Preview: ‘The Rise And Fall Of The Trigan Empire’ Book 2 – The Classic Of British Comics Continues

The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire reprint series continues with Volume 2, containing all of the Trigan Empire stories published in Look and Learn between May 1967 and February 1971. One of the greatest space opera sci-fi epics of British comics, indeed of comics worldwide, the Trigan Empire is a magnificent achievement, beautifully illustrated by one of the masters of comics, Don Lawrence.

As we told you before, with the preview of the first of four volumes of The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, this is one of those wistfully mentioned titles, a classic of Brit comics from Mike Butterworth and Don Lawrence.

As Chris Weston mentions in his introduction here, what set Trigan Empire apart from everything else was the art of Don Lawrence, printed in all its fully painted, photo-realistic magnificence.

Inside, you get to luxuriate once more in Lawrence’s vision of a futuristic empire across worlds, the retro-futurist styles of rocket flight sitting perfectly naturally with a mythology from Butterworth grounded in the worlds of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. It’s a heady mix that lends itself perfectly to this epic tale chronicling the heady days of the Trigan Empire – full of action and intrigue, betrayal and bravery, great men and villainous villains.

Everything opens up here with Emperor Trigo’s son being born – the first Prince of Trigan and the rightful heir to the Empire.

Unfortunately, as you’ll see in the preview below, things aren’t quite as straightforward and easy as that. Within this second volume, we see three sons reduced to one, a nefarious outsider pushing to seize power, the first death of Trigo and the ascent of a monster as new Emperor – and that’s just in what you’ll see in the small preview of the near 300 pages you’ll find here.

The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire Book 2 is available for pre-order now and available in December from The Treasury of British Comics.