Storm (Don Lawrence) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Storm is a soft science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

/fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

series originally (and for most albums) drawn by Don Lawrence

Don Lawrence

Donald Southam Lawrence was a British comic book artist and author.Lawrence is best known for his comic strips The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire in the British weeklies Ranger and Look and Learn and the Storm series, first published in the Dutch weekly Eppo...

. 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

Glénat (publisher)

Glénat Editions SA is a French publisher with its head office in Grenoble. The company publishes many things, including comic books and manga in France, Benelux, and Spain; it was founded by Jacques Glénat. The Spanish subsidiary has its head office in Barcelona. The Benelux subsidiary, 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
Heavy Metal (magazine)
Heavy Metal is an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, known primarily for its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica. In the mid-1970s, while publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to jump-start the French edition of National Lampoon, he discovered the French...

magazine in January 1997 and March 1999. The Navel of the Double God had an early publication in the Dutch magazine Myx.

Overview

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

Parallel universe (fiction)

A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...

Characters

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. Ember is a beautiful red-haired girl and Nomad has the physique of a black man, yet he has a red skin.

Commander Grek

The Deep World was originally conceived as a framework for stories revolving around the character Commander Grek. An episode was written in 1976 by Vince Wernham and drawn by Don Lawrence, which was not picked up by Dutch publisher Oberon. The story was later reworked by Philip Dunn, now with the astronaut Storm as the main character. Storm did get published by Oberon. When Storm appeared to be a success, the previously unreleased Commander Grek album was published as part of the Storm series, as "Episode 0" . The album includes background information regarding the inception of Commander Grek and Storm.

The Chronicles of the Deep World

Storm is an astronaut

Astronaut

An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

in the 21st century who makes a journey to the Great Red Spot of Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

. The Great Red Spot is an anticyclonic

Anticyclone

An anticyclone is a weather phenomenon defined by the United States' National Weather Service's glossary as "[a] large-scale circulation of winds around a central region of high atmospheric pressure, clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere"...

storm which has already been 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 have collapsed and turned into a barbaric

Barbarian

Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...

society. This is where the adventures of Storm begin.

Apart from albums 4, 5 and 6, each album is a separate adventure and the stories are inconsistent.

The Chronicles of Pandarve

Storm and Ember get beamed to the Pandarve multiverse

Parallel universe (fiction)

, 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

Parallel universe (fiction)

. The Pandarve multiverse is a bubble of breathable gas, surrounding a white hole

White hole

A white hole, in general relativity, is a hypothetical region of spacetime which cannot be entered from the outside, but from which matter and light may escape. In this sense it is the reverse of a black hole, which can be entered from the outside, but from which nothing, including light, may escape...

, that contains Pandarve itself, and thousands of other planetary objects. The main body, Pandarve, is a giant telluric planet

Terrestrial planet

A terrestrial planet, telluric planet or rocky planet is a planet that is composed primarily of silicate rocks or metals. Within the Solar System, the terrestrial planets are the inner planets closest to the Sun...

. At Pandarve, the normal physical laws are no longer valid; this gives Don and Martin room for incredible stories and magnificent scenery.
Also Pandarve is a living planet - which means it has intellect and can even interact with other beings. For this interaction she normally relies on her Theocrat, but she is also capable of creating a humanlike representation of herself [Alice].
Storms time travel remains important but Ember has also travelled through time. So she is (or should be) an anomaly as well (In the legend of Ygdrassil they both arrive in a certain time period together). This fact is never really used in the stories.

Other planets and planetoids in the Pandarve multiverse described in the chronicles are:

Farseid - a synthetic ring world controlled by robots. (The Robots of Farseid)
Eriban - a paradise-like planet containing the academy for slayers. (The Slayer of Eriban)
Kyrte - the small home-planetoid of tariev-fisher Rann. (The Pirates of Pandarve)
Marrow - a crystal-shaped planet, home of the Barsaman-games. (The Slayer of Eriban)
Red Tear - a satellite of Pandarve, a few kilometers above the ocean near the city Aromater. (The Seven of Aromater)
Vertiga Bas - a small pirate planet. (The Pirates of Pandarve)
Waterplanetoid - a fisher-world completely covered with water. (Vandaahl the Destroyer)

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. 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 of various "cocoons". Around the 21st century one "cocoon" was sent into space with the purpose of making 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 off. There are some references to well-known stories (Alice in Wonderland, Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel

"Hansel and Gretel" is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic hag living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children...

, Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

, ..), movies (My Little Chickadee
My Little Chickadee
My Little Chickadee is a Universal comedy/western motion picture starring Mae West and W. C. Fields, with Joseph Calleia, Ruth Donnelly, Margaret Hamilton, Donald Meek, Willard Robertson, Dick Foran, George Moran, William B. Davidson, and Addison Richards. It was directed by Edward F. Cline...

and other Western

Western culture

Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...

influences), persons (Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

, ..) and some theorems (the Genesis Formula, Goldbach's Conjecture

Goldbach's conjecture

Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest unsolved problems in number theory and in all of mathematics. It states:A Goldbach number is a number that can be expressed as the sum of two odd primes...

and Fermat's last theorem

Fermat's Last Theorem

In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two....

Chronicles of Meanwhile

About the time when The Genesis Equation was published, a spin-off series was started, called Chronicles of Meanwhile. The episodes take place between albums 6 and 7 of The Chronicles of the Deep World. Three episodes were released, drawn by Dick Matena, the first two under his pseudonym John Kelly.

