My favorite Moorcock character is Corum, and especially the second Corum trilogy, a Celtic world near its collapse, in a near apocalypse caused by the fomorian fiends... By the Gods! I love it!
Corum is my favorite to as well. Funny thing is, in the 80's, when I was buying any book by Moorcock, I didn't care for the second trilogy because it didn't really have much to do with Law and Chaos and didn't tie in as much to the Champion Eternal stuff as the first. Over the last few years, thanks to the Graphic Audio dramatizations, I've come to love the second trilogy every bit as much as the first, and am amazed that I missed as many connections to the overall mythos back in the day.
Prolly started this series in 1980 when I was 9. As a dyslexic (and 1st Gen AD&D player), this is what broke through my "disability" and got me into reading. D&D taught me reading and math.
Jeff Dee’s art in Deities and Demigods (if you get the edition that has these mythos in it) for these books is my personal favorite. He captured the physically weak appearance of Elric quite well IMHO.
Me too :) I found Moorcock's books in the World's Biggest Book Store in Toronto early 80's (it's now a parking lot or something) It was book store heaven.
Thanks for this, alongside Dune, the Eternal champion books, and Elric in particular, shaped my tastes and my imagination as a teenager. I think I recall reading that Elric was a deliberate inversion of Conan - rather than a muscle-bound barbarian who hacks through his foes to claim a throne, Elric is a sophisticated scion of an ancient house, a weakling who throws his throne away and kills all those who love him. Wonderful, imaginative stuff.
Oh yeah, totally an inversion of Conan. It was definitely a work of reactionary S&S, and very much a part of the New Wave which was rejecting the past. And I love Dune as well.
@@ollep0lle He doesn't mean to, but his Demon-possessed sword - stormbringer - is thirsty for souls and Elric is not always in full control. In fact the last line in the storyline is Stormbringer's - "Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!"
I always thought it was kinda cool he couldn't do much without his potions or demon sword. It made for good writing and story telling. Extremely tragic character 🤘💜😑
The Elric Saga was recently released as a new two volume set by Saga Press. I found it at my local book store. These books are illustrated but only with a few color plates by various artists.
I first read these books in the early 80s and have dipped in and out of them many times since, the combination of psychedelia and unrelenting despair speaks to me as much as it did back then. Definitely a formative influence on my own art. Btw/ as well as the books and comics there’s also an Elric RPG. It’s probably quite difficult to find a print copy these days but I think there are PDF versions floating around the web.
What’s so interesting to me about Elric is that he seems driven by fate, but I always had the impression that it was self wrought, that he was crying crocodile tears all the time. It’s not just that he played along, but he clearly does have incredible agency, mostly from his power of charisma. In 1st edition ADnD I’d score it 25 at least. Everyone wants to serve him - magic swords, exceptional warriors, powerful women, elementals, gods. And I’d call it a charisma of self entitlement, like he so believes that he’s the center of the universe that everyone else does as well. And maybe he was right. Well I guess it was actually Stormbringer.
Maybe he’s a useful idiot? Maybe people and things want to serve him because he’s the best vessel for them to get what they want? It’s an interesting thing to think about!
Hello, loving this series of sword and sorcery. I really want to get into the elric books, but not sure which editions of the books to buy. Have any recommendations?
I’m still surprised that content hungry Hollywood hasn’t successfully done something with the IP considering there is a fair amount of built-in fandom for the property
I don't think every series of this writer needs to be talked about but as great the Elric books were , for me the series of Corum books was just a tiny bit more gripping.
Karl Edward Wagner wrote a short story entitled "The Gothic Touch" in which Elric met and fought alongside Kane (Wagner's most famous sword and sorcery character). It wasn't Wagner's best effort IMHO, but it was an interesting premise. Has anyone else read that story? If so, what is your opinion of that story?
I liked it a lot. First published in a collection of Elric stories by other hands -- Tad Williams, Colin Greenland and many others. Published about 20 years ago by White Wolf. Sorry -- can't remember title -- Tales of the White Wolf or wimilar.
