Category: Fantasy

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Yragael: Urm


By Philippe Druillet (Dragon’s Dream)
ISBN: 9-063-325210

The fantasy tales of Lone Sloane revolutionised graphic fiction not only in Europe but especially in Britain and America when the baroque and bizarre cosmic odysseys began appearing in the adult fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, which combined original material with the best that “Old World” comics had to offer. By the time French comics collective Les Humanoides Associes launched the groundbreaking magazine Métal Hurlant in 1975, Philippe Druillet, one of their visual and philosophical big guns, had been creating new myths for nearly a decade…

Born in Toulouse in 1944, Druillet was born and raised in Spain, a photographer and artist who started his comics career in 1966 with an apocalyptic science fiction epic Le Mystère des abîmes (The Mystery of the Abyss) which introduced the doom-tainted Earthling, intergalactic freebooter and wanderer called Lone Sloane in a far distant future: a tale heavily influenced by HP Lovecraft and A.E. Van Vogt. Later influences included Michael Moorcock’s doomed anti-hero Elric (and I’m pretty sure I can see some Jack Kirby and Barry Windsor-Smith also tinting the mix…)

He began working for Pilote in 1969, and revived his mercurial star-rover for a number of short pieces which were first gathered together as a graphic novel in 1972. Prior to the large scale (310mm x 233mm) 1991 collection from NBM (see The Six Voyages of Lone Sloane and the later compilation Lone Sloane: Delirius).

Following these early epics he further stretched himself with the astounding, nihilistic, “End of Days” cosmic tragedies of the doomed prince Yragael and his child of ill fortune Urm.

Readers of Moorcock, August Derleth and particularly Jack Vance will recognise shared themes in the woeful tale of the last times of Earth where declining humanity is beset by gods and demons keen on recovering their lost power, on a blasted planet where men still intrigue and kill each other for gain. From this guttering chaos arises Yragael, a potential messiah who founders and falls due to pride and a ghastly liaison with the dire Nereis, witch queen of the living city Spharain…

One hundred years later in the devastated wastelands of the world, the grotesque hunchbacked spawn of that illicit union falls under the spell of mendacious demons and attempts to reclaim both parts of his heritage. Urm is stupid but passionate and his cataclysmic visit to the horrendous city reveals that the Last Men are just as much playthings of the gods as the monstrous bastard himself…

This is a graphic odyssey of utterly Byzantine narrative and Brobdignagian, baroque scale and scope. The storytelling is reduced to the merest plot, as the text (more pictorial accoutrement than dialogue facilitator) and art goes into emotional overdrive. This isn’t a tale told, it’s a mesmerising, breathless act of graphic expression. If it helps think of it as ballet or a symphony rather than a novel or play: you’re supposed to go “wow!” not “a-ha!”

The visual syntax and techniques originated in these non-stories dictated the shape of science fiction – especially in movies – for decades. Character and plot are again pared to pure fundamentals so that Druillet could fully unleash the startling graphic innovations in design and layout that churned within him, and which exploded from his pen and brain.

His brand of universal Armageddon achieved levels of graphic energy that only Jack Kirby has ever equalled, and this is another work crying out for re-release in large format with all the bells and whistles modern technology can provide, but until that distant tomorrow this book will have to do – and do very well.

Luckily for you it’s still widely available and remarkably inexpensive…
© 1974 Philippe Druillet/Dargaud Editeur. © 1975 Philippe Druillet/Dargaud Editeur. All rights reserved.

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The Hobbit


By J.R.R. Tolkien, adapted by Charles Dixon & Sean Deming, illustrated by David Wenzel (Eclipse Book)
ISBN: 1-56060-054-3-1295

I’m a great believer in art remaining true to its roots: Nobody writes a novel with the ultimate intention of it becoming a lousy movie, nor a song or symphony merely to sell the ring-tone rights (maybe these days they do – it would certainly explain why there are so many bad books and crap tunes. Just call me the last of the dewy-eyed idealists, then).

So just to keep things straight: even though I’m about to review the graphic novel adaptation – and favourably – Read the Book. Even though there’s been a stage play, a radio drama, an animated feature and (soon) a two-film franchise – Read the Book.

Every time you see something leap the creative hurdle from original artwork to another, different, separate medium: Read the Book. Or comic or play or song or…

The Hobbit was first published in 1937 to world-wide success and acclaim. It won the New York Herald-Tribune Award for best juvenile fiction, was nominated for a Carnegie Medal and is rightly considered to be a classic of World Literature. In my overblown and utterly personal opinion it completely outclasses and knocks spots off the sequel Tolkien’s publishers demanded. You ought to read that too: it’s called Lord of the Rings.

