This news came a year or so after I had made the acquaintance of Peter Ledeboer and his international poster company Big O. Around that time in the mid-seventies, it was unusual for me to receive a prompt or positive feedback from my outreaches to publishers, yet in this instance, what did I get, a letter, handwritten, by MICHAEL MOORCOCK – I was thunderstruck!Īs can be seen from this very letter, Michael was enthusiastic and complimentary from the outset, being also as good as his word in his insistence that his publishers would use my artwork on his works: Firstly, I sent a colour photograph – addressed to Michael Moorcock – to one of his publishers (I think it was Granada/ Mayflower) of my original image ‘In Search of Forever’. What interested me though, as an illustrator, was the sheer number of great visual ideas per chapter that featured in Moorcock’s stories, and with that in mind, I decided to approach the man himself, offering concepts for book cover art. He may be charged with protecting the Balance, but we are never quite sure where the loyalties of this forlorn anti-hero lie - did I mention he is the wielder of the soul-drinking sword Stormbringer?! Once such incarnation of the Champion is Elric, the albino warrior, 428th Emperor of Melniboné. The series undercurrent centres upon the struggle between two forces - Law and Chaos (the good and evil of Moorcock’s multiverse). Taken as separate novels, there is little in Moorcock’s work that remind me of Tolkien’s legendarium of mythopoeic writings, but place them all together and you have a compelling and original premise - an Eternal Champion with numerous identities, existing across multiple universes, with multiple dimensions and alternative worlds, chosen to fight for the Cosmic Balance.
In fact, I read every Michael Moorcock story I could lay hands upon. In next to no time I was back at Roger’s door craving more, and then again more, until finally he suggested that I go buy my own copies, which is exactly what I did. There were quests, runeswords and dragons galore! - “Better start here”, my friend suggested, handing me a couple of paperbacks with strange psychedelic cover artworks, and tales of this Elric bloke. There followed much verbage about an eternal champion series, a bloke named Elric, another called Corum and so on. He took me into his “library” where several bookshelves were groaning under the weight of his Moorcock collection of paperbacks! - “Help yourself” he beamed, “but let me have them back without damage.” - “But where do I start?” I have to take you back to 1973, when after reading most of what JRR Tolkien had to offer, I asked a friend (who was similarly nuts about fantasy and sci-fi literature): - “Where do I go from here?” - “Michael Moorcock” he replied enthusiastically. MEETING MICHAEL MOORCOCK - MASTER OF THE MULTIVERSE
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