Word, gotta love the guy. Elric was one of the main fantasy series' that got me through high school (the other being Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series). The inherent tragedy of the character and his circumstances really made him feel different from a lot of other books.

I really dig this piece, like most of your pieces, because it just seems right. Most of the Elric art I have seen (and you're so right about no getting to see his companions often enough) either makes him look way too broad or, even worse, prissy. Here he looks like he should: gaunt, world-worn, yet powerful & quite able.

Elric is an interesting character in being both a nerd and a nerd vengeance fantasy - both the scrawny misfit, and the incredibly cool badass at once. I don't think I necessarily got him right because that's such a difficult combination. Originally I'd figured he'd wear kinda poofy Renaissancy stuff because his culture is pretty effete but I couldn't figure out how to make that work with how spindly he should be (imho) - I really wanted to have him be this thin dude so that there's no chance he could be lifting that sword through sheer muscle.

I love your art... so much.

Thank you!

Holy fuck, someone else other than me even knows that Lankhmar exists! Still trying to hunt the books down, but I've been playing the D&D setting for a while.

Oh, find them if you can! They are exceptionally worthwhile and there's even some ridiculously furry content in there.

Oh trust me, I am looking for them, the Elric saga, and others. Used book stores only have so much to offer, hah. Ever read Thieves' World? Think I've got all of them so far. Going to be reading that after Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human.

Oh yeah! I read the first Thieves Worlds and then kinda dropped out about the time that Tempus started being this really ridiculous over the top character. I didn't know there was a Blade Runner 2 though.

It's a book only. It's specifically a sequel to the movie, not Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Haven't seen a trace of Mercerism in here yet. I stopped Thieves World around book four because I couldn't find them. Now that I have them . . and the entire Wheel of Time series . . . and other books I've been looking for . . I have to actually read them. Oh god, the books, they want to kill me! Does Hanse Shadowspawn stay entertaining?

I was still learning English, so for a while there, I was VERY confused by this fellow. Still, I learned to love him.

Have you seen the newer comic adaptation? Very strange...

Nope! I do have an old comics adaptation from the early 80s.

Classic fantasy. Awesome interpretation. You go.

Thanks!

On an aside: Your writing is lovely. Like the actual words, haha.
This has such style to it, I love it. :D

Thank you!

I loved Elric when I was in high school. He's still the best of his kind. I also love that Moorcock created the character in part specifically as a departure from the Tolkien-style fantasies which dominated the genre at the time.

I have mixed feelings about Moorcock's take on JRRT. To some extent I'm with Moorcock - a lot of Tolkien is comfortable English cultural monomyth through the filter of a very smart, very cranky linguist, and imitating that comes across as sort of stale without the wealth of experience which informed Tolkien. I liked the Shannara books for instance, but the same way there's some really neat stuff which is purely Terry Brooks, the JRRT-imitation just doesn't work. But I like Tolkien a lot and think that a somewhat nostalgic look backwards isn't terrible.

But you notice what authors I did read. McCaffery is very much in the Tolkien groove of looking backwards, and is not going to challenge your perceptions. Howard doesn't challenge anything either (boil down Howard's thoughts about barbarism and civilization, and I actually don't like the result) but he's a great writer and does a lot of world-building. I'd suggest Fritz Lieber had a little of what I liked about both Howard and Moorcock; his science fiction is very world-buildy, but his bigger than life fantasy characters are just trying to make it in this crazy dangerous world, so they're never all that perfect. Whereas Moorcock gives you a bit of world-building, bigger than life fantasy characters, and they're varying levels of accessible. Tough barbarians and clever-minded swordsmen are very appealing when you're a scrawny nerd, but what if the hero is a scrawny nerd? A little like how Jaws was one of my favorite movies as a kid because the biologist is also a very capable, athletic character; this was a real contrast to what my society was telling me at the time.

Speaking of that rant, I think there was an appeal to the Elric books in the 80s that there isn't now (you're a Gen Xer as memory serves); Reagan-America takes on imperialism and idealizing the past were pretty heavy-handed where I was growing up, and I can only imagine British readers the same age having an even nastier reaction to Thatcher's Britain. Whereas Moorcock roars ahead and tears at the comfortable monomyths (a dying, backwards looking Melnibone which can only be relevant again once people give up on it being an empire? And Pan Tangian newcomers to Imperial power who are just basically arrogant jerkwads with some of the same magic and cruelties? Who do these sound like?). I think part of the appeal of reading this stuff back 'when was that here were stories about how all this stuff wasn't all that great.

Anyway, I'm kinda babbling, and will shut it now.

There's no need to apologize for rambling. I think Elric makes for a really fascinating cultural study. Really, he's a product of all the revolution in culture and sexuality and equality and war and oppression that all was fomenting in the 1960's when he was born, and the devastating loss of faith that led into the 1970's. On top of that you had the New Wave going on in Science Fiction (which Moorcock was without question a leading figure in). The phrase Sea Change gets tossed around a lot these days, but there definitely was a shift that massive when Elric came about. It stays relevant because these cycles of rising and falling power and revolution persist in our culture.

