You've stumbled through its front flaps, contentedly drunk. Before you, bathed in blue shadow, the carnival finally winds down. Striped tents collapse at the careful direction of mustachioed men. Exotic beasts slink around in cages while curtains drape them from sight. As for what happened within the glittering pavilion--your mind foams with arcane impressions.Warm bodies shouted, clapped and spilled wine. You watched several plays, both popular and obscure, and heard readings, your favorites among them being about ghostly princes and lost jungle boys. As the grass cools one of your bare feet (a velvet bootie is missing), you realize dimly that nobody knows where you've wandered off to. What you need is sleep.There's a clean quiet spot, behind the pavilion and under a lemon tree. The day's entertainment takes your sopping mind in its tendrils and squeezes. In a cascade of fantastic detail to be lost by morning, you dream yourself as an artist of impeccable taste and awesome skill. The name Philip Craig Russell, cobbled from multiple sources, seems charmingly appropriate. But dreams and points of view shift like a midday shoreline. From here we'll examine Russell not as a temporary spell, but as the legend he'd likely become.Born on October 30, 1951, in Wellsville, Ohio, Russell has adapted operas by Mozart and Wagner, and collaborated frequently with fantasy high-priest Neil Gaiman. His career began in 1972, and by '74 he was illustrating the Marvel comic Amazing Adventures, which starred the character Killraven. This noble, red-haired savage and "Warrior of the Worlds" fought to liberate a future Earth ruled by H. G. Wells' Martian overlords. During his eleven issue run, Russell channeled the sinewy, dynamic style established by Marvel's powerhouse artists John Buscema (The Avengers) and Neal Adams (X-Men). But he also displayed a knack for creating frightful technology and otherworldly beauty; by the drawing of Doctor Strange Annual #2 (1976), Russell's craft had flourished in these directions tenfold.By the early 80s, the taste of fantasy literature still fresh on his tongue, Russell found a contemporary work ripe for graphic adaptation--Elric of Melnibone. British writer Michael Moorcock, though the father of many sword & sorcery characters, is best known for this albino antihero. Elric first appeared in the novella "The Dreaming City" (Science Fantasy #47, June 1961), which refers to the tragically opulent Imrryr. The city's ruby throne, reluctantly held by Elric when we meet him, matches his coldly gleaming eyes. Numerous short stories and novels continued his adventures, which were printed by DAW throughout the 1970s (featuring gorgeous covers painted by Michael Whelan). The first of these, simply titled Elric of Melnibone (1972), opens the saga:
On the island kingdom of Melnibone [most of] the old rituals are still observed, though the nation's power has waned for five hundred years, and now her way of life is maintained only by her trade with the Young Kingdoms and the fact that the city of Imrryr has become the meeting place of merchants. Are those rituals no longer useful; can the rituals be denied and doom avoided? One who would rule in Emperor Elric's stead prefers to think not.
This "one" is Elric's avaricious cousin, Yyrkoon. He believes Melnibone's fall began when his uncle, Emperor Sadric, refused to slay twelve sets of newlyweds on his own wedding night. The result? A pale, sickly child, whose birth killed the queen and "threatened the very continuity of the monarchy."Indeed, Elric doesn't seem, superficially, a ruler to be feared. He's the white shadow of sword & sorcery lunk Conan in nearly every way: thin, thoughtful, merciful, alive by the grace of magic herbs, and deeply in love with just one woman, his raven-haired cousin Cymoril. Most disastrously, he believes Melnibone should yield the world to the Young Kingdoms, full of piratical humans who would ransack Imrryr, stealing centuries worth of treasure and destroying its army of dragons.To properly surround the tarnished elegance of Moorcock's character, Russell worked with Marvel writer Roy Thomas, whose adoration of the genre already had him scripting Conan the Barbarian. Tightly collaborating on every detail, striving to honor Moorcock's world rather than improve it, the pair worked through the Star*Reach comic studio, based in Kent, Ohio. In 1981, they presented Elric in the then-new graphic novel format, bewitching readers with original material, minus advertisements, in an oversized square-bound book.Strangely, however, the Elric: The Dreaming City graphic novel isn't the same tale told in the first DAW paperback, Elric of Melnibone (as it states on the cover). Russell and Thomas actually adapted the first half of the third Elric book, The Weird of the White Wolf (1977). None