In 1989 Eclipse Comics produced a three-part prestige miniseries adapting the Hobbit, which was then collected into a successful graphic novel that helped break the then-new format out of the comics fan ghetto. Since the company’s demise the collection has been re-issued by HarperCollins (1998, ISBN: 978-0-26110-266-8) and other companies and is relatively easy to find.

I’m sticking with the original here simple because it has the wonderful painted cover by David Wenzel gracing it. The story itself, of how a sedate and sedentary little Halfling called Bilbo Baggins is cajoled by the wizard Gandalf into leaving his complacent life of middle class prosperity for the seductive lure of adventure, is as enchanting as it ever was.

The diminutive Hobbit agrees, somewhat reluctantly, to become a Thief/Burglar for 14 disinherited dwarfs who yearn to liberate their ancestral home – and treasure – from the awesome dragon Smaug, and incorporates all the fascinating ephemerals that have graced Western mythology and tale-telling for centuries. (Read the Book).

Tolkien’s text is sensitively abridged rather than adapted by Chuck Dixon and Sean Deming, who strove to retain as much of the original as possible, whilst the illustration is by turns pretty, jolly, enthralling and when the dragon, goblins, trolls and especially Gollum appear, wholesomely terrifying. Wenzel started out as a wanna-be comics artist before moving into the field of fantasy and especially children’s illustration in the 1980s where he worked with icons like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and creators like Maurice Sendak, but he returned to comics for this project: probably his greatest achievement and one he’d dreamed of for much of his career (See Middle Earth: the World of Tolkien Illustrated)…

This is a truly magical interpretation of the classic and one that any devotee will find hard to dislike. If you are a lover of traditional fantasy you should get a copy – after you’ve Read the Book.

© 1989, 1990 the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. Based on The Hobbit © 1965 by J.R.R. Tolkien. Illustration © 1989, 1990 David Wenzel. Adaptation © 1989, 1990 Charles Dixon & Sean Deming. All Rights Reserved.

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Men in Black


By Lowell Cunningham & Sandy Carruthers (Malibu Graphics)
ISBN: 0-944735-60-6

Usually when I write these graphic novel reviews I’m looking to promote something excellent or entertaining (both is best) and consequently there are vast numbers of books I wouldn’t even consider. Some because I’m assuming everybody who’s interested has already seen them (like Maus) whilst others are just not good enough for people outside the incredibly forgiving and tolerant fan-base. In a world where all publishing is increasingly a cottage industry, I see no reason to recommend sub-standard fare that even I wouldn’t give house room.

However on the understanding that computer games, DVDs/CDs, television and movies are all The Enemy, leaching funds that could be spent on comics, I’m going to start featuring the odd tome of suspected interest…

First up is Men in Black which originally appeared as a three-issue miniseries from a poorly-regarded company named alternatively Eternity and Malibu comics. No doubt you will have seen and enjoyed the spectacular and vastly amusing pair of films and the competent cartoon show based on this series but the comic itself is largely forgotten and – at first glance – justifiably so.

But I must admit that there’s far more than merely the kernel of a good idea in this softcover black and white collection. Although Carruthers’ black and white artwork is rushed and primitive there’s a solid basis to it that a few more years of practice could have redeemed and Cunningham’s script and concept is bold and engaging.

Agent Kay is a legendary government spook working for a super-secret organisation. In the first episode ‘Initiation’ he recruits an undercover Drug Enforcement Agent who’s accidentally stumbled into a plot to distribute a super narcotic called Bezerk. Stripping him of every facet of his old life Kay designates the new guy Agent Jay and together they wipe out the drug barons (all human) who have developed the drug.

‘Encounter’ is a lighter tale and the one that both films are based on. Jay learns that aliens exist when an extraterrestrial scavenger hunts leads to a close encounter in the American Heartland. The book concludes with ‘Invocation’ a supernatural thriller that pits the agents against a demon released when a bunch of kids inadvertently play Dungeons and Dragons with magic dice.

The success of the films depended entirely on amping up the silliness and slapstick and sticking strictly to science fiction rather than all aspects of The Unknown, but Cunningham’s subtler, restrained, darkly humorous paranormal version could just as easily have worked. The comic is played more or less straight, with action and horror a vital component of the mix, and if Hollywood saw the potential of a feel-good film they perhaps missed the chance for a solid fantasy thriller that might have reached even greater heights.

