The ship’s crew dead, our planet’s top scientists scour the trove of documents left behind, unlocking the alien hieroglyphs that recount the story of the doomed Trigan empire. The Trigan Empire was L&L‘s signature series, a futuristic tale of an ancient humanoid race from the planet Elekton, whose phallic spacecraft crashes into modern-day Earth. His artwork was visionary, defined by its luscious gouache and photorealism, and his fondness for dressing his characters in the cartileginous mugs of actors like Kirk Douglas. He had been the artist behind the The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, part Roman epic, part sci-fi fantasy adventure, which began its run in the mid 1960s in the otherwise dully edifying British children’s magazine Look and Learn. Lawrence was a superstar on the Continent - knighted, even, by Holland’s Queen Beatrix - and, for the bulk of his career, a nobody at home. It was called The Trigan Empire.…” The Guardian called Lawrence “an exemplar” of British comics, “acclaimed across Europe.” Acclaimed everywhere, that is, except his native England (and the rest of the English-speaking world), which paid him as much attention as a shitting pigeon does a windshield. Neil Gaiman posted an encomium on his weblog that began, “When I was a boy, Don painted a comic I loved. When Don Lawrence died last December at age 75, a chorus of artists and writers emerged from the wings to pay homage. Crouching in the bottom right corner, an afterthought, is the artist’s signature, the only reference to either artist or writer in the entire book, as though the work had simply willed itself into being. It opens on a stunning watercolour panorama, a white-bearded man instructing two blonde warriors on a hillside overlooking a vast, ancient Roman city. On its cover, a pale blue spaceship sails through the cosmos, while the comic’s title smoulders just below: The Trigan Empire. At least it’ll be easy to spot: even with its black hardcover peeling at the spine, the book is a thrilling object. The Women’s Press SF Line – A Son of the Rock - Jack Deighton on The Women’s Press science fictionĬurrent reading mygoditsraining "all those perfectionist artists who worked their asses off".AND GOT PAID FOR IT PaulGrahamRaven john_clute also, all of his book-length works since the late 1990s were published by small presse… /i/web/status/1… PaulGrahamRaven john_clute he has a new best of collection due out this month or next from Subterranean Press, so not entirely forgotten.If you’re duly devoted to the search, you may find a copy buried in your library’s delete bin, under shaggy tomes on potato slicing or the history of the Cleveland Browns.I didn’t buy any, but the catalogue itself is very nice.īritish Fantasy Society Journal: New HorizonsĪ la deriva en el mar de las Lluvias y otros relatos In 2008, Book Palace Books published a full-colour catalogue of Trigan Empire art from the Look and Learn archives which was available to buy. If Dan Dare inspired a generation of British boys in the 1960s to become sf fans, then the Trigan Empire did the same in the 1970s. To be honest, the stories are often quite crap – as they were for Dan Dare – but the art is gorgeous – again, as it was for Dan Dare. Each volume includes an essay on one aspect of the strip’s world. The stories, however, are not complete.īetween 20, the Don Lawrence Collection in the Netherlands reprinted all of Lawrence’s Trigan Empire strips in handsome leather-bound volumes. This Hamlyn omnibus reprints some of the earlier stories from the strip, including the one describing the founding of the empire. But back when I was at school, I wasn’t aware of Lawrence’s work, and it wasn’t until my parents bought the book below one Christmas that I discovered the true Trigan Empire. The latter quit in 1976 after discovering that the strip was being syndicated throughout Europe and he was receiving nothing for it. It was was originally written by Mike Butterworth and drawn by Don Lawrence. The Trigan Empire had actually begun in Ranger in 1965, and the moved across to Look and Learn in 1966, where it remained until 1982 when the magazine ceased. At that time, it was drawn by Oliver Frey and then Gerry Wood. I chiefly read the magazine for one reason: The Trigan Empire. I remember sitting in the school library back in the late 1970s, reading Look and Learn, which the school had on subscription.
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