of this interferes with enjoying the narrative, but nevertheless seems to fit the character's pedigree of bitter delusion.And what could that insult mean? It must refer to Elric's actions between the first and third books; he begins cautiously, as someone for whom the promise of future tranquility is all. Marrying Cymoril (and keeping her conniving brother Yyrkoon at bay) occupies the whole of his thoughts. Then, after successfully routing a fleet of pirates, Elric finds himself weak from leading the battle himself. He stands with Yyrkoon aboard a golden Melnibonean war barge, desperately in need of the herbs that sustain him. Before turning the ship back, Yyrkoon knocks his cousin into the sea. From here, Elric's journey is invigorated by water and wood elementals, passages into limbo, and the summoning of a dark chaos lord. Lying face down in a room painted with runes:
Elric sent his mind into twisting tunnels of logic, across endless plains of ideas, through mountains of symbolism and endless universes of alternate truths; he sent his mind out further and further and as it went he sent with it the words which issued from his writhing lips--words that few of his contemporaries would understand, though their very sound would chill the blood of any listener. And his body heaved as he forced it to remain in its original position and from time to time a groan would escape him. And through all this a few words came again and again.
One of these words is the name Arioch. This "Duke of Hell" (as Moorcock calls it), once learning that Elric will do anything to rescue Cymoril from her insane brother, manipulates Elric into submitting to Fate. This involves chasing Yyrkoon into a nether realm and stealing two cursed swords from a stifling, membranous chamber. The black swords, Mournblade and Stormbringer, possess the cousins, forcing them to duel with a viciousness alien to their mortal frames.(In the mid 80s, Russell did adapt this chapter of Elric's life. Published by the fledgling Pacific Comics, Michael Moorcock's Elric doesn't quite feature the artist's full signature. Collaboration with another artist, Michael T. Gilbert, reins in and dilutes Russell's more rococo tendencies.)Unsurprisingly, Elric wins. He drags Yyrkoon back to Imrryr, and is now convinced by the bloodthirsty blade Stormbringer that he must risk his life as a warrior before settling down to rule (as chronicled in book two, Sailor on the Seas of Fate, 1976). While gone, he allows Yyrkoon to sample stately power as interim Emperor. Should he prove worthy of Melnibone, Elric will step away from his lineage.But Yyrkoon, like all who crave power, is inherently weak. In Elric's absence, he places Cymoril in a sorcerous sleep not unlike living death. It is at this point we join Russell and Thomas in their glorious adaptation; it begins with a meeting among rulers of the Young Kingdoms, as they await a special guest whose strategies will prove invaluable to their conquest of Melnibone.
Russell's exceedingly fine lines portray the characters Yaris, Dharmit, King Naclon, and especially Count Smiorgan, as real people. When Elric appears, he's everything that Moorcock has warned: his cheeks are sunken, his crimson eyes stare from bony hollows, and he's rail thin. A starving white wolf. Russell's sequential paneling (along with Thomas' script) is thorough and compact. The real treat is to encounter the artist's montage pages, which faithfully package back-story in superbly balanced masterpieces. Russell's design sense, inspired by the complexly-woven filigree of 19th Century Art Nouveau, both massages and dazzles the eye.The original graphic novel format takes full advantage of Russell's spectacular penchant for drawing water, clouds, and magic (flying from Elric's hands and sword). While the albino stands on a beach, conjuring wind enough to secretly speed his vessel to Imrryr, we see a man that is haunted yet determined. And it's here that Russell's coloring goes from subdued to riotously pastel.A perfect expression of love from one creator to another, for as Elric approaches his island capital bent on revenge, Moorcock offers natural splendor in counterpoint to the coming violence:
Light, low-hanging cloud wisps streamed slowly across the sun-painted sky, like fine cobwebs caught by a sudden breeze. All the world seemed blue and gold and green and white, and Elric, pulling his boat up on the beach, breathed the clean, sharp air of winter and savoured the scent of decaying leaves and rotting undergrowth. Somewhere a bitch-fox barked her pleasure to her mate and Elric regretted the fact that his depleted race no longer appreciated natural beauty, preferring to stay close to their city and spend many of their days in drugged slumber. It was not the city that dreamed, bit its overcivilized inhabitants.