Men in Black is hard to whole-heartedly recommend but beneath the lack of polish a competent adventure series rests with its full potential still untapped. Perhaps a revival isn’t too big a stretch…
© 1990 Lowell Cunningham.  Artwork © 1990 Sandy Carruthers. All Rights Reserved.

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Jack of Fables: Jack of Hearts


By Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Tony Akins, Steve Leialoha & Andrew Pepoy (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-628-3

In case you didn’t know, Fables are refugee fairytale, storybook and legendary characters who (which?) fled to our mundane Earth from their various mythic realms to escape a mysterious and unbeatable Adversary. Disguising their true natures from humanity they created enclaves where their immortality, magic and sheer strangeness (all the talking animals are sequestered on a remote farm in upstate New York) would not threaten the life of uneasy luxury they built for themselves. Many of these immortals wander the human world, but always under injunction never to draw any attention.

In Fables: Homelands the utterly self-absorbed and absolutely amoral Jack of the Tales (everyman hero of Beanstalk, Giant-killer, Be Nimble fame) did just that by stealing Fabletown funds and becoming a movie producer, creating the three most popular fantasy films of all time, based on (his version) of his life, consequently drawing physical power from the billions who inadvertently “believed” in him – and coining vast amounts of filthy lucre in the process.

A key tenet of the series is that the more “mundies” (that’s mundane humans like you and me… well, me anyway) who think about a fable character, the stronger that character becomes. Books TV, songs, all feed their vitality. In the first volume of his eponymous irreverent series Jack was brought low by the publicity-shy Fables Police: banished from Hollywood and ordered to disappear, with only a suitcase full of cash to tide him over.

He was captured and escaped from a particularly horrific fate – metaphysical neutering by The Golden Bough, a clandestine organisation that had been “vanishing” Fables for centuries – and is now on the run from those selfsame forces (in the attractive shape of the Page Sisters, dedicated hunters of everything Fabulous and Uncanny) after instigating a mass-break-out of forgotten and abridged Fables…

This second volume (collecting issues #6-11 of the Vertigo comicbook) opens with ‘Jack Frost’ illustrated by Steve Leialoha, as the legendary blowhard links up with a few other escapees in snow-bound Wyoming, and “entertains” everyone with the story of how he once knocked-up Lumi, the Snow Queen, after which he then helpfully “borrowed” her role in the supernatural cosmology and almost destroyed the cycle of Seasons before the Queen’s sisters Summer Spring and Autumn brought him to book…

The sharp eyed might notice that although the two chapters smoothly follow one another the attendant reproduced covers indicate that the concluding part was actually #11, not #7. Yes. Correct. You’re not wrong. Chalk it up to the magical drama of deadlines and move on.

‘Viva Las Vegas’ illustrated by Tony Akins and Andrew Pepoy, opens in that legendary Sin City with Jack waking up hung over and married to a cutie who is also the billionaire heiress who will one day inherit much of that aforementioned modern Gomorrah. But things aren’t as great as they seem. For starters Jack has somehow been reunited with fellow escapee Gary, the engagingly peculiar but trouble-attracting Pathetic Fallacy. For another, nobody likes an obvious gigolo gold-digger and everybody is trying to kill him. Most importantly though, the disgustingly bloodthirsty Fable Lady Luck already secretly controls Vegas and doesn’t want someone like Jack around just when her lost magic horseshoe has finally, serendipitously returned to the city after being missing for decades…

Saucy, self-referential, darkly, mordantly funny, this series is a deliciously whimsical fairytale for adults concocted with much more broad, adult, cynical humour and sex than your average comicbook – so mothers and matrons be warned! This enchanting series is a wonderful view of how the world should be and every volume should be compulsory reading for jaded fantasists everywhere.

© 2007 Bill Willingham and DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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Goddess


By Garth Ennis & Phil Winslade (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-327-3

Some stories are just a good, vicarious read and there’s no better description for this achingly funny, over the top eco-romp from the lord of outrageous shock comedy Garth Ennis. That it’s beautifully illustrated by master of the meticulous Phil Winslade is a tremendous plus of course…

London Zoo keeper Rosie Nolan went for a walk in the Highlands. As she was revelling in the wonders of nature something odd happened: she was gripped by an eerie emerald power and accidentally split Scotland and England apart…

