Don Lawrence

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Donald Southam Lawrence called Don Lawrence (born November 17, 1928 in London , † December 29, 2003 in Eastbourne , Great Britain ) was a British comic artist .

He attended art academy after school and military service , but found that the "real" arts were not for him because he was much more interested in drawing comics.

His career as a comic artist began in the 1950s with the comic strip " Marvelman ", the English version of the American " Captain Marvel ". It followed u. a. Series like "The Sword of Eyngar", "Olac the Gladiator" or "Fireball XL5". He loved science fiction , but most of his comics were based on previous television series.

Don Lawrence made his breakthrough with the Trigan comic series (developed together with Mike Butterworth ) between 1956 and 1976. Finally, Don Lawrence was able to draw a comic according to his own ideas, in the tradition of the illustrator Frank Bellamy .

The second high point in Don Lawrence's career as a comic artist was the series Storm (with 22 albums by Lawrence) from 1976. It is about a 21st century astronaut who is hurled thousands of years into the future by a cosmic hurricane and then into the Parallel world Pandarve experienced many adventures, mostly fantasy and SF elements are mixed and there are many allusions to characters from classical literature (from Greek mythology , from Alice in Wonderland, etc.).

Phillip Saul Dunn, Dick Matena (under the pseudonym John Kelly ) and Kevin Gosnell also worked on "Storm" . Martin Lodewijk finally wrote the scenario for albums 10 to 26 of "Storm", of which Don Lawrence drew volumes 10 to 22 until his death (from "Storm" volume 23 on are the drawings by Romano Molenaar and Jorg De Vos ). After its breakthrough in Europe, the series "Storm" became one of the most popular science fiction comics in Germany and the Netherlands (together over 2 million albums sold).

Last but not least, his comics owe their great popularity to the unique drawing style of Don Lawrence. His exceptionally detailed drawings have often been compared to photographs. He used watercolors (Trigan) and gouache (Storm), which is why he sometimes needed several weeks for a single page.

literature

Hartmut Kasper : Storm is back - alive and well. Don Lawrence's iconic comic book series is making a triumphant return. In: Sascha Mamczak , Wolfgang Jeschke (Hrsg.): The Science Fiction Year 2008 . Heyne, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-52436-1 . Pp. 1187-1198

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lawrence, Don
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lawrence, Donald Southam (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British comic artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 2003
Place of death Eastbourne , UK