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Storm (Don Lawrence) |
| Storm | |
 Painting by Don Lawrence of Storm and Ember. |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Big Balloon (Dutch) Uitgeverij Oberon (Dutch) Egmont Ehapa Verlag (German) Norbert Hethke Verlag (German) British European Associated Publishers LTD. (English) Glénat (French) Interpresse (Danish) Star Comics (Greek) Esperos Comics (Greek) Apu-Magazines (Finnish) P.T. Gramedia (Indonesian) Forum Marketprint (Yugoslavian) Amigos Do Livro Editores LDA. (Portuguese) Norma (Spanish) Sarpe (Spanish) Tercuman Tesisler (Turkish) |
| Publication date | 1976 – ? |
| Main character(s) | Storm Roodhaar/Redhair/Carrots/Ember Nomad Marduk |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Martin Lodewijk Dick Matena Kelvin Gosnell Philip 'Saul' Dunn Don Lawrence Vince Wernham |
| Artist(s) | Don Lawrence Dick Matena Romano Molenaar |
Storm is a soft science fiction/fantasy comic book series drawn by Don Lawrence. The series is primarily available in Dutch, although all the books are translated in English and German, and some in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Indonesian. The books are published by Big Balloon, Uitgeverij Oberon (both Dutch), Egmont Ehapa Verlag, Norbert Hethke Verlag (both German), Star Comics and Esperos Comics (both Greek) and Glénat (French). English copies are published in the Don Lawrence collection. The living planet and The slayer of Eriban were also published in Heavy Metal magazine in January 1997 and March 1999. The Navel of the Double God had an early publication in the Dutch magazine Myx1.
Contents |
The actual series can be split in two parts: The Chronicles of the Deep World, which takes place on post-apocalyptical Earth, and The Chronicles of Pandarve, taking place in the Pandarve multiverse.
The main characters are Storm himself, Roodhaar/Redhair/Carrots/Ember, Nomad and Marduk, the Theocrat of Pandarve, although the last two only make their appearance in The Chronicles of Pandarve. Storm is an astronaut who accidentally got lost in time. In the later albums, Storm looks a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. Ember is a beautiful red-haired girl and Nomad has the physique of a black man, yet he has a red skin. Storm and Ember clearly form a couple, although their love is never expressed in the books.
Intended as a pilot, but proved unsuccessful.
Commander Grek, finished in 1976, was kind of a false start. The album was rejected by Uitgeverij Oberon. As a second attempt Don Lawrence took Philip Dunn to work on The Deep World, which strongly resembles the story of Commander Grek. When Storm appeared to be a success, this album was published. The album also contains a Storm-dossier, which has some information about Don Lawrence and the various writers.
Storm is an astronaut in the 21st century who makes a journey to the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. The Great Red Spot is an anticyclonic storm which is already there for at least 300 years. Once arrived his ship gets dragged into the storm. When Storm manages to escape it seems he has traveled through time. The civilizations on Earth are collapsed and turned into a barbaric society. This is where the adventures of Storm begin.
Apart from album 4, 5 and 6 each album is a separate adventure and the stories are inconsistent.
Storm and Ember get beamed to the Pandarve multiverse, where they meet Nomad, and a new enemy: Marduk, the Theocrat of Pandarve. Marduk wants to catch Storm, because Storm is an anomaly (he imbalances the multiverse because he traveled through time) and is the key to give him power over the multiverse. The Pandarve multiverse is a bubble of breathable gas, surrounding a white hole, that contains Pandarve itself, and thousands of other planetary objects. The main body, Pandarve, is a giant telluric planet. At Pandarve the normal physic laws are no longer valid, this gives Don and Martin room for incredible stories and magnificent sceneries.
Other planets and planetoids in the Pandarve multiverse described in the chronicles are:
The last three albums (The Van Neumann Machine, The Genesis Equation and The Armageddon Traveller) from Don's hand stand out for both their stories and artwork.citation needed They form a trilogy wherein Storm & co and Marduk need to work together to save Pandarve from perdition. A strange, gigantic "spaceship" (referred to as the Intruder) is headed for a collision with Pandarve, which will mean the end of both entities. The "spaceship" consists out of various "cocoons". Around the 21st century one "cocoon" was sent into space with the purpose to make replicas. But because of a system error the strangest "cocoons" started to emerge (including one resembling Heaven and one the Hell from La Divina Commedia) and cluttered together instead of floating of. There are some references to well-known stories (Alice in Wonderland, Hansel and Gretel, Sherlock Holmes, ..), movies (My Little Chickadee and other Western influences), persons (Marilyn Monroe, ..) and some theorems (the Genesis Formula, Goldbach's Conjecture and Fermat's last theorem).
About the time when The Genesis Equation was published, a spin-off of the series was started. These "chronicles" are called The Chronicles of the Between-time. They take place between albums 6 and 7 of The Chronicles of the Deep World. The first two were drawn by John Kelly, the third by Dick Matena (John Kelly is a pseudonym of Dick Matena).
Three years after Don Lawrence died, a new team continues his work. Martin Lodewijk still writes the scenario, Romano Molenaar and Jorg De Vos do the artwork2. Their first album The Navel of the Double God (De Navel van de Dubbele God) is available since September 6th, 2007 in Dutch. Storm 23 is already reprinted and has given Storm a renewed international interest. The next album, with working title Marduk's Springs, is expected to be released in September 20083.
Since July 2008 there's a second team to work on Storm. Minck Oosterveer is doing the artwork and Willem Ritstier writes the stories. Their first album will be called The Exile of Thoem4.
All written by Martin Lodewijk.
All written by Martin Lodewijk, artwork by Dick Matena.
The Deluxe volumes are hardback with a leather cover, gold imprint and dust jacket. Each bundle contains two albums and a part of the Storm-dossier "The Search for Storm". The last part also contains "Storm - The Big Picture" which gives an overview of Storm in the press, Storm expositions, the status of Storm in the modern comic scene and a portfolio. Only available in Dutch and English.
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