EXTRACTS: Don Lawrence Art (illustrators special) © 2018 The Book Palace (144 PAGES in Full edition)

retrospective exhibition of his work at Breda, Holland, in 1994 attracted over 10,000 visitors. Over the years, Lawrence had taken on a number of assistants, including his own son, Ian (Chuffy). Liam Sharp (who worked on Vandaahl de verderver in 1986) and Chris Weston ( De weentelwereld in 1987), but for the most part continued to work alone… and slower than ever. In 1989, after completing De robots van Danderzei , the 18th Storm adventure, Lawrence took on the art production of a board game, Temple Raiders , which took up far more time than he had hoped and proved disastrous to his schedule. Inevitably the years took their toll and Lawrence suffering from numerous eye problems. By now he was producing only two or three pages a month. As astonishing as they were, it made scheduling them for publication impossible. De terugkeer van de rode prins was published in two parts to prevent there being a two-year gap between episodes. There was then a two-year gap before De Von Neuman machine appeared and another two-year gap until De Genesis- Formule . These last two stories formed the opening episodes of a trilogy and were only completed thanks to a late re-write by Martin Lodewijk, whereby a Dutch graphic imaging company were used on some pages and a further two pages re-used elements from an earlier story. The story needed to be complete before Lawrence went into hospital to resolve the problems he had been having with cataracts. Instead of improving his eyesight, an infection caused him to almost lose the sight in his right eye. Martin Lodewijk explained why this was particularly catastrophic for a painter: “To have any perception of depth you need two eyes. Now if you write or draw with a pencil or pen or crayon it’s more or less easy. You just put it on the paper and you press more or less hard and your line is there. With a fine brush that’s a whole different ballgame. The hairs touch the paper at a microscopic point or flat out, but your hand doesn’t feel it . You need to judge depth to guide you. And you need two eyes for that. “How he did it I cannot fathom but he virtually taught himself to work all over again.” After many months struggling to come to terms with his eyesight, Lawrence began work on the final volume of the trilogy, De Armageddon Reitziger . Unfortunately, after ten years, Sjors en Sjimmie —which had replaced Eppo as the regular publisher of Storm serials—folded. To allow the story to be serialised, Rob van Bavel of the Don Lawrence Fanclub launched Pandarve , which ran episodes between 1999-2001. Latterly, when it became obvious that Lawrence was struggling to complete the book, Liam Sharp was drafted in to paint the final few pages. Lawrence had contributed a number of other one-off strips to Dutch publications and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Fanclub the bore his name, set up by Van Bavel in 1984. The fanclub’s early newsletter, Thunder , developed into an astonishing array of publications: a series of 12 deluxe hardbacks, Don Lawrence—The Collection , reprinted many of his strips and illustrations and a limited edition, 300-page full-colour volume was issued to celebrate Lawrence’s 70th birthday in 1998. Deluxe collections of his two most famous strips, ‘The Trigan Empire’ and ‘Storm’ began appearing in 2000 and English language editions followed in 2004-2010. A four-volume slipcased collection of ‘Karl the Viking’ appeared in 2008. 30 © Don Lawrence Collection