Torkan is a

heroic fantasy Sword and sorcery (S&S), or heroic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of ...

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

written and illustrated by Roger Fletcher. The strip debuted in June 1976 in the

Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, first published on 5 February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegr ...

and has appeared continuously in the paper to the present day, with over seventy stories having been published. During the early 1970s, Fletcher began developing a comic strip about an Australian soldier-of-fortune, titled ''Nathan Cole''—until he was introduced to the world of sword and sorcery by science-fiction writer

Fritz Leiber Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. ( ; December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Along with Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber is one of the fathers of sword and sorcery. Life ...

that would have a profound impact on his future. In particular, the pair of characters called

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two sword-and-sorcery heroes appearing in stories written by American author Fritz Leiber. They are the protagonists of what are probably Leiber's best-known stories. One of his motives in writing them was to hav ...

influenced Fletcher greatly. Fletcher worked on a fantasy comic strip called ''Orn the Eagle Warrior'' in 1974, but the strip received no attention from publishers. Fletcher subsequently started drawing Torkan. ''Torkan'' continues to win new generations of readers; something which Fletcher believes is attributable to the character's enduring appeal. Fletcher claims; "the paradigm for heroic adventure was first written in the Bible, as David and Goliath. Whether it's in Arthurian legend or Harry Potter, the paradigm itself doesn't change much - but fashions do change

Levels of violence in the stories have dropped since the strip's early years. Torkan has ended on 3 March 2019, with the last strip published in the Sunday Telegraph after 43 years of continuous publication
Refer to Page 21 of the TV Guide section of Sunday Telegraph where the last strip appeared

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examples of Torkan strips
Australian comic strips 1976 comics debuts Fantasy comics Action-adventure comics Australian comics characters Male characters in comics Comics characters introduced in 1976 {{Comic-strip-stub