Having read an article today about the erotic art of Oliver Frey, I immediately thought "I know that name".

Then I remembered as an under 11 year old reading a comic strip called "The Trigan Empire".

Does anyone remember it?

Yes indeedy - was in "Look & Learn" - it was all very homoerotic, so no surprise what he became famous for

G

Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigan_Empire

It seems Frey was not the only artist though.

G

The Trigan Empire was fantastic, and a cheap, good quality reprint or set of reprints is long overdue. Imagine the Roman Empire with spaceships and rayguns, that was it.

Didn't the main villains have blue skin??

"The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire" was by Don Lawrence and first appeared in "Ranger" although everyone associates it with "Look & Learn".
It took DL about two weeks to illustrate each episode, adding to the established tradition of British painted comics as opposed to the more common US ink/pencil offerings.
If the US had a tradition of painted comics in the 60s I must have missed it.
It's been reprinted in book form many times but there's so much of it that I doubt anyone has ever read it all the way through.
The blue-skinned villains were the Lokans (boo!)

I rememeber reading somewhere that Asterix made his first appearance in Look and Learn where he was renamed Beric the Brave

I remember reading it in Vulcan, in the mid 70's.

Asterix has had lots of names over the years. He was called Cedric when I was a kid.

One thing about "The Trigan Empire" has always intrigued me: was there ever a story in which the spacecraft featured in the opening story actually set off and where was it going? What were the crew up to and how did they die?

I tried to bid on a Trigan Empire collection a couple of years ago, it went for over £70 so it was beyond my means and shows just how popular this strip remains. Certainly it is time that they were republished.

I remember it. I used to be a massive star wars fan, but after some bad school behaviour, they swapped my star wars weekly.... For look & learn... Imagine my surprise as I opened l&l and found pictures of anglo saxons instead of princess leia totting her gun....I was traumatised! The only thing worth reading in that damn rag was trigan empire... Hated l&l then and hate it now! Seriously - did you buy l&l for yourself? Or did do-goody family members buy it for you?! I cant imagine any child wanting that rag! Didnt you defect to marvel/dc or look-in?!

No, it was primarily drawn by the great Don Lawrence, who also drew 'Storm' for the European market as well as a lot of other stuff including strips in TV Century 21 and the long running erotic humour strip 'Carrie' in Mayfair magazine.

Oh yeah, from 'Look and Learn'! Essentially the Romans if they'd had microchips. I must say it was my favourite part as I was too young to enjoy the rest of the magazine, a quintisentially British production so the Trigan Empire was my favourite part. If I recall they may have been reprinted a little while back?

I remember being given this when I was a child for Xmas, as a hardback book. The book was massive!

I had the book of this, when I was eleven or twelve. Emperor Trigo was one of three brothers. He was the noble, courageous, handsome one. He had a brother called Brag (?) who was good-hearted but not too bright (so of course convention dictated he had to be heavier-featured, more brawny, and less good looking) . His other brother was called Klud (?). a villainous character, eager to do down his much more popular brother, Trigo: he sported a goatee beard (hmmm, villain with a goatee: not too cliched, eh!?).

Seen the books in Forbidden planet but they were about £50. The funny thing I remember about it is that either in this or a similar work by the same artist one of the heroines went bare breasted.

Not in The Trigan Empire, but Don Lawrence was known for his sexy fantasy females, including Ember in the European strip Storm. He was also the original artist of stripgirl Carrie in the men's magazine Mayfair.

I used to buy Ranger mainly for this strip- the artwork was superb. Unfortunately Ranger ended being "incorporated" into the dreadful Look & Learn which I reluctantly had to buy to follow the story.