The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire

I’ve noticed a trend on Twitter this year (2025) with people asking questions based on the following template—What is a good X to get into for someone just getting into Xs?

So I thought I’d offer some recommended reading for someone just getting into The Trigan Empire. 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!

But why these particular tales? Are they representative of tales from the Trigan Empire? How do they fit into the general scheme of things? Let’s have an overview.

I’ve long contemplated how to rightly divide the series that sprawls across 86 episodes over 17 consecutive years. Here is my taxonomy.

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Early Trigan (1965–1967) – Establishing characters, world-building, early development. Episodes 1 to 12.

There are seven main recurring characters—Trigo (the Emperor), Brag (the Emperor’s brother), Janno (the Emperor’s nephew, Brag’s son), Keren and Roffa (Janno’s comrades in the Trigan Air Fleet), Peric (the great scientist) and Salvia (the physician, Peric’s daughter).

Trigo, Brag, Peric and Salvia are introduced in Episode 1. Janno and Keren are introduced in Episode 2. Roffa is introduced in Episode 12.

There are other recurring characters who feature in the Early Trigan period, notably Imbala (the King of Daveli, Keren’s father), Kassar (the King of Hericon), and Ursa (Kassar’s sister, Trigo’s bride). But Butterworth writes Kassar out of the script early on in the Classic Trigan period, and thereafter Ursa and Imbala barely even rate a mention.

All these Early Trigan tales are illustrated by Don Lawrence, co-creator of the series with writer Mike Butterworth.

The first and last of these Early Trigan tales are quite lengthy. Episodes 1 is 20 instalments and Episode 12 is 19 instalments. A couple of episodes in the next group are even longer!

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Classic Trigan (1968–1970) – Series consolidates style, matures artistically and narratively. Episodes 13 to 24.

This period commences with an absolute gem of a tale. Voyage to the Moon Bolus features the three ‘R’s of sci-fi—rockets, robots, and ray guns! It is also the first of many adventures of the three comrades-in-arms Janno, Keren, and Roffa.

Next up is the epic tale The Three Princes. As befits an epic tale, it’s 31 instalments long, the longest of all Trigan tales. The action kicks off with the arrival of Thringa, the evil telepathic humanoid alien. An invasion of sorts.

Another epic during this Classic Trigan period is Trigo’s Five Tasks. It’s 23 instalments long, the second longest of all Trigan tales. It segues into the next tale The Thing from the Sea.

1970 was bookended by two episodes featuring alien invasions and memorable alien weaponry. The Red Death stars a spaghetti-like alien weed that threatens to engulf the planet. A conquest machine with destroying units on stalks that rise from the ocean depths steal the show in The Thing from the Sea.

All but one of these Classic Trigan tales are illustrated by Don Lawrence.

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Peak Trigan (1971–1973) – The absolute height in storytelling quality and popularity. Episodes 25 to 43.

After the extended epics and mostly quite lengthy tales (12 instalments or more) of the Classic Trigan period, none of the 19 tales here is more than 11 instalments long. These somewhat shorter, standalone stories are among the very best, in my opinion. And they are, or were at the time (if the number of pages in the parent magazine Look and Learn is anything to go by), among the most popular.

1971 has three further pairs of tales where the first of the pair segues into the second.

All but one of these Classic Trigan tales are illustrated by Don Lawrence. And this is where he ends his almost unbroken 8-year-long initial run.

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Late Trigan (1974–1977) – The later Butterworth years, showing signs of stasis and more obvious repetition. Episodes 44 to 69.

The 19 tales of Peak Trigan were never more than 11 instalments long. The 26 tales of Late Trigan are never more than 10 instalments long.

This period is really more of the same. And that’s a good thing. These tales are for the most part solid, but on the whole perhaps not quite as scintillating.

What’s notable about this period is that the majority of tales are not illustrated by the saga’s co-creator Don Lawrence. He was gone for the duration of 1974. He returned in April 1975 and illustrated the next 8 episodes before quitting for good. Thereafter, Oliver Frey took over as his replacement.

It seems to me that Mike Butterworth held back two of his greatest scripts in anticipation of Don Lawrence’s return. The Man from the Future and The Man with a Mission are every bit as good as the stand-out gems of the earlier Classic Trigan and Peak Trigan periods.

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Latter-Day Trigan (1978–1982) – Post-Butterworth. The Roscoe corpus.

To be frank, I’m not a big fan of the 17 tales penned by Mike Butterworth’s successor Ken Roscoe. That said, a handful of the Latter-Day Trigan tales are quite good, I think.

Submarine Mission is the strongest of them, in my opinion. A Tragic Misunderstanding, too, has all the right ingredients. It’s memorable for the unexplained resurrection of King Kassar who was summarily executed early on in the epic Classic Trigan tale The Three Princes. I infer from this that Ken Roscoe hadn’t actually read all the tales in the franchise he was tasked with continuing. That’s one of my gripes! It’s doubly infuriating, given that he’d just killed off King Imbala of Daveli in the previous episode Rebellion in Daveli. The problem here being that it leaves Imbala’s son and heir Keren’s ongoing role as a pilot in the Trigan Air Fleet in some doubt.

In a more positive vein, the Skorpiads make for very memorable aliens. Perhaps they deserve to make a comeback?

1978

LXX  Brinka, Intergalactic Investigator
LXXI  The Killer
LXXII  The Rival
LXXIII  The God of Zonda
LXXIV  Chase for a Traitor
LXXV  Submarine Mission
LXXVI  The Flowers of Forgetfulness

1979

LXXVII  Rebellion in Daveli
LXXVIII  A Tragic Misunderstanding
LXXIX  More Trouble in Zabriz

1980

LXXX  Trigan’s Deadly Peril
LXXXI  The Skorpiads

1981

LXXXII  The Zolt Exodus
LXXXIII  Terror of the Skorpiads
LXXXIV  Search Mission
LXXXV  Alien Mission

1982

LXXXVI  Mercy Mission