At that moment ineffectual Jeff (our narrator) was cocking up his latest relationship and ecological psychopath Mudhawk was slaughtering some more people who didn’t share his passion for animal rights, but someone who did notice Rosie’s little gaffe was paranoid narcisscist  Harry Hooks, a CIA spook who had been hunting for telekinetic people to turn into US weapons for decades. He immediately headed for England where a concatenation of circumstances brought Jeff, Mudhawk – and his bellicose ex Samantha Flint – to Rosie’s doorstep just as the Yank arrived…

Mad as a bag of badgers, Hooks tried to abduct Rosie, leading to the deaths of five American agents, and when the local beat copper arrived Hooks shot him. This rash act brought cheerful old Desk Constable George Dixon into the mix. Dixon was the kind of rozzer who always got his man – and then assiduously disposed of the body before anybody could register a complaint. An old fashioned sort, he didn’t much like cop-killers, so with the sadistic Bovver Bruvvers in tow Dixon went after the kill-crazy Hooks, incidentally racking up a body-count of his own that a middle-eastern dictator would be proud of…

In a voyage that traverses the entire globe Rosie’s powers expand exponentially and as the frantic chases of all the authority figures rapidly converge on her the attendant carnage escalates. With her companions in tow she uncovers the incredible secret of her gift in a gloriously trenchant and darkly sardonic satire on society, like a gore-splattered “Carry-On” film with no limits and not even a modicum of good taste.

Fast, furious, funny and wickedly whimsical, this is classic over-the-top Ennis fare, which was purportedly postponed during its conversion from eight issue miniseries to trade paperback compilation because the terrorist themes were deemed too raw after the September 11th attacks. As one of the most impressive scenes here concerns crashing an airliner, I think I can see their point. Nevertheless, as the series premiered six years before the towers fell, and it’s been a long while since, perhaps the time is right to revisit this incredible fantasy tale for consenting, contrary adults…

© 1995, 1996, 2002 Garth Ennis and Phil Winslade. All Rights Reserved.

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Michael Moorcock’s The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell – UK Edition


By Howard V. Chaykin & Michael Moorcock (Star Books)
ISBN: 0-35230681-5

Presented as a Heavy Metal Presents… production this slim and scintillating fantasy thriller was one of the most successful early graphic novels, but has since slipped into seeming obscurity. Created Marvel-style (plot/art and then script) it teamed two of the medium’s most outspoken and popular creators on a project that still has a phenomenal amount of punch.

Michael Moorcock began his career as a comics writer and editor at age 15, on such strips as Tarzan, Dogfight Dixon, Jet Ace Logan, Captain Condor, Olac the Gladiator and many, many other British stalwarts before making the jump to prose fiction, where he single-handedly revitalised the genre with the creation of Elric and the high-concept of the Eternal Champion.

This very adult fantasy thriller is a part of that extended cycle of sagas (and if you’re a fan this tale immediately follows the novels The Eternal Champion and Phoenix in Obsidian) but if it’s all new to you everything you need to enjoy the epic is précised within the tale itself.

Urlik Skarsol, known as John Daker, is an aspect of the tragic fate-tossed Eternal Champion. Unlike most he is always aware of his true nature so when he incarnates on a new world he already knows it is another place of conflict and jeopardy.

Here he is Lord Clen of Clen Gar, a knight of the Dream Marches and wielder of a terrible soul-drinking black sword. His land is a buffer zone between the acid-scorched wastes of Hell and the lush highlands of Heaven, and for centuries his people have guarded the decadent body-warping elite above them from the desperate wild-men of the burned wildernesses.

A final confrontation is drawing inevitably closer, and death is in the air, but Clen holds one final awesome secret. The floating acid-spewing beasts known as Angels are not what they seem and their final fate will determine whether this world thrives or dies in blood and flame…

This is a classic romp from two masters of the form, painted with all verve and dash of Chaykin in his prime, and a treat fantasists and followers of exotic, erotic fantasy will simply adore.

© 1979 Howard V. Chaykin & Michael Moorcock.  All Rights Reserved.

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Voyages – Adventures in Fantasy


By Alex Toth, Rick Geary, Charles Vess, Trina Robbins & others (Nautilus Dreams)
ISBN: 0-913161-00-4

For comics purists and especially fans of comic art few books can match the impact and content of this delightful one-off from the early 1980s. I know nothing about its genesis or editor Howard Feltman, but at the dawn of creator owned-publishing, he managed to compile a truly staggering pool of talent for a (regrettably) single engagement that still resonates with power and charm today.

Behind the Frank Brunner cover and Terry Austin frontispiece, these crisp black and white pages contain firstly two incredible tales of Alex Toth’s Bravo For Adventure; an origin and a truly magnificent, surreal design masterpiece, wherein a blow to the head sends the dashing aviator to the furthest reaches of reality.

