Well ok, I am an occasional sci fi gamer – I own five parsecs from home solo rules – have some figures – even scratch built space ships courtesy of AHPC. However it is very hit and miss.
Alas I have few sci fi heroes as such unlike all those American comic characters. In fact this sends me back to my childhood. You will need a cup of tea…….
Back well before Wargames entered my brain (courtesy of my local library), my mum not only made me airfix kits – biplanes and railway wagons on her ironing board!! But she bought my Ranger magazine which very quickly got absorbed by look and learn. You can still get the old annuals but they are full of serious kids learning stuff.
It was fun to learn through these magazines all sorts of stuff – even historical battles which did have a big impact on me, but every week there was one half page that got all my attention.
A real mix of sci fi and ancient/medievals
It was all about the Trigan Empire. And it was fantasy history told in a comic strip style with a literal colour bomb compared to most of the magazines black and white text, illustrations and photos. Later on colour invaded most of look and learns column inches, indeed it’s massive archive is still well used popping up all over the place on the net.
So what did trigan land do to me? Well it meant my giant plastic castle for 54mm – plastics, in my case, saw ancient Romans, Greeks, knights in armour fighting acw and ww2 soldiers. I never had any pike and shot or napoleonic or seven years wars 54mm toys – and they were toys some with ring hands so the ancients could be armed with guns just like in the comic strip.
Mixed up history telling set me up for a life of imaginations narrative Wargames. Either absolutely no regrets.
I had no paints at this time so figures came as they were.
I had a lot of fun and as it happened even though my American relatives and my sisters pen friend sent marvel comics I was unshaken except for those 1 dollar giant 20mm plastic armies advertised on the back pages. I think I asked my ever helpful mum to buy me some but to no avail: Airfix kits were liberally bought and I then got a secondhand model railway … …..Wargames would have to wait.
And all those now rare comics were just binned…
What a carve up – of genres?
I distinctly remember the lokans who were the nasty guys always fighting the trigans who were really Romans armed with ray guns but usually preferred cold steel. Mind you everyone seemed to prefer cold steel if they got in a close fight – Ray guns for distance only of course – no cheating!
Anyway although I eventually discovered wargames and straight up historicals at that, I retained this rather period feel sci fi memory even through all the Star Wars, aliens and other film eras as well as my copious reading of sci fi books in the seventies – Asimov etc. I even read all 27? books of the Perry Rhodan series…in which the global stock markets were manipulated using clever computers, there was the space station in orbit of course – more like a space airport and agriculture comprising automated harvesters working across land untouched by humans – all proper early seventies make believe founded on real science of the time – algorithms and heuristics and robotics were just getting going back then.
Anyway unlike Roger I rarely modify let alone build figures so lacking a Trigan hero (yes I know I could hunt down a Roman but…) I have opted to celebrate their existence by a paint mod using some modern toys for those anti heroes – the lokans.
I tried to emulate the colour palette if nothing else…
These were 100 for a fiver type of sell if I remember from the bovington tank museum online of all places – never been though.
My nasty lokans posing in front of my sci fi AHPC scratchbuilds – how many discarded household items can you spot? Of course you know one is a Klim class space trader ship….
One thing you get from sci fi plus challenges is the freedom to play around with colours and paint types. I feel obligated to paint historical figures based on all that flimsy yet absolutely accurate historical evidence to be found in books and online.
Not so my sci fi guys but of course I needed to use the comic strip as it was my jumping off point. So these guys got some contrast paint treatment alongside the usual Vallejo and citadel colours.
So there you have it a few bad lokans 2026 style to celebrate the heroically forgotten trigans.
You can buy bound books of the comic strips for what it’s worth.
Back in the nineties? I picked up this selected compilation book. Not necessarily my favourite remembered stories but the artwork is from the early days pre 1975 which is the best. It’s the artwork that makes the comic strip work of course.
The Wargaming Erratic 