Hear that sound? That was my mind boggling!I've read other Michael Moorcock tales involving his "multiverse", I've read Grant Morrison and I've read William Burroughs and it's fair to say that not only did I enjoy their reality-warping tales but, generally, I had at least a vague idea of what was going on.
Michael Moorcock's Multiverse - a trade paperback collection of a 12-issue series published by a DC imprint in 1997 - tells three separate, but linked stories, that become increasingly more entangled with each other as the overall story progresses.
All involve characters, connected to Moorcock's grand creation The Eternal Champion (of which Elric is just one facet), on the hunt for an elusive person known as 'The Silverskin'.
The first story thread, Moonbeams And Roses (illustrated by Walt Simonson), is the most metaphysical, being densely populated with bizarre, hyper-intelligent sounding concepts - dealing as it does with the very nature and structure of the Multiverse and the factions of Law and Chaos that fight over it.
The second thread, The Metatemporal Detective (illustrated by by Mark Reeve), introduces us to time-travelling detective Sir Seaton Begg whose investigations take him from pre-war Nazi Germany (and a sub-plot involving Adolf Hitler) through a very Dickensian London underworld and finally to the lair of The Silverskin.
The final thread, Duke Elric (illustrated by John Ridgeway), is the most straight-forward. It centres around 'our' Elric, now living in Europe of the year 1000, reclaiming his soul-sucking sword Stormbringer and embarking on a cross-continent quest to find the enigmatic Silverskin.
He meets some familiar faces along the way and ultimately he is the manifestation of The Eternal Champion that faces off against The Silverskin, while a thousand years "in the future" the fate of the Multiverse is being decided in a game of chance.
Or something like that...
This is not your typical comic book collection. Michael Moorcock's Multiverse is not an easy read, but perseverance pays off. The plot is one of those that was either made up as the author went along and means nothing or was intricately planned out so that EVERYTHING means something. I suspect the latter with this story, although most of it went way over my head.
A prior knowledge of Moorcock's many characters is not essential, but would help in grasping the numerous subtleties and cameos of the multi-dimensional action (I think I recognised a fair number of characters, but certainly not all).
If nothing else Michael Moorcock's Multiverse fired a few neurons in my brain and got to me to thinking that rather than wasting too many hours every day on the Internet I really should get back to my own creative writing.
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I've never got into Moorcock (ahem) but this sounds potentially interesting. I think.
Let us know what you think of Buffy vol 2, won't you? I've read vol 1 and thought it was quite good, if a little decompressed, but that had Whedon as the writer.
Hi Nimbus, I can tell you now what I make of Season Eight, Volume 2. I don't rate it that highly at all. It was the stories in this volume that persuaded me to drop the title from my regular pull list in the first place.(http://www.heropress.net/2008/01/bottom-of-pile-buffy-season-eight-10.html).
I'm only reading Volume 2 now - as part of my current Buffy kick - to move on to the next two volumes, which continue to garner critical praise, to refresh my memory and make sure I'm not missing any sub-plots/clues etc
As I said in my original write-up, Brian K Vaughan's depiction of British culture borders on the insulting and caters to all the cliches and stereotypes that Buffy was supposed to shatter.
I still accept it as canon, because the whole venture is being supervised by Joss Whedon, but that doesn't mean to say I like every story (**koff, koff** Hell's Bells **koff, koff**)
I'm hoping that if I can finish the four volumes currently available (before volume five comes out) I'll do a "round-up" review of Season Eight to date.
I am HUGE Moorcock fan and I am always "this close" to rereading all my Elric books.
Thanks for this book recommendation, I am off to the book store to spend some birthday money! ;)
Do let us know what you make of it. I'm a big Moorcock fan - the first thing of his I read at school was The Ice Schooner and I thought it was incredible.
I actually came to Elric comparatively late, but click on the "Elric" tag if you want to read my earlier "encounters" with the mighty albino.
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