Toth was the undisputed god of minimalist line and his breathtaking mastery of dark and light is given full rein in these incomparable yarns. Hard on his heels is ‘Murder in the Garage’, an impressive early crime confession from Rick Geary, whose Treasury of Victorian Murder and Treasury of XXth Century Murder graphic procedurals are a constant source of delight to readers of true crime tales and cartoon aficionados everywhere.

Stardust star Charles Vess follows with the first of two brief vignettes, ‘Sugar in the Morning’ and Howard Chaykin provided an eerie psycho-thriller entitled ‘No Rest for the Weary…’ painted in glorious, psychedelic colour in a special glossy insert, after which Toren Smith and Lela Dowling contributed a whimsical and decidedly different ‘Cheshire Cat’ tale.

Barb Hawkins Karl interviewed P. Craig Russell with a liberal sprinkling of beautiful pencil studies and a stirring fantasy illustration in pen and ink, Trina Robbins brilliantly pastiched the Maltese Falcon in ‘Queenie Hart and the Andromedan Grzblch’ and John Jay Muth traded his signature watercolours for tone and pencil in the pensive picture poem ‘The Ghost’.

This enchanting collection concludes with Vess’ quirky ‘Blimp Tales’ and a Dowling unicorn endpiece. The tremendous outpouring of superlative art and stories that came from the rise of independent publishers in the 1980s seldom reached the qualitative peak of Voyages and this book is still readily available at incredibly modest prices. No true art lover or collector can afford to be without it.

All art and stories © 1983 the respective creators/copyright holders. All Rights Reserved.

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Elric at the End of Time


By Michael Moorcock, illustrated by Rodney Matthews (Paper Tiger)
ISBN: 1-85028 032-0

He doesn’t demonstrate it often enough but Michael Moorcock has a wicked, absurdist sense of humour. One occasion of this is marvelously captured and reinterpreted in this deliciously odd collaboration with fantasy illustrator and heavy metal/prog-rock art icon Rodney Matthews. The prose book this tale is taken from collects short stories of the doom-drenched last-Emperor of a dead race, with the titles tale deviating ever so slightly from the breast-beating norm…

Elric is a tragic incarnation of the Eternal Champion, reincarnated in every time, place and alternate dimension. His life is blood and tragedy, exacerbated by his dependence on a soul-drinking black sword and his sworn allegiance to the chimerical Lords of Chaos. But what happens when he is lost in a place where time has ended?

Misplaced from his proper situation he finds himself in the indulgent, entropic, oh-so-bored company of the Dancers at the End of Time where an effete and omnipotent group of beings are desperately trying to keep themselves amused until the inevitable finally happens.

Elric believes he’s been shanghaied to the realms of ultimate chaos – a belief his hosts are delighted to encourage – and only the duty-bound Una Persson, Top Agent of Time Central, cares about returning the lost Melnibonéan to his point of origin before all reality unravels…

This novella is a mock heroic, surreal delight, that revels in lancing its own pretensions, expanded to fill this lush 120 page album by the incredible, unique art work of Matthews who eschews sequential narrative for a panoramic series of (21) lavishly painted plates, spreads and vignettes and a further 11 illustrations ranging from cameos to spreads in eerie black and white.

Controversial among fans who either love or hate it, this is still a terrific read, outré and startling, and one that fantasy and illustration fans should see. Well worth the effort needed to track it down.
© 1987 Dragon’s World Ltd. Text © 1981 Michael Moorcock. Illustrations © 1981 Rodney Matthews. All Rights Reserved.

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The Squirrel Machine


By Hans Rickheit (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN:  978-1-60699-301-9

¡Perfect Present Alert!  For him or her – if they’re “Of Age”

Hans Rickheit was born in 1973 and has been producing skilfully crafted art in many different arenas since the early 1990s, beginning with self-published mini-comics and graduating to full-sized, full-length epics as well as dabbling in film, music, gallery works and even performance art. A Xeric award beneficiary, he came to broader attention in 2001 with the controversial graphic novel Chloe, and has since spread himself wide contributing to numerous anthologies and periodicals.

He has been called obscurantist, and indeed in all his beautifully rendered and realised concoctions meaning is layered and open to wide interpretation. His preferred oeuvre is the imagery and milieu of Victorian/Edwardian Americana which provided such rich fantasist pickings for Poe, Lovecraft and Derleth, and his meticulously clear line is a perfect counterpoint to the cloud of mystery and cosmic confusion engendered by the protagonists of his latest book The Squirrel Machine.

