New to the Trigan Empire and wondering where to begin?
I’ve given all the original 89 episodes each a provisional rating of stars out of five. Of course, these ratings reflect my personal preferences. Your mileage may vary.
That said, I highly recommend The Wish-Fulfiller and/or The Duplication Machine and/or The Fiendish Experiment and/or The Man from the Future as stories to read first. Five-star classics!
See also The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire for a bit of an overview.
XIII Voyage to the Moon Bolus
XIV The Three Princes
XVI The Lost City
XX The Trigan Republic
XXVIII The Duplication Machine
XXXIII The Wish-Fulfiller
XXXIV The Fiendish Experiment
XXXVI The Lost Years
XXXVII A World within a World
Voyage to the Moon Bolus is the first of many tales to feature the trio of comrades in the Air Fleet—Janno, Keren, and Roffa. The Three Princes is the longest and most epic of all the tales.
The Lost City and The Trigan Republic are representative of many tales where Trigo, Janno, and Brag are either separated geographically from Trigan, or imprisoned.
The next five tales are all from a period in time I call “peak Trigan”.
The last two tales are the first illustrated by Don Lawrence on his return from a year+ sabbatical. They’re as good as the best of the earlier tales.
XXI The Red Death
XXII The Puppet Emperor
XXIII Trigo’s Five Tasks
XXIV The Thing from the Sea
XXV The Giant Plant
XXVII The Unscrupulous Servant
XXIX The Masked Raiders
XXX The Prisoner of Zerss
XXXIX The House of the Five Moons
If you think some of these tales deserve 5 of 5 stars, you’re probably right! It’s hard to find fault with most of these tales, but I wanted a somewhat even spread across the ratings.
III Elekton In Danger
XI The Three Aliens
XII The Reign of Thara
XXXI The Miniature Killers of Zelph
XXXV The Curse of King Yutta
XLII Evil from Outer Space
XLIII The Curse of the Sun Worshippers
XLVII The Secret Assassin
XLVIII The Food of the Gods
LIV The Faith Healer
LIX Ten Lunar Years of Solitude
LXI The Street Sweeper
LXIII The Frozen People
LXVI The Digger
There’s not much wrong with any of these tales either. Perhaps some of the tropes are hackneyed or overused.
I Victory for the Trigans
II Crash in the Jungle
V The Land of No Return
VI The Revolt of the Lokans
VII War with Hericon
VIII Revolution in Zabriz
IX The Phials of Forgetfulness
X The Revenge of Darak
XVII The Terror of Mount Spyx
XVIII The Invisible Man
XXVI The City of Jewels
XXXII The Zota Club
XXXVIII The Secret of Castle Doum
XL A National Emergency
XLIV Planet Zootha
XLVI The Elixir of Youth
XLIX The Stone of Vorg
L The Heat Controller
LIII The Mind Controller
LVI The Green Fog
LVII The Lost Valley
LVIII The Scourge from Space
LX Janno’s Five Tasks
LXII The Time Machine
LXIV Imperial Walkabout
LXVII The Stolen Plans
. . .
* The Brief Reign of Sennos the First
LXVIII The Curse of Zonn
LXIX Battle for Survival
LXXV Submarine Mission
LXXVIII A Tragic Misunderstanding
LXXX Trigan’s Deadly Peril
LXXXI The Skorpiads
LXXXIII Terror of the Skorpiads
LXXXV Alien Mission
. . .
Three of Butterworth’s tales that barely make the grade. The Great Flood was meant to refloat the series, but it sinks.
Roscoe’s The Rival definitely has the right vibe, but he seems blissfully unaware that Trigo founded the Trigan Empire. He’s not the latest in a long succession of Trigan Emperors.
The Zolt Exodus isn’t a bad story at all, except that it takes half a dozen instalments—which could easily have been condensed to a single instalment—to get to the action.
Salvia is the lead character in this story. And that’s a good thing. What’s not so good is the unexpected reappearance of King Zorth of Loka, now a space-faring monarch.
LXXVII Rebellion in Daveli
LXXIX More Trouble in Zabriz
A couple of overly long tales.
Keren ends up being the King of Daveli, after the rebellion is thwarted, but not before Keren’s father Imbala is killed.
More Trouble in Zabriz is a re-run of the original Revolution in Zabriz. This time featuring maiden-in-distress Ursa who is left hanging in a harrowing hostage situation.
LXX Brinka, the Intergalactic Investigator
LXXI The Killer
LXXXIV Search Mission
Now we’re getting close to the very bottom of the barrel. Brinka, Intergalactic Investigator and The Killer are generally regarded as one tale. Presumably this is because no one has bothered to read them—they are very clearly two separate tales, albeit that the second is a sequel of sorts to the first.
Search Mission is a long-winded 15 instalments. It introduces a new character we didn’t know we needed, Peric’s long-lost son Fidelius. Plus the return of the phonic pirates, whom we would have been better off never hearing from again.
LXXIII The Zondan Affair
LXXIV Chase for a Traitor
LXXXVI Mercy Mission
Sometimes I wonder if The God of Zonda and Chase for a Traitor are actually intended as parodies. I might view them more favourably if they were. Look and Learn ceased publication after Mercy Mission and so ended the Trigan Empire. Mercifully so.