I was flipping through the new Lost Marvels: Savage Tales collection when I came across a beautifully-rendered aerial battle drawn by an artist whose style I didn't recognize. Checking the credits, to my surprise the artist was Herb Trimpe! Editor Larry Hama asked Trimpe to come up with a series involving airplanes because that is what he liked to draw. I would describe "Skywarriors" as a cross between EC's Aces High and Xenozoic Tales. If that doesn't convince you, here's what Dr. Michael Dean had to say about the feature in his introduction.
"Trimpe, best known for his long run on Incredible Hulk, was a rare instance of a creator recruited for Savage Tales from Marvel's mainstream super-hero line. what he broght to Hama, though, was something completely different: The Skywarriors, a series about postapocalyptic WWIII aerial c ombat fought using technology from two previous world wars. Turned loose to write, pencil, and ink his own creation, Trimpe's enthusiasm shows on every page. he sprinkles bits of exposition here and there but mostly doesn't waste much time explaining the premise -- even the location is vague, suggesting a South American backdrop and Russian adversaries. It's all basically an excuse to depict cool-looking early-20th-century machineries and aerial dogfights in an open-ended future war. Each story focuses on a different member of a band of resistance fighters, including one of Savage Tales' rare female protagonists."
If you've never seen it before, I guarantee "The Skywarriors" feature will redefine how you think about Herb Trimpe.
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Never heard of Skywarriors before. My guess for the artist was Walt Simonson. I never would have thought of Herb Trimpe. The premise sounds interesting. And good for Herb Trimpe having the opportunity to do a passion project like this.