Don Lawrence

Don Lawrence was born at November 17, 1928 in London, England. He went to the Academy of Arts but he found out that this study wasn't what he was looking for. He rather made comics. Lawrence got a job at the comics studio of Mick Anglo. There he worked on Young Marvelman [1956]. In 1958 Lawrence left Mick Anglo and started working for Amalgamated Press where he made comics like Olac the gladiator [1960], Erik the Viking [1960-1964], Karl the Viking [1960-1964], Thunderbirds [1966], Fireball XL5 [1967] and about eight western comics [1957-1966].

Don Lawrence became known with the comic The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire which he made together with story writer Mike Butterworth (1924?-1986) from 1965 to 1976. The first page of this comic was published in the comics magazine Ranger of September 18, 1965. Forty six books of this popular comic were published. Lawrence only came to know the popularity of his comic when he went to a British comics convention in 1976. When he confronted his publisher with this and asked him for more money, the publisher ended their relation.

After his breakup with publisher IPC in 1976, Don Lawrence started working for a Dutch publisher and began to draw stories for the Dutch comics magazine Eppo. In 1977 he started with the comic Storm in co-operation with story-writer Philip Dunn (1946). Other story-writers that contributed scripts for Storm are Martin Lodewijk (1939), Dick Matena (1943) and Kevin Gosnell (1950). Between The Trigian Empire and Storm Lawrence also worked on the comic Cathy (Dutch: Carrie, German: Virginia, French: Sophie).

Don Lawrence passed away at December 29, 2003.

Books in the Storm series:

De diepe wereld (The deep world) [1977]
De laatste vechter (The last fighter) [1978]
Het volk van de woestijn (The people from the desert) [1978]
De groene hel (The green hell) [1979]
Strijd om de aarde (The fight about the earth) [1979]
Het geheim van de nitronstralen (The secret of the nitron beams) [1980]
De legende van Yggdrasil (The legend of Yggdrasil) [1980]
Stad van de verdoemden (The city of the damned) [1981]
De sluimerende dood (The slumbering death) [1981]
De piraten van Pandarve (The pirates of Pandarve) [1982]
Het doolhof van de dood (The labyrinth of death) [1983]
De zeven van Aromater (The seven of Aromater) [1983]
De doder van Eriban (The killer of Eriban) [1984]
De honden van Marduk (The dogs of Marduk) [1985]
De levende planeet (The living planet) [1986]
Vandaahl de verderver (Vandhaal the corrupter) [1987]
De wentelwereld (The rotating world) [1988]
De robots van Danderzei (The robots of Danderzei) [1990]
De terugkeer van de rode prins (The return of the red prince) [1991]
De Von-Neumann machine (The Von-Neumann machine) [1993]
De genesisformule (The Genesis Formula) [?]
Het Voyager Virus (The Voyager Virus) [1996, drawn by John Kelly]

Also in this sequence: number 0: Commander Grek - Prisoners of time [1982].

Two fanclubs of Don Lawrence exist: one in Germany and one in The Netherlands. By searching on Google you can find many other Don Lawrence fan pages, for example The Worlds of Don Lawrence.

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Last update: September 30, 2006. erikt(at)xs4all.nl