Continuation

Three years after Don Lawrence

Don Lawrence

died, a new team continued his work. Martin Lodewijk

Martin Lodewijk

Martinus Spyridon Johannes Lodewijk is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist, and advertising adviser.Martin Lodewijk was born in Rotterdam. He dropped out of high school in 1957, and started drawing cartoons, notably of spacecraft and pirates...

still writes the scenario, Romano Molenaar and Jorg De Vos do the artwork. Their first album The Navel of the Double God (De Navel van de Dubbele God) is available since September 6, 2007 in Dutch. Storm 23 is already reprinted and has given Storm a renewed international interest. The next album, titled Marduk's Springs, was released in February 2009.

Since July 2008 there has been a second team working on Storm. Minck Oosterveer is doing the artwork and Willem Ritstier writes the stories. Their first album will be called The Exile of Thoem.

Prologue

Commander Grek - Prisoners of time (Commandant Grek - Gevangenen van de tijd) (1976 - first print in 1984) (written by Vince Wernham)

The Chronicles of the Deep World

The Deep World - (De Diepe Wereld) (1978) (written by Philip 'Saul' Dunn)
The Last Fighter - (De Laatste Vechter) (1979) (written by Martin Lodewijk
Martin Lodewijk
Martinus Spyridon Johannes Lodewijk is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist, and advertising adviser.Martin Lodewijk was born in Rotterdam. He dropped out of high school in 1957, and started drawing cartoons, notably of spacecraft and pirates...

)
The People of the Desert - (Het Volk van de Woestijn) (1979) (written by Dick Matena
Dick Matena
Dick Matena is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist. He has also publishing under the pseudonyms A. den Dooier, John Kelly and Dick Richards.-Toonder studio's:...

)
The Green Hell - (De Groene Hel) (1980) (written by Dick Matena)
The Battle for Earth - (De Strijd om de Aarde) (1980) (written by Dick Matena)
The Secret of the Nitron Rays - (Het Geheim van de Nitronstralen) (1981) (written by Dick Matena)
The Legend of Yggdrasil - (De Legende van Yggdrasil) (1981) (written by Kelvin Gosnell
Kelvin Gosnell
Kelvin Gosnell is a British comics writer and editor. He was involved in the founding of the long-running comic 2000 AD in 1977.-Biography:...

)
City of the Damned - (Stad der Verdoemden) (1982) (written by Kelvin Gosnell)
The Creeping Death - (De Sluimerende Dood) (1982) (written by Don Lawrence)

The Chronicles of Pandarve

All written by Martin Lodewijk.

The Pirates of Pandarve - (De Piraten van Pandarve) (1983)
The Labyrinth of Death - (Het Doolhof van de Dood) (1983)
The Seven of Aromater - (De Zeven van Aromater) (1984)
The Slayer of Eriban - (De Doder van Eriban) (1985)
The Dogs of Marduk - (De Honden van Marduk) (1985)
The Living Planet - (De Levende Planeet) (1986)
Vandaahl the Destroyer - (Vandaahl de Verderver) (1987)
The Twisted World - (De Wentelwereld) (1988)
The Robots of Farseid - (De Robots van Danderzei) (1990)
Return of the Red Prince - (De Terugkeer van de Rode Prins) (1991)
The Von Neumann Machine - (De Von Neumann-Machine) (1993)
The Genesis Equation - (De Genesis-Formule) (1995)
The Armageddon Traveler - (De Armageddon Reiziger) (2001)
The Navel of the Double God - (De Navel van de Dubbele God) (2007)
Marduk's Springs - (De Bronnen van Marduk) (2009)
The Red Trail - (Het Rode Spoor) (2010)
The Mutineers of Anchor - (De Muiters van Anker) (2011)

Chronicles of Meanwhile

All written by Martin Lodewijk, artwork by Dick Matena.

The Voyager Virus - (Het Voyager Virus) (1996)
The Dallas Paradox - (De Dallas Paradox) (1997)
The Stargorger - (De Sterrenvreter) (1998)
Klein
Klein bottle
In mathematics, the Klein bottle is a non-orientable surface, informally, a surface in which notions of left and right cannot be consistently defined. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a...

Space - (De Ruimte van Klein
Klein bottle
In mathematics, the Klein bottle is a non-orientable surface, informally, a surface in which notions of left and right cannot be consistently defined. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a...

) (unfinished and unpublished)

The Collection

The Deluxe volumes are hardback

Hardcover

A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...

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.

The Collection - Part 1 (contains The Deep World, The Last Fighter and The search for Storm - part 1) (2000)
The Collection - Part 2 (contains The People of the Desert, Green Hell and The search for Storm - part 2) (2000)
The Collection - Part 3 (contains The Battle for Earth, The Secret of the Nitron Rays and The search for Storm - part 3) (2001)
The Collection - Part 4 (contains The Legend of Yggdrasil, City of the Damned and The search for Storm - part 4) (2001)
The Collection - Part 5 (contains The Creeping Death, The Pirates of Pandarve and The search for Storm - part 5) (2001)
The Collection - Part 6 (contains The Labyrinth of Death, The Seven of Aromater and The search for Storm - part 6) (2002)
The Collection - Part 7 (contains The Slayer of Eriban, The Hounds of Marduk and The search for Storm - part 7) (2002)
The Collection - Part 8 (contains The Living Planet, Vandaahl the Destroyer and The search for Storm - part 8) (2002)
The Collection - Part 9 (contains The Twisted World, The Robots of Farseid and The search for Storm - part 9) (2003)
The Collection - Part 10 (contains Return of the Red Prince, The Von Neumann Machine and The search for Storm - part 10) (2003)
The Collection - Part 11 (contains The Genesis Equation, The Armageddon Traveler and The search for Storm - part 11) (2003)
The Collection - Part 12 (contains Commander Grek, Storm - The Big Picture and The search for Storm - part 12) (2003)

External links

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