Karl the Viking - Volume Two (Paperback)

Before The Rise and Fall of The Trigan Empire Don Lawrence created the historical epic fantasy of Karl the Viking, written by World Fantasy Award winning author Michael Moorcock!

"Vastly influential. Stunning. " - The Independent

In the second, and concluding, volume of Karl the Viking the brave Briton takes the fight even further abroad than before as he and his band of warriors battle against the rival viking Gefion One-Eye in Africa, become mercenaries in a violent dispute between treacherous Russian tribes, and survive against fantastical and unnatural sea monsters. 

Karl the Viking is the series which made Don Lawrence's reputation, and it was on this basis that he was hired to revolutionise painted comic art with The Trigan Empire. This volume also contains stories written by Michael Moorcock penned when he was just beginning to create the adventures of Elric.

Michael Moorcock is one of the most famous and influential Science-Fiction and Fantasy writers of the 20th century. He was also the influential editor of the New Worlds anthology which ushered in the "New Wave' science fiction writers of the sixties. He has created such popular characters as Elric of Melnibone and Jerry Cornelius, and has popularised the concept of the 'Multiverse' with his Eternal Champion series. He has won the Nebula award, the Guardian Fiction award, and the World Fantasy Award, and several lifetime achievement awards.

Don Lawrence was born in 1928, and worked for Mick Anglo on the Marvelman comic produced for Amalgamated Press, and then Billy the Kid in the comic Sun. When Sun was absorbed into Lion he moved on to illustrating Olac the Gladiator, Karl the Viking and Maroc the Mighty. In 1965 he teamed with Mike Butterworth to create The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire for Ranger magazine, and continued to paint the comic through its transition into Look and Learn through to 1976. During this period he also worked on Fireball XL5 and The Adventures of Tarzan comic strips for TV Century 21. After leaving The Trigan Empire he worked with a Dutch publisher to create Storm, a post-apocalypse sci-fi series, which he would draw through to his retirement in 1999

Before entering the comic industry Ted Cowan worked as a lab assistant at Shell-Mex then enlisted into the RAF as WWII broke out. Forced to re-enlist with the army after a crash, he became a dispatch rider, but another accident saw an end to his career in the services.
After picking up a comic and being unimpressed by the writing inside, Cowan wrote to Stan Boddington, then editor of Champion. Boddington gave him a chance and Cowan started on Ginger Nutt – a successful strip about a young Australian boy, which ran for almost seven years.
Cowan’s next strip - The Jungle Robot – appeared in the first issue of Lion. Many adventures featuring Robot Archie were to follow. While working for Lion, Cowan scripted many popular strips including Paddy Payne, Adam Eterno and of course The Spider which he co-created and wrote the first two complete stories for.