royalties or compensation, he departed from his old employer and was immediately offered work on a new Dutch comic magazine called Eppo. After an abortive start on a strip entitled Commander Grek written by his friend Vince Wernham, Lawrence found success with Storm. The first volume, The Deep World, was based on a concept by Martin Lodewijk but written by Philip Dunn. A further 22 volumes followed. Lawrence did not limit himself solely to Trigan Empire and Storm; other strips he drew include Fireball XL5 and The Adventures of Tarzan for TV Century 21, Carrie for the men's magazine Mayfair and a number of one-off strips for various Dutch publishers. A number of partly completed and unpublished comic strips appeared in the series Don Lawrence Collection, published in the Netherlands. The final Storm serial (completed by Lawrence's former assistant Liam Sharp) appeared in the magazine Pandarve published by the Don Lawrence Fanclub in 1999–2001. One of his last illustrations was the cover of volume 6 of the Storm -the collection- from 2002. In the mid-1980s he was looking for an assistant and accepted then 17-years old Liam Sharp as his apprentice, but after realizing he did not want to step back as much as he had thought he would, he helped Sharp develop his own style. Later life In 1995, he lost sight of his right eye, caused by an infection after an unsuccessful cataract operation. With his depth perception gone, he could no longer see when the tip of his pen and brush touched the paper's surface, forcing him to teach himself an alternative drawing technique. He went through a new cataract operation in 1999, this time without medical complications. But his general health was starting to decline, and when he was diagnosed with emphysema and put on medication, he permanently retired from comics and art. Lawrence died in December 2003 of emphysema at the age of 75. Awards 1980 Society of Illustration Lifetime Achievement Award 1981 Grand Prix Spatial 1987 Gouden Bommel Award 1994 De Stripschapprijs 1998 Pantera di Lucca Lifetime Achievement Award 2003 Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau Bibliography Comics work published in English include: The Look and Learn Book of the Trigan Empire (1973) The Trigan Empire (1978) Storm: The Deep World (1982) Storm: The Last Fighter (1987) Storm: The Pirates of Pandarve (1989) Tales From the Trigan Empire (1989) Cathy (1991) — reprints Carrie