The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, later called simply The Trigan Empire was a science fiction comic series written mainly by Mike Butterworth and most notably drawn by Don Lawrence. It told the story of an alien culture that contained an educational blend of science and Earth-like ancient civilizations. The strip first appeared in the first issue of the British magazine Ranger in September 1965 and then in the British Look and Learn magazine from issue 232 (June 1966) when the two titles merged after the 40th issue of Ranger. Both titles were weekly educational magazines designed for young people; although mainly filled with articles on life, history, science and technology, both contained a small comic strip section in each issue.
The series ran in Look and Learn until the title ceased publication with issue 1049, April 1982, an extraordinary run of 854 issues between the two magazines. There were a number of early reprints. In the United Kingdom, Hamlyn Publishing printed one book called simply, "The Trigan Empire", this was printed in the United States by Chartwell Publishing. This edition featured early stories. A later book was printed by Hawk Publishing in 1989 as Tales of the Trigan Empire in hardback form. Both the Hamlyn and Hawk books have parts cut from some of the original stories, most notably in the Hawk book there are sometimes entire pages that have been taken out. In recent years, the parts of the Trigan Empire that were drawn by Don Lawrence have been reprinted by the Don Lawrence Collection in luxury hardback limited editions. These editions have the stories as originally printed without any of the frames that were missing in some of the other reprints, notably the Hawk publications book. They are not direct copies of the Look and Learn prints, but in many cases are taken from the original artwork and use revised fonts to make them easier to read.
