The Trigan Empire was published in installments in a number of British and European comics during the 1960s and '70s. The artwork was originally by Don Lawrence (also known for Storm), and was way better than anything else available at the time; indeed, you'd have to look to modern day artists as Alex Ross or Serpieri to see it bettered, yet Lawrence was paid a pittance.
The story is set A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away... on the planet Elekton, which has twin suns and twin moons (although another "moon", Gallas, falls to the planet in an early story). The Trigans look basically human, although they stand 12 feet tall (in the stories they appear normal since everything else that looks vaguely Earth-like is also twice the as tall); the Trigan race looks Aryan, but there are no black people, apart from the occasional dark-skinned tribe that pops up in a supporting role, generally depicted as primitive but friendly. The main recurring non-white races are green-skinned, ranging from yellowish to turquoise with little consistency between episodes. The Lokans, enemies of the Trigans, are pale olive green, and look like a cross between very ugly black people and Yellow Peril-type orientals. In fact, they were yellow, in the early stories. Daveli are a more turquoise colour, and are very good-looking. Their chief, Imbala, is Trigo's blood brother, and Imbala's son Keren is one of the good guys, usually the only non-white among the good guys.
To begin with, the story was entitled The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, and tried to trace the development of the eponymous civilisation from a humble beginning as a bunch of nomads to becoming the greatest power on the planet. Presumably, a decline was supposed to happen after this.
However, as the story progressed, it became a series of adventure stories featuring the same cast of characters, principally Trigo, the emperor; Brag, his brother; Janno, Brag's dashing son; Keren, Janno's friend; Peric, a wise architect and scientific genius, and his daughter, Salvia. Later, Janno and Keren aquired another friend, Roffa, and Trigo had three sons of whom one, Nikko, lived to be a major character.
In the early stories it made sense that the leader should do his own adventuring, as he was a young hero founding an empire, but later it made even less sense for the leader of a superpower to keep running about swashbuckling and leading expeditions than for The Captain of the Enterprise to keep leaving The Bridge to lead landing parties in person. But that never stopped Trigo, any more than it stopped Kirk or Picard.
The writing style was very purple. Probably not since Robert E. Howard wrote that Conan the Barbarian was destined to "Tread the Jewelled thrones of the world beneath his sandalled feet" has there been more overblown verbiage in a piece of popular entertainment. Certainly, not many characters in modern comics "slake their ravening thirst" at waterholes or "feel the icy fingers of terror course down their spines"; but maybe the world of comics, and the English language, are the poorer for it.
The writers and artists often got things wrong. A fleet of hundreds of aircraft was retconned into six aircraft between one episode and the next of the very first Story Arc. Trigo confronted a sabre-toothed tiger (the Sacred Yalt) wearing his breastplate and cloak; by the time he wriggled free of its claws, he was wearing the remains of a white shirt. And so on; but a fan could forgive that.
Another problem was that, as time went by, there were fewer and fewer new ideas available, and old ones had to be recycled without even observing the Fleeting Demographic Rule. The most common stories were:
- Villains, often officers or councillors appointed by Trigo, who must have been a Horrible Judge of Character, try to usurp the throne or place upon it a puppet emperor; happened lots of times.
- Aliens invade; at least three times.
- A plant or contaminant that makes good people evil arrives from outer space; happened at least three times.
- Trigo or his relatives set off on an expedition to some continent that had never been mentioned before; at least twice.
- Taming a huge monster by healing its injuries; many times.
- A Dread Curse menaces the Imperial Family; at least twice.
- Someone seems to have the secret of eternal youth; at least twice.
- Failing these, the Lokans could try to undermine the Empire... again.
Overall, the story quality could be cheesier and mouldier than a well-matured Stilton, but there was still something great about it. It has the same kind of place in the hearts of its fans that the old Batman (1966) show with Adam West has.
Not to be confused with Trigun.
Tropes:
- Alien Invasion: The alien Trigans were occasionally subject to invasion by aliens from distant worlds, including a trio of bodysnatchers and before that a pair of telepathic aliens.
- Alien Sky: Twin moons and Binary Suns.
- Aliens Speaking English: Averted; a human scientist dedicates most of his life to translating the works of the crashed Trigan spaceship. As an old man, long after everyone else has given up, he succeeds.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The Lokans as they first appear. Later a sympathetic Token Minority Lokan appears. A Token Lokan, in fact.
- Ancient Grome: The Trigan Empire has the togas, spathas, triremes and other mishmash of ancient Rome and Greece.
