This May sees the return of The Trigan Empire to comics, with writer Michael Carroll and artist Tom Foster bringing us New Adventures From The Trigan Empire. David Ferguson asked Michael about the new series, as well as some of his other work…
Plus, courtesy of Rebellion, we have an exclusive brand-new prologue of the new story, below!
For those not familiar with the Trigan Empire yet, what is your take on what the series is about and how does your series fit in with that narrative?
Michael Carroll: The original series was set in the then-present-day of the 1960s, and it opens with an alien spaceship crashing in the swamps of Florida. The human-like crew are all dead, but the ship yields other treasures, most notably a series of books written in an incomprehensible alien language. After many decades scientist Richard Haddon figures out how to translate the language, and reveal that the books tell the story of the rise and fall of the Trigan Empire.
The strip was presented in two-page weekly episodes, and pretty quickly the Haddon back-story is mostly side-lined as the strip tells us how Trigo, leader of a nomadic tribe on the planet Elekton, decides that it’s time for his people to stop wandering and start building: they will establish a city and, in time, an empire. This will help them to stand against their enemies, in particular the people of Loka, a warmongering race who possess much more advanced technology than Trigo’s people.
The creators of the series – Mike Butterworth and Don Lawrence – clearly had an absolute ball with the strip, throwing in everything they could think of. We’ve got swordfights and monsters and dragons and flying cars and aliens and pirates and absolutely tons of treachery and back-stabbing and kidnappings and last-second escapes.
“The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire” series originated in Ranger magazine in September 1965, then was carried on when Ranger was absorbed into Look and Learn in June 1966. It remained a key element of Look and Learn until that mag’s demise in April 1982.
While the early stories leapt through the years at quite a rapid pace as Trigan City (yes, Trigo named the city and the empire after himself!) is built, they soon slowed down to the point where the main characters seemed to stop ageing, as is of course standard for almost all comics: Trigo is forty-something-ish, his brother Brag is about five years older, Brag’s nephew Janno is in his early twenties, the scientist Peric is very old but still vital, and so on.
Back in the 1960s and 70s in particular, comic strips weren’t designed to be read the way they are now. They were candy: enjoyable in the moment, but not intended to be nourishing or considered to be of great worth. We can see this reflected in the original “Trigan Empire” stories, especially in the later years, where the same story elements pop up again and again, and just about every adventure is resolved without any lasting impact. Most TV shows at the time were the same: skip an episode and you can just jump back in the following week without feeling like you’re missing something.
This was mostly because the readers weren’t expected to stick around forever: you’d get a few years at most out of them before they moved on to something else. They certainly weren’t thumbing back through their collections of back-issues and going, “Wait a second… In the first story it’s made very clear that Trigan City is established on ‘The Five Hills’ but three years later they’re talking about ‘The Six Hills’ – then a few years after that, it’s back to ‘The Five Hills’ again!”
There’s a lot of anomalies like that – and some other pretty major contradictions – because not only were the readers not being utterly anal about things like continuity, neither were the creators. The stories were not designed to be binge-absorbed in great big chunks! They were meant to be savoured at a rate of two pages per week, each gorgeous panel lovingly poured-over.
When it came to reviving the series, well, things are very different nowadays. The readers expect adherence to continuity and lasting impact. They don’t want the reset-button approach to every adventure.
So after quite a lot of back-and-forth as to how best to approach the revival, we decided to leap forward quite a bit. Trigo is an old man, still the emperor but he’s ceded most of the day-to-day running of the empire to Janno, who’s now in his fifties with a family of his own. This allows us to make a very clear and very necessary distinction between the original series and this new one. We’re not trying to supplant the original, just build on its foundations – but we’ve taken particular care not to try to overshadow what came before.
I won’t pretend it hasn’t been a struggle, though, and I know that there will be some die-hard fans of the original who won’t be happy with what we’ve done… but that was a given anyway! Any attempt to revive an older property faces the same battle: change too little and there’s no point in doing it. Change too much and the complaints roll in: “It’s not the same! They don’t understand what was so great about the original! It’s gone woke! Aaaargh! They’ve ruined my childhood!” And so on. But I’m old enough to remember the incredibly toxic vitriol aimed at Star Trek: The Next Generation when it was announced: so many of the purist Trekkies were absolutely apoplectic with rage that their beloved show was being trampled over by these ridiculous upstarts! They have an android called “Data” for cryin’ out loud! How lazy is that? That’s barely a step above the robot in Lost in Space being called “Robot”! And the captain doesn’t even have any hair!
