Storm (Don Lawrence)

Storm is a science fiction / fantasy comic book series originally (and for most albums) drawn by Don Lawrence. It tells the adventures of an astronaut who accidentally gets lost in time. The series originated in Dutch, but has since been translated into many other languages.

Publication history

Don Lawrence had spent ten years as the artist behind the British science-fiction strip The Trigan Empire. With its impressive visuals, melodramatic plots, and (unusual for the time) fully-painted art, the strip developed a considerable fanbase in continental markets, particularly in the Netherlands. After Lawrence was replaced in 1976, Martin Lodewijk and Frits van der Heide, who had been publishing a Dutch-language version of The Trigan Empire in the comics magazine Eppo, approached Lawrence and suggested he create an original story for them. Lawrence initially conceived of a story set in the "Deep World," a future Earth in which the oceans have receded and primitive civilizations exist on the former sea-beds. The title revolved around a character named "Commander Grek", but the first installment (written in 1976 by Vince Wernham) was not picked up by Dutch publisher Oberon. The story was later reworked by Philip "Saul" Dunn, with Grek replaced as the main character by the time-displaced 21st-century astronaut Storm. This version did get published by Oberon, serialized in Eppo in 1977, with the "Deep World" setting reused for the first nine volumes of the series.