- Badass in Distress: It seemed every other story has the mighty Emperor Trigo or his heroic nephew Janno getting kidnapped, Made a Slave or mind-controlled.
- Black Box: The crash of the Trigan spaceship didn't advance Earth technology any. That's because despite decades of study, human scientists were never able to understand and reverse-engineer Trigan technology.
- The Big Guy: Brag, if only by default. He's quite willing to stand aside and let his more ambitious brother Trigo not only rule their people, but completely transform their way of life while carving out an empire — but Brag retains his barbarian robustness, and can always be relied on to supply a strong sword arm when things turn violent on a personal level.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Downplayed. While most inhabitants of Elekton look human (more or less), they're around 12 feet tall and if one particular instance where Janno learns how to fly the aircraft is anything to go by, their eyes can move independently.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Kreeds (rhymes with 'steeds') = horses, Nobras (rhymes with 'cobras') = poisonous snakes, The Sacred Yalt = a sabre-toothed tiger, Robbis = marmot, Morrol = rat, Norva = orca, Zanna = piranha, Gorphin = dolphin, Ranta = tarantula.
- Catchphrase: Many. "By all the stars!" "Look your last upon the sky!" and "Many shall fall before Trigo falls!" are particularly good ones.
- Climbing Climax: A number of villains felt the need to go up high when Trigo chased them.
- Deadly Dodging: Brag can move a lot quicker than he looks as a Lokan tank gunner finds out. The Lokan tried blasting Brag but he leapt out of the way and so the heat cannon shot traitorous brother Klud instead.
- Disintegrator Ray: The guns in Trigan are alternately described as heat guns or disintegrators. One poor giant beast found out the hard way what a disintegrator can do. Even the disintegrator is alternately a ray or a shell.
- Dramatic Ellipsis: "And then... It Happened", "And then he saw... IT", "And then... sheer blind panic", etc., ad nauseam.
- Easily Forgiven: Are you an invading civilization from another galaxy and nearly destroyed the Trigan Empire? No worries, Emperor Trigo forgives you and welcomes your entire people to join the empire and he'll even settle you on good land.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The monstrous Worst Man is the foulest criminal on Elekton but he does have one specific standard - he's a firm believer in a fair fight (he even kills a henchman who tried to shoot Trigo in their match) and when he's dying due to a snakebite accident after his scrap with Trigo was interrupted, he's a Graceful Loser and concedes that Trigo is the winner.
- Evil Twin: Triplet, in this case. Twice. Trigo was one of a set of triplets, one of whom, Klud, was a stinker (his daughter Thara was also evil). Trigo later sired triplets, of whom one, Argo, came under the influence of an evil alien.
- Fantastic Racism: White people will turn on Green ones if the story requires it, otherwise they're all sweetness and light.
- Fountain of Youth: There's a hidden city who's nobles are believed to have the secret to reverse aging (it's actually a scam). Peric actually creates one by re-engineering Zogg's Rapid Aging invention and it never gets used again after it fulfills its story role.
- The Glasses Come Off: Roffa had Nerd Glasses when he first appeared, but he still got a job as a fighter pilot. One day, he dramatically took off his glasses, and never put them back on again. He could still see well enough to be a fighter pilot.
- Gorgeous Period Dress: Flash Gordon, ancient Rome and Arabian Nights stuff all mixed up in lovely colour. Verges on Crystal Spires and Togas.
- Heads or Tails?: One that decides the fate of an entire world. The Lokan dictator is wondering who to crush next; the nomadic warrior Vorgs or the cultured Tharvs? Expecting to conquer both in good time, he tosses a coin to settle the matter. It's the Tharvs, and their refugees flood into Vorg territory where they form an alliance with the Proud Warrior Race that defeats the Lokans and establishes the Trigan Empire.
- Hollywood Healing: Nobody stays hurt longer than dramatically necessary.
- How We Got Here: On a huge scale; the very first story is about the last of the Trigans crash-landing on Earth.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Janno, Roffa and Keren get marooned on an island ruled by a sadistic loony who likes to hunt humans for sport.
- Immune to Bullets: Some wildlife on Elekton are immune to the bullets from the high-tech guns of that world.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Villains never hit. The goodie always runs away with "projectiles screaming around his bent head".
- Killed Off for Real:
- Argo, the son of Trigo while being controlled by an evil alien, had King Kassar, his own grandfather and previously a major character, executed.