With our revival of The Trigan Empire we could have aimed for a middle-ground… but unfortunately I don’t think there isone: the “changed too much” and “didn’t change enough” fields actually overlap. We all need to bear in mind that most of the stuff we loved when we were kids was aimed at kids: the love we still have for it is very heavily bolstered by nostalgia!
Tom Foster is the artist. I have seen some of the preview pages and it’s got a very classic science fiction vibe. Can you tell us about working with him on this project and the artistic choices?
Tom’s work is amazing! He fully understands the tone of the original Trigan Empire and the approach we’re bringing to this revival, and his painted pages are breathtaking. There was always a sense of heightened reality with Don Lawrence’s and Oliver Frey’s pages and Tom’s captured that perfectly while also bringing his own unique skills to the work.
When his first pages came in I got goosebumps… and immediately I felt a great sense of imbalance, which was my imposter syndrome kicking in: This art is too good for my story!
There’s a weight and groundedness to Tom’s art and design that gives the whole thing a sense of credibility and momentum. We can feel the years bearing down on Trigo, the spring in Judelle’s step, the entitled arrogance of Prince Breon and the resigned weariness of his manservant Donian… Tom’s able to bring the characters and events to life in a way that few artists could have managed. I certainly can’t speak for Don Lawrence, of course, but I find it easy to imagine him seeing Tom’s pages and going, “Oh, I do like this!”
I have to mention Dreadnoughts. The story just gets more realistic with each passing day in the real world. John Higgins art style really feeds that too. Has it gotten tougher to write because of real world events?
Definitely! The whole purpose of Dreadnoughts was to say, “Look how utterly horrible things would be if this were to happen!” and sometimes it feels like the USA responded with, “Oh yeah? Challenge accepted! Hold my lite beer!” And we’re going, “Dude, that’s wasn’t a challenge!”
I’ve said this too many times already, but I’ll say it again. Whether we’re talking about Dreadnoughts or Judge Dredd… The Judges are the bad guys. It’s that simple. Sure, Judge Dredd himself and some of the Judges in Dreadnoughts are presented as heroes, but that’s still not a contradiction. Inindividual cases, the Judges can do good things, but in the big picture the Judges are the baddies.
Arguably, when we boil it all down, there are two main approaches to governance and society in general: assume thatpeople are inherently good and compassionate, or assume that they’re inherently selfish and lazy. If we leave a basket of candy outside the house at Hallowe’en will the majority of the people take only one item so that there’s some left for others, or will they be tempted to take the lot? Each person should ask themselves, “What would I do?” and “What do I think most people would do?”
Dreadnoughts exists in a world where the “people are inherently selfish and lazy” approach very much has prevalence, and sadly we’re seeing that all the time on the news right now. Compassion is viewed as weakness, while ignorance is seen as strength and arrogance is prized most highly of all. A nation where opinion and volume carry more weight than evidence is unsustainable…
I delivered the script for the fifth Dreadnoughts series – “The Shakedown” – a month ago, and by crikey, that was a tough one to write because the news kept out-horribling everything I could come up with!
One of the few lessons people remember from the Mussolini’s time as dictator of Italy is that “at least the trains ran on time” as though that’s an indicator that fascism has some positive aspects. What people fail to understand (often by choice) is that the trains didn’t run on time: the people whose job was to report on the train schedules lied about their efficiency because they were too scared to tell the truth. That’s the United States of America in the present day… It’s a powder keg, and the republicans are clustered around it, setting off self-congratulatory fireworks.
But I’m an optimist: the current regime won’t last! The majority of the people of the USA are kind, and compassionate, and would instinctively help a fallen neighbour rather than exploit them. The good people seem to be in the minority only because the spotlight falls on the selfish ones… And that’s because the selfish ones own the spotlights.
Your other current series Silver is pure escapism to me. The concept is such a great idea. Vampire versus aliens. It has been my first exposure to Joe Currie’s art and he is doing amazing work on it. I’m wondering how working on this book differs? It feels further from realism compared to the others.
