(left) pencils by Herb Trimpe
Damon's 2nd completed Golden-ager was Timely's (Marvel's) The mighty Destroyer from the 1940s MYSTIC COMICS. He was re-introduced to comicdom in '77 by Roy Thomas in the INVADERS. "Happy" Herb Trimpe was hired to do this one and this is my first attempt at inking him. Damon asked Herb not to add the Destroyer's stripes to his pants but to instead make them black which I think was a wise move...no one looks intimidating in striped, colorful pants:-) This was my 1st attempt at inking Herbie and I used brush, a Pitt brush marker & markers. While fun, the challenge for me with this job was that Herb used a cream- colored art board that I've occasionally had to ink on before which causes the ink to fade a little more than usual when I try to erase the pencils at the end and the pencils DONT. Barely, anyway. So I used a harsher pink pearl eraser on what areas I could to try to erase more pencil lines and I had to redo most of the blackened in sections and even some of the feathering & other details. Even so, some pencil lines still come through in the scanned art and look a bit messy to me as they compete with the ink lines and also some delicate lines have faded a bit. This 11 X 17 commission was finished by 3/5/04.
Herb Trimpe's web-site