The brothers Edmund and William Torpor live in a secluded 19th century New England town but have never been part of the community. Raised alone by their artist mother they are quite different from other kids, and Edmund especially is obsessed with arcane engineering and assembling musical instruments from utterly inappropriate components.  Fantastic dream-like journeys and progressions mark their isolated existence, which is far more in tune with a greater metaphysical cosmos, but as puberty gradually moves them to an awareness of base human sexuality they find the outside world impacting theirs in ways that can only end in tragedy and horror…

Moreover, just where did the plans for the Squirrel Machine come from…?

Visually reminiscent of the works of Rick Geary, this is also a uniquely surreal and mannered design, a highly charged and subtly disturbing delusion that will chill and upset and possibly even outrage many readers but it is also compelling, seductive and hard to forget. As long as you’re an adult and braced for the unexpected, expect this to be one of the best books you’ll read this decade.

© 2009 Fantagraphics Books. Contents © 2009 Hans Rickheit. All Rights Reserved.

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Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné: The Weird of the White Wolf


Adapted by Roy Thomas, Michael T. Gilbert, P. Craig Russell, George Freeman & various (First Publishing)
ISBN: 0-915419-87-4

Elric is a landmark of the Sword and Sorcery genre: the ruler of the pre-human civilisation of the Melnibonéans, a race of cruel, arrogant Sorcerers: Dissolute creatures in a slow, decadent decline after millennia of dominance over the Earth. An albino, he is physically weak and of a brooding philosophical temperament, caring for nothing save his beautiful cousin Cymoril, whom he killed whilst battling her loathsome usurping brother Prince Yrrkoon.

After Elric destroyed his own love and race he wandered the world a broken dissolute wreck. In a series of short prose stories, a number of which (The Dreaming City, While the Gods Laugh and The Singing Citadel) were included with a framing tale The Dream of Earl Aubec into the novel Elric: Weird of the White Wolf, the albino forged his tragic legend across the young planet.

This stellar graphic adaptation adapts not only the novel but also gatherers many of the disparate previous adaptations (partially or in full) in a logical chronological sequence, which originally saw the light of day as a five issue miniseries from the much missed innovators First Comics.

The Dream of Earl Aubec by Thomas, Gilbert and Freeman (with spectacular support from letterer Ken Bruzenak) sees the greatest champion of his world fight his way to the very edge of reality searching for glory and approval from his queen Eloarde of Klant. Where solid ground meets raw unformed chaos-stuff he finds a castle and is seduced by the incredible creature Myshella, the Dark Lady, who shows him visions of the future in the raw Chaos and particularly the travails of a tragic Emperor, Elric.

The first vision is an abridged version of Thomas and Russell’s ‘The Dreaming City’ taken from 1982 Marvel Graphic Novel which is followed by the pair’s superb adaptation of ‘While the Gods Laugh’ which first appeared in the fantasy anthology magazine Epic Illustrated (#14, 1984) wherein the doomed hero searches for the Dead God’s Book, a magical grimoire that promises to answer any wish or desire, picking up the first of many disposable paramours in Shaarilla of the Dancing Mist, as well as his truest friend and aide, Moonglum.

Interspersed with the continuing drama of Aubec and Myshella the collection then moves into an all-new interpretation of ‘The Singing Citadel’ with Thomas and Gilbert co- adapting the saga for the hugely underrated George Freeman to illustrate and colour. Elric and Moonglum take ship and are attacked by the pirates of Pan Tang, before being drawn into the scheme of Queen Yishana who needs a better magician than her own lover Theleb K’aarna to investigate an incursion of melodic chaos into her kingdom.

The invader turns out to be the malevolent Jester of the Lords of Chaos, intent on establishing his own domain without the interference of his superiors…

This is a phenomenal tale of heroism and insanity and the art and colour here fully capture the drama and madness of the original. Gilbert and Freeman are every bit the imaginative, illustrative equals of the magnificent Russell and this book is one of the most impressive graphic fantasies ever produced, and desperately in need of re-release.

Michael Moorcock’s irresistible blend of brooding Faustian tragedy and all-out action is never better displayed than in his stories of Elric, and Roy Thomas’ adaptations were a high watermark in the annals of illustrated fantasy. Every home and castle should have one…

© 1990 First Comics, Inc. and Star*Reach Productions. Adapted from the original stories by Michael Moorcock, © 1967, 1970, 1977. All Rights Reserved.