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Curated by: Obscurities in Miniature (283 videos)
I've always been fond of 70's fantasy art. Maybe because it wasn't as rigid or set in the tropes that we all take for granted today. Prior to reading this I wasn't super familiar with Cawthorn. Obviously I've read Moorcock (even though I couldn't remember Jerry Cornelius while filming this) and am familiar with his Eternal Champion concept. Perhaps that was more due to growing up in the US and being less exposed to the UK comic scene until the Internet arrived? Right away the cover got my attention. The bug plane gives off a Roger Dean vibe or something out of vintage Heavy Metal. Plus older graphic novels are always fun to read as they seemed to function a bit differently than comics did, especially at the time this was published (which I got wrong in the video- Hogarth did his Tarzan book in 72 while this was around 78 I believe). You can tell the interiors really had a lot of love lavished upon them. I really enjoyed the multitude of double page spreads. While the scenes of exposition seem a bit stiff (especially early on) you can see that Cawthorn really was enjoying drawing the big battle scenes. As the story goes and delves deeper into Europe you see even wilder and weirder details present in the art. I found the early parts of the story a bit dull to be honest. Things got better in the second portion of the volume. I feel a lot of that was due to how much prose was crammed in at the beginning. The pacing feels much more natural as the story continues. Some of the text is very stiff in its writing as well. I don't know how much of that I can blame on either Cawthorn or Moorcock, as I'm not sure how much is directly pulled from the source novels. Despite my tepid feelings in the beginning, I am curious how it all gets tied together (and without just peeking at Wikipedia). Plus the artwork is quiet imaginative and was obviously a labor of love. I do look forward to seeing the Elric books released as well! You can check out Titan's page here or hunt these up at your favorite comic shops! https://titan-comics.com/