Storm (thing)

A Dutch comic drawn by an Englishman (Don Lawrence) (who also did episodes of the Trigian Empire, Olac The Gladiator, Fireball XL5, and young Marvelman). Don is a very talented artist. Every frame of the comic is a painting on its own. The result is stunning, I prefer it over Boris Vallejo.

The stories started out as below average Science Fiction. After Martin Lodewijk teamed up with Don, the stories got fantasy -influenced and gave the comic its unique flavour.

The astronaut Storm undertakes a Jupiter mission and gets caught into the everlasting storms of the giant red spot. He manages to escape but discovers he has ended up in a distant, barbaristic future. He searches a way to return to his own era.

Most of the earlier stories weren't that great (except for the beautiful red-haired companion of Storm, she's always great :-)).
Almost every story had another storywriter, so there wasn't much continuity. Don's great drawing talents make you forgive the poor stories.

From issue 10 on, the comic is renamed to Storm: the cronicles of Pandarve,and all stories are written by one writer (Martin Lodewijk). The stories improved dramatically, there's even a notion of character-devellopment.

Because of his journey into time, Storms body has absorbed energy. The evil Marduk, ruler of Pandarve transports Storm to his multiversum and then tries to catch him (and use Storm as his energy source). The multiversum consists of huge, living intelligent planets, and there are some weird laws of physics. Together with Storm, Redhear and Nomad, the reader discovers these strange worlds...

Issues: I got the next list from (1) ^{I'm not sure the titles are correct, because I haven't found an English publisher.}.
1. The vanished ocean (1977 Philip Dunn)
   ^{A rewrite from an older story (commander Grek). The publisher thought the original story was a bit shallow, but the revamped version isn't much better ...}
2. The last fighter (1978 Martin Lodewijk)
   ^{Good story about a trap-ridden space ship}
3. The people from the desert (1978 Dick Matena)
   ^{Great story about slavery}
4. The green hell (1979 Dick Matena)
   ^{Good story, Storm learns more about the fate of the Earth}
5. The fight about the earth (1979 Dick Matena)
   ^{good story, but Matena tries to cram too much in a single episode}
6. The secret of the nitron beams (1980 Dick Matena)
   ^{same critism here...}
7. The legend of Yggdrasil (1980 Kelvin Gosnell)
   ^{the storywriter tried to start all over again by sending Storm back to Jupiter and by middling with dinosaur DNA (Jurassic Park avant la lettre). Quite entertaining.}
8. The city of the damned (1981 Kelvin Gosnell)
   ^{Telekinesis, time travel, computer tyranny ... no wonder this was Gosnells last script. Great drawings of the city.}
9. The slumbering death (1981 Don Lawrence)
   ^{Don tried to write a story, but found out it's not that easy...}
10. The pirates of Pandarve
    ^{start of the Pandarve chronicles, renewed collaboration with Martin Lodewijk, great story!}
11. The labyrinth of death (1983)
    ^{Again a great story, excellent characters}
12. The seven of Aromater (1983)
    ^{Good story about the fight of colors against black}
13. The killer of Eriban (1984)
    ^{imho the best story, about an assasin, involves the bloodiest platform game I've ever seen :-)}
14. The dogs of Marduk (1985)
    ^{another great story, about the loyalty of a strange dog...}
15. The living planet (1986)
    ^{mmm prehaps this is the best story...:) Pandarve reveils herself to Storm in a strange way ...}
16. Vandhaal the corrupter (1987)
    ^{great story about bravery}
17. The rotating world (1988)
    ^{our heros get warped into a strange dimension}
18. The robots of Danderzei (1990)
    ^{the idea of pets tuned upside down}
19. The return of the red prince (1991)
    ^{good story, but not as great as the other pandarve stories. The duel is noteworthy.}
20. The Von Neumann machine (1993)
    ^{Don gets his inspiration from Dante... exciting beginning of a trilogy...}
21. The Genesis Formula (1995)
    ^{...the story is totally ruined by the last 5 pages :///}

links:
• http://lcg-www.uia.ac.be/~erikt/comics/ (1)
• http://home.luna.nl/~tinus/html/Fanclub.html (Fanclub Don Lawrence)
• http://www.pandarve.de (German fanclub)
• http://www.donlawrence.nl

_{Note 1: The Genesis Formula is really a let-down, please don't read it. The last pages consist of stereograms in stead of drawings, which really dates the work. It really spoils the great series imho...
Note 2: Amazingly, I couldn't find an English publisher, if someone knows more of this msg me!!
Note 3: Because Don is getting a bit older, and each frame is a painting on its own, new stories take a lot of time. To cash in on the Storm -craze in some countries, the publisher 'Big Balloon' has created a spin-off, drawn by Dick Matena (yep one of the storywriters...). Don't expect the same quality: Matena's drawing talents are very limited. Some of the poorest comics I've ever read.}