@@jerrycornelius2261 Yes, I read that story in the anthology book "Tales of the the White Wolf". I really liked the idea of Kane and Elric (along with Moonglum) together in a story, but the prose seemed uncharacteristically bland and awkward to me. I'm a huge fan of Karl Edward Wagner's writings, and this one didn't seem to be remotely similar to his previous writing style. Kane was portrayed very oddly compared to how he was written in the previous Kane stories. I had the impression that it perhaps was a rough-draft that had not undergone final edits and polishing of the language. It was written in 1994, the same year his untimely demise to severe alcohol abuse, so I have to suspect that was a major contributing factor for the underwhelming effort. Again, just my own subjective take on the story.
@@jerrycornelius2261 I wish that I could have met Karl Edward Wagner so that I could have told him how much I enjoyed his writing! I really wish that more people could discover his writing, as he was truly talented. RIP, Mr. Wagner.
"A huge influence on Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone at Games Workshop." A bit of an understatement, they got the eightpointed star of chaos from Moorcock.
my Theary is what If Tod McFarland did Read the Novels Of Elric. Tod McFarland imagination is wow even though Tod Was drawing For Marvel he must of read some Michael Moorcock novels to get Indpiration but Mcfarland Was Only doing Dark fantasy in Comic Form
Tolkien's LOTR and HOBBIT never caught my fancy. Which is probably odd--I knew guys in college who weren't really readers or fans of reading, but they would re-read the LOTR trilogy every year. But I couldn't ever get into any of that, although my sons really enjoyed it all. So it would make sense I'd really like the anti-LOTR, Elric, right? I like Elric in smaller doses: the individual stories I find really enjoyable. Tackling them in a book-length work, however, compiled into a single novel, I find a tougher read. I admit, it baffles me, too, because I like shorter novels--not the bloated form in which most contemporary fantasy novels manifest their narratives--and the Elric novels certainly fit the smaller form. But as I mentioned in another post's Comments section, S&S works better for me in a story or novella form. Still, those individual novellas are usually excellent.
I love the Hobbit, don't really care for LOTR. I think the Elric "novels" are so damn short and speedy, that they do work, but they're also pretty disjointed if read like a novel. They really should have just been billed as collections of novellas.
That's totally true, and I'm not disagreeing, but it can also make for an uninteresting characterization of Elric. If it is Stormbringer's story (I'd say it's a story about both), then that character is also really poorly portrayed throughout.
@@TheDungeonDive You need to check them out. English translations of this are from Titan comics. Volume 4 will be out either this month or March. They are so good that Michael Moorcock himself, in a 2014 interview, said that if he started writing Elric today, he would incorporate many of the ideas that Julien Blondel (the writer) has put into it. If the man himself is impressed, you should check them out.
They’re both beautiful. Whalen’s art is great, as is Gould’s. Robert Gould’s style adds a layer of elegance to the depiction. Just different than Whalen’s and Cawthorn’s.
@@TheDungeonDive Umm, not imo. Elegance? Simplistic perhaps. 2 dimensional and it utterly fails in capturing any elements of Elric, the tone, the horror and evil, the ancient wisdom. Goulds covers are completely outside of the world put down on the pages that they cover. I mentioned this because I remember when they came out. I had a visceral negative reaction to them. Still do. Wonder what a vote on this would say. But thx for responding, always an interesting topic
Ngl, it can be easy to assume sword & sorcery stories = dark/low fantasy stories. Kinda puts me off ish since it reminds me of the overly lethal spiel from the OSRs. I still have a bunch of Brandon Sanderson books as well as an incomplete collection of the Wheel of Time series to read.
I would never make such assumptions. IMO, OSR stuff is a terrible representation of S&S fiction. A topic I’ll be discussing later this year, and will most surely receive a ton of hate for.
My favorite Moorcock character is Corum, and especially the second Corum trilogy, a Celtic world near its collapse, in a near apocalypse caused by the fomorian fiends... By the Gods! I love it!