Silver is a joy to write because – unlike The Trigan Empire or Judge Dredd or Dreadnoughts – it’s all our own work. Joe and I can create whatever we like without having to worry about stepping on someone else’s toes!
Joe’s imagination is matched only by his skills and it’s definitely been hard work at times to come up with ideas that approach his level: I’ve never encountered an artist so gifted at making ugly things beautiful: the alien machinery and the Sepsis themselves are inspired. At times Joe gives a almost balletic feel to the violence, and a majesty to the scale of things.
His depictions of the Baroness, though, are the highlights for me! From the very start we knew what we wanted to show her as ancient, barely alive after three decades trapped underground, but still absolutely ferocious and skilled – and as time goes on, she grows strong and seemingly younger. She can change her form, of course, and that gives Joe great scope to show so many different aspects of her character… I’ve not yet seen any of the artwork for Book 3, but history tells me it’s going to look amazing!
I’ve already delivered the script for Book 4 – so hopefully Joe will be jumping straight into that once he’s done with Book 3.
Dreadnoughts and Silver eventually ended up in hardback but The New Adventures of the Trigan Empire is starting out in one. What is it like seeing your work in this format and how did the format impact the writing on Trigan?
It’s great to see the collected editions of the serialised comics – but always a little strange to re-read the story in one go when it was written to be presented in five-page episodes!
That’s one of the key things we have to bear in mind when creating work for 2000AD these days… We sometimes only get one shot at surprising the readers! With Silver, for example, we deliberately said nothing about the plot until the first episode came out, that way it was a nice surprise for the readers who think they’re getting a vampire story to have that first episode end with the appearance of the alien spaceship. Suddenly the readers are going, “Wait a second! What the bloomin’-blinkin’ heck-flip is going on here?!” But the collected edition is presented as a 100-page story (two books of ten five-page episodes), so there’s no point in hiding the surprise any more.
The upshot of that is that serialised stories have to be designed to work for the initial readers who experience it episode-by-episode and they have to work for readers who come along later and get the collected edition and can read it all in one go.
With The New Adventures of the Trigan Empire, it’s a sixty-page episode! I didn’t have to break the story down into five-page chunks, complete with a cliff-hanger at the end of every episode to keep the readers coming back for more, so from that aspect it was a lot simpler to write. It does have individual chapters, but I was able to make them as long or as short as the story needed.
You have a lot of stuff out but is there any other stuff you want to mention?
I’ve recently finished a science fiction novel that was a lot of fun to write. It’s currently sitting in a bunch of editors’ inboxes not being read but hopefully that’ll change soon and it’ll start to gain some traction.
I’ve also got a brand-new series coming in 2000AD, but I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about that yet: I’ve seen some of the artwork, though, and it’s absolutely knock-out.
Plus May will, hopefully, will see the publication of The Goodies: The National Mistrust. It’s a tie-in novella to the classic TV show [from Chinbeard Books]. One of my strongest influences growing upand its stars Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden were my first comedy heroes. I had more fun writing that book than I’ve had in decades!
The story behind the story is that there had been plans for an audio revival of The Goodies with the basic plotlines for six episodes written by the Goodies themselves, along with the producer Barnaby Eaton-Jones. Sadly, that revival never came to pass because Tim died in 2020. But then Barnaby landed on the idea of presenting the same stories as novellas, with each one written by a different writer. Barnaby already knew I was a fan and he figured it was worth taking a chance on me… I’m extremely grateful for that: one of the highlights of my career has beenreading Graeme’s feedback on the book!
Oh, and Proteus Vex is still my favourite comic I’ve ever written and more people should buy it!
• Preorder New Adventures from the Trigan Empire – Book One from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
• The Rise and Fall of The Trigan Empire collections are available to order from all good bookshops, AmazonUK (Affiliate Link) | Bookshop.org (Affiliate Link) | Treasury of British Comics Webshop
• Michael Carroll is online at michaelowencarroll.com | Follow his blog about British Comics and more, Rusty Staples
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David is a writer of stuff on comics and pop culture for GCN.ie. He is also a contributor and editor (Hugo nominated) for Journey Planet
Categories: 2000AD, British Comics, British Comics - Current British Publishers, British Comics - Graphic Novels, Comic Previews, Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
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