- Argo himself later dies.
- Loony Laws: The Vorg tribe has an ancient law of revenge, anyone who harms a member of the tribe needs to be avenged immediately regardless of circumstance. This law was never removed despite Emperor Trigo concerned about its implication. A scummy merchant uses this against the Hericon kingdom when they legitimately punished him for fraud and this law causes a major war between the Trigans and the Hericons because of Cycle of Revenge. It got so bad that Trigan citizens wanted to lynch Trigo's royal wife Ursa because she's a Hericon native.
- Lotus-Eater Machine strange little black boxes inducing lucid dreams fulfilling all of the users desires are the main point of one story.
- Mighty Whitey: The blond, blue-eyed heroes always outperform the greenies.
- Mooks: Guards can arrest and oppress when needed, but as soon as the rebellion occurs they can be pushed aside by angry civilians. Guards who fight heroes go down like skittles.
- Mook Chivalry: If the hero needs to spot something in mid-fight, the enemy will pause while he looks round.
- Never Say "Die": Actually, they never say "kill", always "eliminate" or "destroy" or occasionally "dispatch". They generally say "perish" rather then "die" as well. Even while shooting guns or swinging swords at their enemies, "Perish, curse you!"
- Obviously Evil: The Worst Man (yup that's his name) is a brutal Diabolical Mastermind who waged a highly effective terrorist campaign against the Trigan Empire and if Beauty Equals Goodness, this guy looks like a Frazetta Man got boinked by a werewolf and then gave birth to a butt-baby.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Peric begins as an architect. Later, he builds space rockets, discovers the elixir of youth, and invents a way of turning people into intelligent, electrically charged water!
- Proud Warrior Race Guy:
- Daveli in general, King Imbala in particular.
- King Kassar of Hericon, too.
- Ray Gun: The guns on Elekton is a hybrid projectile/energy weapon that fires a bullet propelled by a heat ray.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Maybe not the rape to fall in line with age restrictions, but the Trigan Empire would regularly get taken over by some foreign nation or Barbarian Tribe who'd happily bust up a lot of the local architecture and steal Trigan valuables.
- Retcons and reboots galore. Facts could be changed whenever the story needed it. The Vorg calendar mixes names with numbers, e.g. "In the third year of Zemm..." or "In the month of Yuss of the solar year..." or "In the seventeenth year of Neva..." and we never find out how these time periods fit together.
- Rule of Cool: Swords against guns? Surviving huge explosions? Nomads on funny camel-things against tanks? No problem, as long as it looks good and makes a fine story.
- Schizo Tech: The Trigan Empire love flying around in their nuclear-powered anti-gravity jets while doing trade by ox and cart or triremes with oar-rowing galley slaves and fighting off a Barbarian Tribe who are using flint arrows. That's just a fraction of how schizo the tech level is on Elekton (much of the tech weirdness is socially based, the people respect tradition a little too much on that planet).
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Both times a curse was put on Trigo, it was a fake. Once the arc even ended with unbandaging the "mummy" to reveal a person you'd never have suspected. And he almost got away with it, too!
- Soft Glass: Trigo, pursued by Mooks and promising that many will fall before he does, smashes out the window in his short tunic and kilt. He isn't even scratched.
- Sole Survivor: Of Trigo's triplet sons, only Nikko survives and he becomes the heir to the Hericon throne.
- Space Romans: Despite the quite advanced technology and occasional Mad Science, a lot of the visual aesthetic and bits of the political systems bear a remarkable resemblance to Earth’s classical Graeco-Roman period.
- Tap on the Head: People are always getting "laid low" with "the flat of the blade". It never does them lasting harm.
- Universally Beloved Leader: Trigo has it. He's so loved that when a military junta overthrew him in secret, they were only able to quell the population by declaring a young man as Emperor Trigo the 2nd - as people love the original so much they'd follow anyone with the same name. And when the traitorous general murders his puppet ruler in front of the people at the main square, the population turn into a Torches and Pitchforks mob because "He killed Trigo!!" despite the puppet ruler enacting bad policies.
- Weird Science: Any old whitebeard, dressed like a wizard but calling himself a scientist, seems able to invent almost anything. The one named Zogg even wears a pointy hat decorated with ringed planets and stars.
- World's Smartest Man: Peric is widely acknowledged to be the holder of this title. Coming up not too far behind is Zogg, a Mad Scientist who's the greatest scientist in Hericon and he created a Rapid Aging device that astounded even Peric.
