Hiatus

I'll be going on a prolonged pause for the next few days as I hole up in the family mud-hut on the shores of County Donegal, to enjoy Saint Patrick's Day and the finale of the Six Nation's Cup from a spot in front of the fire of The Singing Pub, Atlantic Drive.

Just enough time to tell you the responses from long-time friends of the blog Michael Moorcock and Walter Simonson's to my entry heralding the long-overdue (in the fullest meaning of the phrase) conclusion to ELRIC: THE MAKING OF A SORCEROR.

Sez Mike, really getting into the swing of hyping a comic in the great Stan Lee tradition: "I really do think they get better as they go, and Elric has to start making serious choices which will determine Melnibone's fate for centuries to come, and pretty much his own for the rest of his life!" and "Yes, Walter's inking the last issue as we speak. Some great pages, I must say. Definitely some of his best work. A shame I can't tell regulars to my web site which was very aggressively hacked last Saturday! I'll do what I can to tell them, though. Hope this means the superb French edition will come out while I'm in France this summer. Soleil did a great printing job"

Yup: some evil toolbag has pretty much hacked Mike's site here to death. Hacked like Stormbringer through that rat bastard Jagreen Lern! (um, sorry - got a bit carried away there). Which means I can't link to the preview pages that Walter was hosting there. Sez the man known still know as Walt, at least if (like me) you remember Marvel - The Shooter Years through rosey nostalgic tints: "And we're off and running! There are about four pages in color (minus the words because they're stripped out of the digital files for coloring) over at Multiverse.org. If you haven't seen them, I think they're on the opening page. The four stories of the entire series are structured around the four Greek elements, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire--and that's the order of them in the books. So the third issue is Air; the fourth is Fire. And I got to draw some really cool flying ships in the air in the third issue. "

I think any long-term fan of Simonson's work knows just how kick-ass the art on this project has been. His control of line is, well, the work of a master. I'm tempted to go ahead and buy the BDs of this myself, just to have them at that great big European album size. And yes, you just know any flying ships by Walt will be really, really, cool. So, yeah, if you loved THOR, if you loved ORION, hell, if you loved BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, tell your local comic book guy "make mine ELRIC!" Excelsior!