Mike Butterworth is primarily known in comic circles as the writer of The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, but had previously written Battler Briton and Buffalo Bill strips for Comet, for Sun he wrote Max Bravo, The Happy Hussar and Billy the Kid (which was drawn by, amongst others, Don Lawrence). The Trigan Empire began in 1965 in Ranger, and continued when Ranger was absorbed into Look and Learn where it continued to be published through to 1982. From 1967 he also wrote crime novels under his full name, John Michael Butterworth, and gothic romances under the pseudonyms of Carola Salisbury and Sarah Kemp.