Talk:The Trigan Empire

Stereotypes
"The comic's writing and artwork reflect its 1960s boy's magazine origin in the depiction of non-white races and women. Alien stand-ins for Asians and Africans are depicted with extreme stereotypes and condescending attitudes that would generally be considered very distasteful today. Women are generally depicted as weak and emotional, but this aspect of the comic is at least more progressive than the racial aspects. As with many 1960s pulp stories, it features one or two capable women to serve as foils and romantic interests for the male heroes"

I take a bit of issue with this, for one thing I am tired of the PC culture that is popping up everywhere, but to say that every non-white is a racial stereotype is extreme. The Gorths are meant to be in my mind representative of any 'barbarian horde' throughout history. At the same time the Hericons who were also 'non white' seem to be a fusion of the Byzantine and Persian empires and are shown to be very advanced technologically and culturally. Also, not every Trigan/Vorg was shown as a shining white (no pun intended) example, for example Yenni, the Trigan in the story that introduced the Hericons. In fact, if you look at the stories there are plenty references to the Vorgs themselves having had similiar 'barbaric' pasts with some of the ancient laws and the primitive medicines shown in the first story which was solved by Salvia (a female character I may add). In addition, probably the main reason there are not many female characters is that romantic stories would in those times not be of great interest to what is in a boys magazine, after all, if you look at the magazine and comic scene of the time there were far more publications with some specifically for girls, so it's not as if there were no choices. Douglasnicol 15:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I removed the section. I read the comics too and I don't find it that obvious. I also couldn't find sources for it. Garion96 (talk) 20:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * three years later, but what the hey - even just sticking to the early stories that people know and can refer to, actually there are a good number of strong women scattered through the series, such as Trigo's sister, the warrior chieftainess of the Tamaz Warriors (Arab desert warriors with a female leader??!) and the aforementioned Salvia. Also, other than the Lokans, who are all despicable cads with bad teeth and green skin, every other civilisation has a fairly normally representative scattering of good and bad people. And how exactly do you stereotype an ancient desert fighter or spear-carrying tribal warrior? That's what they are/were, and how they should be depicted. The objections on racial stereotyping grounds misinterpret the nasty penchant for tarring all Blacks/Irish/Dogs (to borrow from Mr Lydon) with primitive/stupid/bad tags and depicting a warlike tribal culture as what it looks like - warlike, tribal, and looking like it has a culture. Remember, thematically the whole series borrows heavily and deliberately from Earth history and mythology. As the series does not take any civilisation/race to task over its morals or clothing (except the Lokans, of course! because you can't love a Treen), I'd suggest that in fact this could be interpreted as a pretty advanced depiction for its day. Certainly didn't give me any nasty prejudices, and my Saturday mornings were steeped in the Trigan Empire in Look and Learn. Ta - that's something you can't reflect in an article as it's not got a citation. The OR get-out clause - get it in a message on the talk page. See, I'm learning. Archiveangel (talk) 16:32, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Contemporary analysis did in fact view the comic as politically problematic; it is not just present-day "PC gone mad" views that cast the comic in a dubious light. In the stories, the nation relied on the presence of a political strongman (cum brilliant military strategist), and absolute loyalty to the leader was required if the nation were to withstand the constant threats that it faced. These are the basic tenets of fascism. I use this term advisedly, as defined academically, not in the sense of "anyone I do not agree with" as has become fashionable on the internet. If you would like to know more, it was published as an article entitled "Comic book version of Mein Kampf." I note that artist and writer did not see eye to eye about this, the artist being decidedly leftist in his opinions. For what it's worth, Trigo consistently exhibited a noble, merciful character, although his good deeds seldom went unpunished. One might say his decency was his weak spot and major plot propellant. In one story, Trigo decides to cut military spending in favour of more progressive politics -- and the country is swiftly undone by a coup d'état. Another story has Tharv unhappy being a vassal state, quite understandably given that they endowed the Vorg with three millennia worth of civilisation overnight. Xenophobic hatred exploited by demagogues also occurred as a theme. My impression is that Butterworth evolved on these issues in the course of the series. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:6CFB:D927:1631:6D82 (talk) 09:48, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Trigan2.jpg
Image:Trigan2.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot 04:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Trigan Empire revision
This has been haunting me for a while. I've got slightly ahead with the MLJ/Archie project, User_talk:Archiveangel and think an occasional break from the task is probably sensible. The Trigan Empire page has been haunting me for a while; and I've just opened a box with most of the original run - in Look and Learn and around 400 pages I ripped out (fool!) to keep years ago; thankfully largely in sequence. Seems like a perfect opportunity to help improve the article - currently the page has 1 citation and gives a very incomplete and inaccurate even starter view; certainly nothing on the scale some lesser subjects from major comics companies get. Although there's not a lot of citeable material available, 95%-ish of the stories are 'net-inaccessible' and original copies hard to collect in a non-random manner, unless you can lay out £660 for the beautiful reprint series; so the information is not easily come by anywhere. However, I think the article can be improved considerably and don't mind getting the ball rolling.

Something is taking form slowly on User:Archiveangel/Trigan_Empire_revision after a first run at the early stuff and a re-shape. It will stay there while I work on it sporadically (and enjoy reliving my short-trousered childhood yet again). Comments on content, how to split (it looks like it will get long), sub-sections and other concerns, thoughts or general whatever are, as always, most welcome. Cheers! Archiveangel (talk) 14:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

How to pronounce Trigan
Is it 'Trigg-an' or 'Try-gan'? Mrstonky (talk) 08:26, 1 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've always assumed its Try-gan, in the same way you would say Triplane. However, even the luxury reprints which have a lot of additional bonus material don't go into pronunciation. 90.215.45.75 (talk) 18:21, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Missing Frames?
It's maybe a trivial point but there is an ambiguous sentence in Publication History. "These editions have the stories as originally printed without any of the frames that were missing in some of the other reprints, including the Hawk publications book."

This could imply that the editions were printed without some frames which I don't believe to be the case. My memory might be flawed however and so I'm open to correction.

Would this sentence scan better and also be accurate if replaced? For example, "These editions have the stories as originally printed without omitting any of the frames that were absent from some of the other reprints, including the Hawk publications book."


 * It is complicated. In the first serialised edition, the artwork was at times cropped, and some of this was restored in some of the anthologies. The cropped areas tend to have little going on in them, e.g. an expanse of sky with all the action in the lower quarter of the frame; since Lawrence was not one to make such odd compositional choices, I suspect he did this so that titles, summaries, authorship credits etc could be set on top of the empty space (look at the art for paperback covers to see the same principle at work). The cropping was thus justified in cases where this space was not needed. Lawrence would also vary the aspect ratio of the page to accommodate titles etc. that would be needed in the serialised publication.

In one instance, the end of one episode (The Five Works of Trigo) and the start of the other (The Threat from the Deep) occurred on a single page. Good for serialisation (the one strip starting the next episode serves as teaser, a mayday from the cruiser Daveli), bad for anthologies, which have to end a book halfway down a page and ignore the teaser strip in the next volume.

The early stories had some pacing problems, so it is understandable that anthology reprints would at times combine artwork from two or more pages into a single page, cutting out some frames. The latest anthology, which is being published over the period 2020-2022, is mostly faithful to the first serialisation version; it retains the Daveli mayday scene. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:6CFB:D927:1631:6D82 (talk) 09:25, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Radioplay
The link on the main page is dead; the radiophonic production can be heard here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsPy3EAenU

for now at least. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:6CFB:D927:1631:6D82 (talk) 09:26, 1 February 2021 (UTC)