Elric: Stormbringer

Elric: Stormbringer by P. Craig Russell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When Elric's wife is kidnapped and the forces of Chaos threaten to overwhelm the world, he must once again take up his soul-sucking blade, Stormbringer!

I reread my two Elric omnibuses a couple weeks ago and finally caved in and picked this up. I'd been avoiding it for years because I didn't want it to influence how I pictured the characters in the novels. Once I got over that, this was something else.

This adaptation of Michael Moorcock's Stormbringer is hailed as P. Craig Russell's masterpiece and I'm inclined to agree. Sure, Stormbringer doesn't look like Moorcock described it and Moonglum is too handsome but in the grand scheme of things, those details ultimately don't matter all that much.

P. Craig Russell is a maestro with his linework, knowing when to go nuts with the hatching and when to leave things much more open. His style is cartoony at times, grotesque and magnificent. His monsters are suitably squamous, maidens fair, and his sad albino Elric looks exactly as I pictured him.

Snippets of Moorcock's texts are included to drive the narration and the dialog is also Moorcock's but PCR sets the pace and lets the images set the mood. He keeps things surprisingly open for such a dour, moody tale. It would have been tempting to use heavy blacks but Russell went the other way with it. It's a gorgeous book for being about the end of the Earth.

Nothing I can say really conveys how much I enjoyed this. I was reluctant and now I'm a believer. I'll be grabbing the rest of the Moorcock library.

Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou. Five out of five stars.

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