Don Lawrence in Illustrators Special #3

Don Lawrence and The Trigan Empire,

I never think of one, without the other.

Don was already a well established professional comic book artist, by the time he began illustrating The Trigan Empire, in the newly launched Ranger weekly comic, in 1965

but

he was all new to me and I was captivated by the art and the story, from that very first issue.

I was an impressionable eight year old and I continued to read the strip for the next couple of years, even following it into the pages of Look and Learn, when the publisher decided to meld Ranger into it.

Somewhere after that, my nomadic existence, with my parents, caused my attention to shift and I never really felt that old draw to the strip.  I am ashamed to say, that when I became a fully fledged convert to the Marvel Comics publications, 

I even found Don's art to be rather stiff and old fashioned!

BUT

I never forgot that early infatuation and when I ran across a copy of the large, hard backed Trigan Empire collection, 

in Victoria, on Vancouver Island in the summer of 1990, 

I snapped it up.

(Borrowed from a seller on Gumtree)

Cathy was a, "girl loses clothes", strip thatran in Mayfair, the Men's Magazine and this collection was published by the relatively short lived Canadian publisher, Aircel.

In an aside, Aircel also launched the career of Dale Keown and several others, in the pages of their comic book lines.

I had never seen or heard of Storm, when this volume turned up on the shelves at the Silver Snail Comic Shop, here in town but it was and is a decent read.

These three books, from The Book Palace, in England, are really special and well worth the money... I only have two of them!

Coming up shortly, is the publication of this beauty

the Illustrators Special, number Three 

and it promises to be well worth the exorbitant $54 Canadian,

that it will cost me.

All of the publications that I have bought, published by the good people at The Book Palace, have been exemplary examples of the craft and I am chomping at the bit, as I wait to read this one.

Don Lawrence left us all, the poorer for his passing, in December 2003, after a distinguished career in illustration.