For Veteran's Day I'm reaching back and picking Marvel's Phantom Eagle as my Favorite Hero of the Day. It's pure happen chance that I picked up Marvel Super-Heroes #16 featuring the one and pretty much only solo appearance of "the Pulse-Poundng Phantom Eagle". He was an American of German heritage and who feared for his faimly who was doing his best under disguise to bring the German menace during World War I to an end. What makes the Phantom Eagle fly is the exquisite artwork of the late Herb Trimpe, an artist ideally suited for the task. Trimpe was in addition to being one of Marvel's most trustworthy and reliable talents, a flyer of just the kinds of planes featured in this comic.
I've remarked here before how I was able to get signatures on my copy of MSH #16 and an original drawing of Phantom Eagle some years ago at a convention by Trimpe. He seemed well pleased to be drawing something other than the Hulk or Wolverine and even took a moment to share the drawing with the writer of the comic Gary Friedrich who was also in attendance at the convention. With both men gone now, it is an even more precious treasure in my collection.
Here is some of the original artwork from that story from so many years ago.
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Just a few months earlier Enemy Ace started his series in Star Spangled War Stories. I wonder if that was a factor in green-lighting the Phantom Eagle, which seemed a real oddity at the time.
ReplyDeleteThat's a wonderful sketch by Trimpe, not just dashed off. He put a lot of care into the meticulous detailing on the mask. I wasn't too excited when Trimpe replaced Marie on the Hulk. But he won me over on the final issue of the western Ghost Rider. His inks on Ayers were really strong, after all of those Colletta stories, and he did a full art job on the back-up that was truly intense, indicating he genuinely loved the genre. Trimpe's original comic book heroes were the EC artists, and you can see the Davis influence in his more humorous art. A regular Phantom Eagle Book would've been really unique.
My assumption has mostly been that The Blue Max starring George Peppard kicked off the tiny wave of WWI ace pilots, both the Enemy Ace and Phantom Eagle. Eagle was clearly a work of love and showed up all to rarely in the early days. The recent mini-series have been very disappointing, but of course they are not about heroism, but the very opposite.
DeleteTrimpe was always best when he inked himself to my eye and his strengths as an inker are immense. He was affected by his inkers to a powerful degree, with John Severin getting a lot of praise appropriately but it always seemed to me that folks liked inkers that hid the singularity of Trimpe's work which I adored.
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From 1964 to 1988 was the 50th Anniversary of the "Great War" and comics made several stabs at WWI-themed projects, besides the previously-mentioned DC projects and "phantom Eagle", Dell had both Air Aces (which started out as WWI-only, but added WWII and Korea tales as it went on), and World War Tales which retold famous WWI battles.
DeleteIn addition, Gold Key tried out pulp hero G-8 and His Battle Aces.
Sadly, none of them lasted very long, despite some wonderful art by Sam Glanzman and George Evans!
Trimpe's inking made average pencilers better and good pencilers look their best!
DeleteHis work on the final issue of Silver Surfer over Kirby's pencils was awesome!
Easily as good as Mike Royer or Frank Giacoia, and just a step below Joe Sinnott!