Excellent! Always good when we all find something to love.
Corum is my favorite to as well. Funny thing is, in the 80's, when I was buying any book by Moorcock, I didn't care for the second trilogy because it didn't really have much to do with Law and Chaos and didn't tie in as much to the Champion Eternal stuff as the first. Over the last few years, thanks to the Graphic Audio dramatizations, I've come to love the second trilogy every bit as much as the first, and am amazed that I missed as many connections to the overall mythos back in the day.
These are fantastic books. My favorite fantasy series of all time, along with GOT.
Prolly started this series in 1980 when I was 9. As a dyslexic (and 1st Gen AD&D player), this is what broke through my "disability" and got me into reading. D&D taught me reading and math.
I learned to love reading via RPGs as well.
Jeff Dee’s art in Deities and Demigods (if you get the edition that has these mythos in it) for these books is my personal favorite. He captured the physically weak appearance of Elric quite well IMHO.
These were some of my favorite books from my teen years in the 80s. Just reread them last year and they are every bit as good as I remembered.
Me too :) I found Moorcock's books in the World's Biggest Book Store in Toronto early 80's (it's now a parking lot or something) It was book store heaven.
Thanks for this, alongside Dune, the Eternal champion books, and Elric in particular, shaped my tastes and my imagination as a teenager. I think I recall reading that Elric was a deliberate inversion of Conan - rather than a muscle-bound barbarian who hacks through his foes to claim a throne, Elric is a sophisticated scion of an ancient house, a weakling who throws his throne away and kills all those who love him. Wonderful, imaginative stuff.
Oh yeah, totally an inversion of Conan. It was definitely a work of reactionary S&S, and very much a part of the New Wave which was rejecting the past. And I love Dune as well.
Why does he kill the ones who love him?
@@ollep0lle He doesn't mean to, but his Demon-possessed sword - stormbringer - is thirsty for souls and Elric is not always in full control. In fact the last line in the storyline is Stormbringer's - "Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!"
That's kind of the whole point of the story! It is Elric's doom.
@@johnwood6750 Stormbringer still holds as one of the best endings I've ever read for a fantasy series
I always thought it was kinda cool he couldn't do much without his potions or demon sword. It made for good writing and story telling. Extremely tragic character 🤘💜😑
Oh yeah. Makes him unique.
i think his story is more tragic then Spawn they both follow DarkFantasy jonra
Elric got me into fantasy. It’s still easily my favourite. Moorcock has such a great rich n dark imagination.
Thanks mate I had a very enjoyable time listen to your video.
Recently picked up some of Moorcock's works and instantly fell in love with them.
60's youth "Frodo Lives!"
80's youth "Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!"
Feral generation indeed =)
Great video :) those illustrations are fantastic!!! love the portraits he makes
The Elric Saga was recently released as a new two volume set by Saga Press. I found it at my local book store. These books are illustrated but only with a few color plates by various artists.
As a kid I managed to find a copy of The Weird of the White Wolf at the library. I've been a fan of Elric ever since.
I first read these books in the early 80s and have dipped in and out of them many times since, the combination of psychedelia and unrelenting despair speaks to me as much as it did back then. Definitely a formative influence on my own art.
Btw/ as well as the books and comics there’s also an Elric RPG. It’s probably quite difficult to find a print copy these days but I think there are PDF versions floating around the web.
RPG any good?
Thank u for your insight!
Totally fascinated
SO wish that someone could complete a good live series--or, even anime?--of the whole saga!
I hope this will be adapted to a SERIES on HBO pretty damn soon ! ! !
Loved and still love this saga. I am setting my alarm to try to be able to attend some of it even if just for a little bit.
Man ya beat me to it.We were just getting ready to review this book series for our channel.Kudos! Great choice!