To me, he persists because he is the quintessential angsty anti-hero of the Fantasy genre. When you're a teenager and the whole world doesn't understand you, Elric is there, and he's just utterly messed up. Can't get a girl, can't keep any friends, family hates him, and the only real benefits he has in his life cause as many problems as they solve. Oh, he is angsty.

I'll fess up here. I have never read Tolkein. It just started out as happenstance, but it's become deliberate. Elric and the Moorcock Multiverse are the foundation and archetype of my understanding of the fantasy genre, along with Greek mythology. It's an experiment on my own mind, because I'm curious how it impacts how I see fantasy.

Okay, so rambling.

Tolkien's worth a try, in my opinion. Part of what makes him worthwhile in my opinion is that he's only coincidentally a writer; he's basically a really smart, really talented linguistics geek whose perspective is informed by everything from growing up very privileged and Boys' Own gripping versions of the Crusades to literally losing all of his friends during WWI and being actually really racially tolerant despite his origin. One thing I really like about him is that he's a major major Norse/Anglo-Saxon buff - so while he was just as Christian as C.S. Lewis, he never really pulls Christian references, but Norse mythology is all over his writing.

I think this is part of why Tolkien's direct imitators fail, again; there are lots of people who are better writers than Tolkien, but those authors aren't necessarily as interesting (or boring depending on your tastes - the guy looooooooves descriptions of scenery and all of Middle Earth starts as background for him inventing languages, so his exciting story will slam to an abrupt halt while he gives you another piece of elf poetry). He's very much a world-builder.

One of the weird things about me and Tolkien is this; Lord of the Rings is actually my least favorite of all the things he wrote. The Hobbit is a children's story, and it's charming and yet really very texturally rich, it's as delightful now as when I was in grade school reading it. The Silmarillion and other things like that are Tolkien writing mythology, pure and simple, it's big huge Jungian stuff, and like you'd expect from a mythology geek, he's really good at it. And there are some other things like Father Giles of Ham where JRRT is just really entertaining. LotR is sort of this compromise, where he tries for this big mythic story and world-building and multidimensional characters, and in my opinion he's not quite able to pull it off.

I think because I discovered other fantasy writers and mythology around same time as Tolkien, he's very central to my understanding of fantasy, but he also doesn't define fantasy.

Daw! Your Earlick is so sincere-looking! His proportions and armor give him a bit of a Don Quixote look, to my mind.

Thanks! It's just really hard to do costume which makes people looks spindly.

Neato! =)

Never got around to reading those books, really should try to hunt them down. Wonder if anyone has put out an eBook format of them (though thats probably asking too much.)
Though, in my teenage misfit years, I wanted to jet about in one of the Starship Troopers (novel) powered armor suits spreading destruction and chaos.

Do like the armor, and that is one badass sword. I would not want to be on the receiving end of that, even hiding behind a tower shield.

I can't praise the books enough! The only caveat is that Moorcock started writing when he was something like 16, so his early stories especially are like something written by a teenager with bad ADD stuck in detention. That said... they're just really great, really a lot of fun, and stand a lot of the fantasy genre on its head. You might be able to find paperback versions cheap in used bookstores.

The deal with the sword, since you haven't read the books; Elric is an albino, he's not a physically strong or tough person, and in order to function he needs to be loaded up on drugs (the materials are not easy to come by, and lack of knowledge means he pretty much needs to make his own pharmaceuticals). This would all be fine and good if Elric could really do what he wanted with his life (get hitched to one of the people he loves, and settle down where he doesn't have to be responsible for very much), but he can't. Not only has he been born as the sole heir to his world's oldest and most decrepit empire, but he is very literally the Eternal Champion. Gods, demon lords and worldly rulers all want to kill him, ally with him, or use him.

The sword is utterly and completely evil - there's actually a secret about it which I'll save off - and it drains life essence and hands it to the user. Someone stabbed with Stormbringer would lose their soul completely, and a slight scratch from the thing is like being desperately sick for weeks on end. It's magical enough that its chosen wielder can easily swing the thing, potentially even one-handed.

So acquiring the sword leaves Elric with this really nasty set of choices; he can either try to sit out his destiny as a larger than life figure caught up in really big, world-shaking events as someone occasionally too sick to be able to move in armor; he can try to cope with that destiny while running on a very shaky supply of drugs; or he can rely on the sword.

Wow. I did miss out on a lot being an almost pure science fiction junkie growing up. But, at least I still have time to catch up for lost time!

Thanks for the info on it, Ill definitely have to find those books!

the runes read 'this sword may be returned to Elric by dropping into any US Post Office box'