Review by Ian Keogh
Don Lawrence ranks high on the list of the UK’s greatest ever comic artists, a polished classical style reaching full expression in the mid-1960s onward with the painted pages of The Trigan Empire, but pretty well anything Lawrence drew beforehand is worth seeing. The sample art emphatically makes the point.
Maroc has long been hesitantly attributed to Michael Moorcock’s brief dabble with comics on the basis of the fantasy elements, but Moorcock denies responsibility, so the writer remains unknown, although the improvement with the second story suggests perhaps more than one writer. Opener ‘The Hand of Zar’ is the longest continuity and features massive logical lapses from the start. An old Arabic man has a magical device able to provide super strength, yet never finds one of his countrymen worthy during an invasion, and passes it to a serf accompanying a Crusader, John Maroc. A requirement of use being by someone with blond hair is a barely credible reason, and the magic only working in sunlight a convenient limitation.
Lawrence isn’t immune to the logical lapses either, a sequence set after Maroc’s banishment looking more like it’s set in China than Arabic lands. However, that’s not really the point, as with the need to entertain young boys of the 1960s with an adventure strip long past, what remains is the fulsome wonder of the art. Lawrence’s strong work ethic never wavers, and from exotic boats through jousting tournaments, battering rams and sea travel to dragons, he’s supplied with props drawn with exquisite elegance. Even sequences set in mists to block the sunlight powering Maroc are refined and interesting, with Lawrence’s cross-hatching itself a thing of wonder.
Set in Spain, ‘The Red Knights of Morda’ holds up far better. An immediate improvement is cliffhangers no longer generated by Maroc’s young companion in danger, and with the exception of the barely seen, yet much feared swamp beast, there are no fantasy elements. Maroc fares better as a well-intentioned novice steering through the political complications of the court. It proves the best of the material here for having a structure absent from the following ‘Maroc the Mighty’ in which Maroc stumbles across a region of dwarves and giants. Never mind. The wonder, as throughout, is Lawrence’s amazing art.
Except for the final story, where a musclebound and misproportioned Maroc is drawn by Alfredo Marculeta. It’s dreadful.
Times have changed, and it’s now a rare comic artist taking inspiration from classical sources as Lawrence did, but great art remains great art, so gratitude is due to Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics imprint for supplying collections of material unseen in print for over sixty years.
