Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [139]
Thereafter, all the other versions have originated in America. One of the best of these was Robert Gould’s original Elric tale (with Eric Kimball) published by Star*Reach, 1976. I have always been a huge admirer of Gould’s work and am especially delighted that he is now illustrating virtually the entire Eternal Champion cycle on recent paperback editions (chiefly by Berkley). A very odd version of Elric came from the pen of that excellent Conan illustrator, Barry Windsor-Smith, in a Marvel Conan comic. Jim Cawthorn and I were responsible for the scenario, Roy Thomas wrote the script, and Barry, having no clear idea of what Elric should look like, based his interpretation on the early U.S. covers of Stormbringer and The Stealer of Souls by Jack Gaughan, not knowing that I had heartily disliked Gaughan’s Elric! This was not Barry’s fault, but it meant that the Conan meets Elric story, “A Sword Called Stormbringer” (Conan the Barbarian Nos. 14 & 15, March & May 1972), always remained something of a disappointment, visually, for me.
In 1979 Frank Brunner produced a tremendously powerful twenty-page story in Heavy Metal magazine (reprinted in Star*Reach Greatest Hits, together with the Gould story)—a rendition which almost got Elric into his first movie. I was approached by a film producer to do an Elric movie entirely on the strength of having seen Frank’s story. Sadly, the project fell through for a number of reasons. Another Hollywood proposal came from Ralph Bakshi, but I wasn’t prepared, in the end, to subject Elric to his kind of trivialization and I pulled out very early. I am also disappointed that although Howard Chaykin and I have worked together on projects (notably The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell) Howard’s only Elric work remains the early portfolio he did in the mid-’70s.
It seemed for some time that Elric projects were doomed to founder after one or two enthusiastic attempts. Mike Friedrich, who was offered control of U.S. comic rights to the Eternal Champion in 1976, had worked very hard to get a regular Elric series running in America and at last things began to come together in the 1980s when Roy Thomas and P. Craig Russell first teamed up to produce the Marvel Graphic Novel version of “The Dreaming City” (1982) and then (in Epic Illustrated No. 14) “While the Gods Laugh.” With Friedrich as editor, Thomas as writer, and Russell and Gilbert as illustrators, a winning team had finally been fielded.
In April 1983 the first regular Elric comic book began to appear, published by Pacific Comics. The fey, eery quality—especially experienced in the large set-piece pages—is like no other version of the Elric stories, and the strangely etiolated figures make the characters seem genuinely of another, more magical and alien world. Some of the work is extraordinary, both in detail and colour, in the originality of imagination which the artists have brought to their interpretation. I was greatly impressed and, in looking through the pages again, continue to be surprised and delighted by subtle touches which I had not taken in at first reading. I have never had the opportunity to congratulate the artists before, but am glad to do so now.
Elric of Melniboné is chronologically the first in the Elric series, although it was written as one of the last (in 1972). With the comic’s first publication in paperback form I very much hope it will lead the way to the entire Elric saga being eventually available in illustrated versions. First Comics, who have already produced a further Elric series (The Sailor on the Seas of Fate by Thomas, Gilbert and Freeman) and who are, as I write, beginning an excellent interpretation of The Jewel in the Skull (featuring Dorian Hawkmoon) by a new team (Gerry Conway, Rafael Kayanan and Rico Rival), continue to prove themselves both reliable and conscientious in their treatment of writers and artists and this, in itself, is fairly unusual in the world of comics.
A long time ago I used to edit and write comics myself. I have lost track of the vast number of