Russell's translation of this bucolic passage, the patient craftsmanship evident in every ripple and falling leaf, is more immediately enthralling than a similar scene, filmed for HBO's Game of Thrones and shellacked in cold CGI, could be.Reaching Cymoril's chamber, Elric finds a tableau of hushed beauty worthy of Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha. But the demented, impish Yyrkoon isn't long in disrupting his cousin's vigil. He orders soldiers to rid his palace of the false Emperor; Stormbringer prevents that, not only dispatching the eagerest among them, but drinking their souls as well. Still, Elric panics and calls for help: "Blood and souls for my Lord Arioch! Aid me, evil one!" Described by Moorcock as a blackness that leaks from the darkest corner of a room, Arioch becomes even more menacing when summoned to feast. Russell gives us a grotesque, amorphous shadow-thing, which for innards has a chemistry-gone-bad profusion of jaws and hooked limbs. It absorbs struggling men, leaving comatose dolls in its wake.
Naturally, Yyrkoon escapes. Elric promises his trustworthy friend Tanglebones to return in five days, and asks that Cymoril be placed in the Tower of D'a'rputna for her safety. The adaptation's next chapter, featuring Elric and the Young Kingdoms' siege of Imrryr, is necessarily denser but less visually striking. Russell resorts to numerous cramped panels of men being slain by arrows and catapults, then falling from ships and towers into the sea. The art eventually breathes deeper when Elric himself leaps into the fray, Stormbringer crackling with sulfurous energy.His showdown with Yyrkoon ends up taking place in the Tower of B'aal'nezbett, a maleficent place where "an eerie fire, chilling and mind-shattering, licks around Elric as he struggles up the steps toward the central chamber." Meeting Yyrkoon, he initially sees a clockwork demon; their eventual, extensive duel is made the more disturbing by the fact that Elric almost cuts his cousin in half, but Mournblade keeps his corpse fighting. Close by, Cymoril wakes. She begs that they stop, treading dangerously near. "If you really want my sister that much," taunts Yyrkoon, throwing her on Stormbringer, "take her!"
You don't like this. You startle awake, under the lemon tree, to an owl's cry. Your mind still throbs with visions of a burning city, lined with run-through bodies and assaulted by the winged reptiles of ancient lore. The moon's height reveals the hour to be between four and five. Pulse slowing, you roll over in the dew-dropped grass to face the woods. This artist you've created is wickedly clever, though liable to kill you by morning. Sleeping in a new position, breathing easier, helps a different story churn within. Details swirl, anchored to fantasies done little justice in daylight--Revisiting Russell finds him in the mid-80s, illustrating the Eclipse Comics series
Night Music. Issue three (1985) features an adaptation of "The King's Ankus," a story from Rudyard Kipling's
The Jungle Book. Starring Mowgli, the boy who's turned his back on civilization, and Kaa, an enormous rock python, this is a tale that explores exactly what separates man from the rest of the animal kingdom.
It begins with Kaa having just shed his skin, luxuriating in the fresh night air. Mowgli, lounging in his friend's coiled body, compliments him by saying, "[The skin] is beautiful to see, like the mottling in the mouth of a lily." Deciding to bath, they venture toward the river, wrestling with winsome abandon.From the first few pages of this ravishing production, Russell appears to have gained finer control of his pen, and an even deeper foothold in the sublime (which is incredible given the more down-to-earth subject matter). Up close, Mowgli peers out of the panels with the fascination of a living youth. He inhabits a world where balanced lines and shadows waste nothing; gigantic tree trunks, pointed fronds, and glistening water inform the characters' graceful movements in every scene. Most delectable is the cool, starlit palette, which speckles here and there, taking on the texture of watercolors.
As he and Thomas did with Moorcock, Russell selects Kipling's best dialogue and prose to encompass the narrative. When Mowgli and Kaa discuss how much better their wild life compares with life in a human city, the snake says, "the Jungle gives thee all that thou hast ever desired." But Mowgli replies:
I have wished the sun to shine in the middle of the Rains, and the Rains to cover the sun in the deep of summer; and also I have never gone empty but I wished that I had killed a goat; and also I have never killed a goat but I wished it had been a buck.