What’s so interesting to me about Elric is that he seems driven by fate, but I always had the impression that it was self wrought, that he was crying crocodile tears all the time. It’s not just that he played along, but he clearly does have incredible agency, mostly from his power of charisma. In 1st edition ADnD I’d score it 25 at least. Everyone wants to serve him - magic swords, exceptional warriors, powerful women, elementals, gods. And I’d call it a charisma of self entitlement, like he so believes that he’s the center of the universe that everyone else does as well. And maybe he was right. Well I guess it was actually Stormbringer.
Maybe he’s a useful idiot? Maybe people and things want to serve him because he’s the best vessel for them to get what they want? It’s an interesting thing to think about!
Have both editions of Elric from both publishers.
Hello, loving this series of sword and sorcery. I really want to get into the elric books, but not sure which editions of the books to buy. Have any recommendations?
I would just buy the latest in print versions.
I’m still surprised that content hungry Hollywood hasn’t successfully done something with the IP considering there is a fair amount of built-in fandom for the property
This would make an epic film if they followed the story
I've thought that for so long. Id imagined Luke Goss or Harry Lloyd as Elric, Hiddleston as Yrkoon and Iain Glen as Dyvim Tar
They'd fuck it just like the Wheel of Time series...
I super agree with you regarding Elric's preferred music lol
Hahah! Right on.
Love these books
basic books to read Before reafing the Game Of Thrones. it comes close to the Elric & Hawkmoon Novels
A Song of Ice and Fire ranks among my least favorite fantasy books I've read. :)
I don't think every series of this writer needs to be talked about but as great the Elric books were , for me the series of Corum books was just a tiny bit more gripping.
Great! We all have our favorites. :)
Karl Edward Wagner wrote a short story entitled "The Gothic Touch" in which Elric met and fought alongside Kane (Wagner's most famous sword and sorcery character). It wasn't Wagner's best effort IMHO, but it was an interesting premise. Has anyone else read that story? If so, what is your opinion of that story?
Yep! Will definitely be taking a loot at that.
I liked it a lot. First published in a collection of Elric stories by other hands -- Tad Williams, Colin Greenland and many others. Published about 20 years ago by White Wolf. Sorry -- can't remember title -- Tales of the White Wolf or wimilar.
@@jerrycornelius2261 Yes, I read that story in the anthology book "Tales of the the White Wolf". I really liked the idea of Kane and Elric (along with Moonglum) together in a story, but the prose seemed uncharacteristically bland and awkward to me. I'm a huge fan of Karl Edward Wagner's writings, and this one didn't seem to be remotely similar to his previous writing style. Kane was portrayed very oddly compared to how he was written in the previous Kane stories. I had the impression that it perhaps was a rough-draft that had not undergone final edits and polishing of the language. It was written in 1994, the same year his untimely demise to severe alcohol abuse, so I have to suspect that was a major contributing factor for the underwhelming effort. Again, just my own subjective take on the story.
@@davidk6269 The last time I saw Karl was at a Dragoncon about a year before he died. Have to admit he was pretty incoherent. Great shame.
@@jerrycornelius2261 I wish that I could have met Karl Edward Wagner so that I could have told him how much I enjoyed his writing! I really wish that more people could discover his writing, as he was truly talented. RIP, Mr. Wagner.
"A huge influence on Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone at Games Workshop." A bit of an understatement, they got the eightpointed star of chaos from Moorcock.
The third part of book 3 Elric basically goes through the Silver Tower.
my Theary is what If Tod McFarland did Read the Novels Of Elric. Tod McFarland imagination is wow even though Tod Was drawing For Marvel he must of read some Michael Moorcock novels to get Indpiration but Mcfarland Was Only doing Dark fantasy in Comic Form
Hi Daniel,
Can you recommend any S &S graphic novels? Apologies if you have already covered this. Great video.
Thanks. Have you read Headlopper?
@@TheDungeonDive Nope. I will check it out. Thanks. Keep up the good work.
It has good art. The story is ok. I don’t read a ton of comics.
@@TheDungeonDive HEAD LOPPER is unapologetically itself. I think it's fun. It probably wouldn't translate well to other media.
