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. 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.
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