Mowgli is tantalized by romantic longing for what is not, at that moment, in front of him. Kaa then suggests they explore a cold lair (or man-built chamber), guarded by an old white cobra. Inside is not something to eat, but things that, "a man would give the hot breath under his ribs for the sight of..."As the pair approaches (and then explores) a collection of temples, Russell's colors transition from cool to dusky brown. The pearlescent cobra, with whom Mowgli speaks at length about a king's treasure, is the notable exception. Then, all at once, we get wonderfully intricate panels of the treasure room, full of objects only dimly impressive to Mowgli. Kipling's words have a different effect, filling the imaginative space with a gradual sensuousness:
The floor of the vault was buried some five or six feet deep in coined gold and silver that had burst from the sacks it had been originally stored in, and, in the long years, the metal had packed and settled as sand packs at low tide. On it and in it, and rising through it, as wrecks lift through the sand, were jeweled elephant-howdahs of embossed silver, studded with plates of hammered gold, and adorned with carbuncles and turquoises. There were palanquins and litters for carrying queens, framed and braced with silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and amber curtain-rings; there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced emeralds that quivered on the branches...
When he eventually handles the jeweled and portentously hooked ankus, the boy asks the cobra if he might view it in sunlight; he promises to return with a meal of live frogs. Agreeing to the arrangement, but also pointing out the human skulls littering the chamber, the cobra says, "They came to take the treasure away many years ago. I spoke to them in the dark, and they lay still."Deliciously, the cantankerous old cobra desires that Mowgli "run to and fro a while," and perhaps get lethally bitten. After all, what is one of the deadliest creatures alive when it's gone too long without killing? "The white thing has dealt with men of the man-pack until now," Mowgli says. "He does not know me. He has asked for this hunting." He throws the ankus at the cobra, and Russell effortlessly imbues the quick action with iconography; gold coins fly, and the snake's hissing mouth is a pink diamond. Then, using the ankus to hold back the fangs, the boy finds that, "The poison is old and dried up, like a rotted tree stump."Or maybe the poison has just migrated? Mowgli visits his panther friend, Bagheera, to show off the ankus. He learns its brutal history, the blood it's drawn while disciplining many elephants. "If I had known this," the boy says, tossing the rod aside, "I would not have taken it."
Later, Bagheera shows Mowgli that the ankus has been fought and killed over by some tribesman. Russell displays the jungle's remarkable depths in a page made of contiguous horizontal panels; boy and panther converse on their way to a clearing, and their word balloons pop from between densely layered trees. As the tale ends (and dawn arrives), the coloring grows incrementally warmer; the pair find a pile of poisoned bodies, tranquil in the lavender light. About man's supposed sophistication, Mowgli says:
They are cubs none the less; and a cub will drown himself to bite the moon's light on the water. The fault was mine... I will never again bring into the Jungle strange things--not though they be as beautiful as flowers. [The ankus] goes back to the father of the Cobras.
Russell dares to hush Kipling early, simply showing Mowgli return to the shadowy forest after glimpsing a nearby city. But, over panels in which the ankus is left by a stream tainted with blood, we get the beginning of "The Song of the Little Hunter," which ends the second Jungle Book:
Ere Mor the peacock flutters, ere the Monkey people cry,Ere Chil the kite swoops down a furlong sheer,Through the jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh--He is fear, O little hunter, he is fear!Very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade,And the whisper spreads and widens far and near:And the sweat is on thy brow,For he passes even now--He is fear, O little brother, he is fear.
This time you wake gently, to the nervous chatter of starlings. The sun tells you it's between nine and ten in the morning (your favorite time of day). Shockingly, you find your entire court standing in a semi-circle under the lemon tree."Many of us only just awoke ourselves," says the jester. "And after last night's festivities, we thought it best not to move you--or wake you--My Lord."Oddly clear-headed, you sit up and smile. "Aye. Perfect choices, both of them."____Justin Hickey is a freelance writer living in Boston and an Editor at Open Letters Monthly.