Tolkien's LOTR and HOBBIT never caught my fancy. Which is probably odd--I knew guys in college who weren't really readers or fans of reading, but they would re-read the LOTR trilogy every year. But I couldn't ever get into any of that, although my sons really enjoyed it all.
So it would make sense I'd really like the anti-LOTR, Elric, right?
I like Elric in smaller doses: the individual stories I find really enjoyable. Tackling them in a book-length work, however, compiled into a single novel, I find a tougher read. I admit, it baffles me, too, because I like shorter novels--not the bloated form in which most contemporary fantasy novels manifest their narratives--and the Elric novels certainly fit the smaller form. But as I mentioned in another post's Comments section, S&S works better for me in a story or novella form.
Still, those individual novellas are usually excellent.
I love the Hobbit, don't really care for LOTR. I think the Elric "novels" are so damn short and speedy, that they do work, but they're also pretty disjointed if read like a novel. They really should have just been billed as collections of novellas.
I personally couldn't stand Tolkiens writing style.
Tried getting thru Martin's GOT'S, same thing.
Don't like either
The reason Elric is a pawn in the saga is that the story is really about Stormbringer.
Could be. Or could be just poor characterization and plotting. It’s still good, but also still an issue for me.
@@TheDungeonDive just look at the ending.
That's totally true, and I'm not disagreeing, but it can also make for an uninteresting characterization of Elric. If it is Stormbringer's story (I'd say it's a story about both), then that character is also really poorly portrayed throughout.
Yall should watch Razorfist's Elric videos too.
my first At 15 was Princess Of Mars. great reading & Conan. I’ve always had the KJV Bible to read i love fantasy more
Game Of Thrones. The writer Read all of Morecock Novels
Nice montage!
Oh yeah. More people should about this. Oh have you read the French comic adaptations?
I’ve only read the old Epic comics.
@@TheDungeonDive You need to check them out. English translations of this are from Titan comics. Volume 4 will be out either this month or March. They are so good that Michael Moorcock himself, in a 2014 interview, said that if he started writing Elric today, he would incorporate many of the ideas that Julien Blondel (the writer) has put into it. If the man himself is impressed, you should check them out.
@@blackraptor311 I’ll have to see if they’re available on Comixology Unlimited. That’s the only way I read comics these days.
@@TheDungeonDive Looe like they are.
Vanish ing Tower was inspired by Stephen king, dark towers even Stephen king read these books
Just commenting on the cover art. Can't believe that crap on the left was ever approved.
Would like to see the sales difference of them.
They’re both beautiful. Whalen’s art is great, as is Gould’s. Robert Gould’s style adds a layer of elegance to the depiction. Just different than Whalen’s and Cawthorn’s.
@@TheDungeonDive Umm, not imo. Elegance? Simplistic perhaps. 2 dimensional and it utterly fails in capturing any elements of Elric, the tone, the horror and evil, the ancient wisdom. Goulds covers are completely outside of the world put down on the pages that they cover.
I mentioned this because I remember when they came out. I had a visceral negative reaction to them. Still do.
Wonder what a vote on this would say.
But thx for responding, always an interesting topic
Luckily for you, there are options!
Ngl, it can be easy to assume sword & sorcery stories = dark/low fantasy stories. Kinda puts me off ish since it reminds me of the overly lethal spiel from the OSRs.
I still have a bunch of Brandon Sanderson books as well as an incomplete collection of the Wheel of Time series to read.
I would never make such assumptions. IMO, OSR stuff is a terrible representation of S&S fiction. A topic I’ll be discussing later this year, and will most surely receive a ton of hate for.
This kind of stuff is the opposite of Sanderson and Jordan. Weird, bizarre, otherworldly, alien, and dreamlike. Also, shorter!
Are there any light hearted S&S stories would you recommend for those still in the high fantasy stories?
Fafhrd and Grey Mouser. Divlish the Damned.
@@rpgchronicler the high crusade
Man Ive read SoTSoF and I remember none of what you said.
I'm like that with most books I read. I can't remember a thing as soon as I stop reading.
💜🤘😈