catalog and utterly reinvented him and imbued him with a brash energy which was evocative of changes to come later in the pages of Fantastic Four and beyond.

The original Rawhide Kid was a tall blonde heroic figure decked out in western finery and strutted in proper fashion. The new Rawhide Kid was a real youngster named Johnny Clay (later "Bart") who wore fancy leathers but cut a small figure with a chip on his shoulder. An orphan twice over there seems to be an interior nature to the Kid which was often missing from the typical stalwart western hero.

This new Rawhide Kid wanted to stay out of trouble until he didn't. He wanted to be law-abiding until he didn't. He was a tough as nails little fellow ready scrap and also willing to tuck in his pride if it would help the situation or establish a proper lesson. We have here a more complex character than comics was used to (for the most part) and you can see in his peripatetic adventures a range of feelings and reflections as he moseys across the hills and plains of the mythic west.

Kirby's artwork is dynamic and his storytelling is spotless in these issues of Rawhide Kid. He seems to really have an affinity for the little man who rides the rugged trails and has to constantly prove his mettle against all sorts of men who tower over him. He is constantly underestimated and proves his skills are more than sufficient to overcome. Kirby had to identify with the Rawhide Kid more than a little.

With the thirty-second issue Jack Kirby stepped away from the interior art chores though he stayed on covers. The expanding nature of the Marvel Universe proper left him no time for the Old West adventures of the Rawhide Kid. With special annual issues for the Fantastic Four and elsewhere and new series pending like The Avengers and The X-Men something had to give way.

And while Jack Davis (of EC Comics fame) does a creditable job for several issues beginning with issue thirty-three, he's not an artist in the Kirby mode by any chance and his Kid is at once older and less classically handsome.

After Davis leaves the series, Dick Ayers steps in to take over as he did on Sgt.Fury and the Howling Commandos so effectively. But eventually even Ayers steps away and Larry Lieber, who had been used as a writer for the most part, steps in and makes the Rawhide Kid his own for the duration of the strips long run.

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