PART 1 of 2
In 1971, French artist Philippe Druillet illustrated Elric le Necromancien from text by Michael Moorcock. This was later reprinted as Elric: The Return to Melnibone in English. Somehow, the story was completely unauthorized and lawsuits followed, so the story more or less disappeared after those two printings and is now difficult to find. Additionally, Druillet had the odd habit of depicting Elric with a jewel embedded in his forehead, a trait almost certainly drawn from one of Moorcoc’s other Eternal Champions, Dorian Hawkmoon.
Druillet’s fascination with Elric remained though, and he recycled many of those Elric le Necromancien pages into his epic Yragael which originally appeared in the pages of Metal Hurlant magazine in France and Heavy Metal in the United States.Yragael was also collected with a companion story Urm in the U.S. and published as a book by Dragon’s Dream in 1975.
So, while the connection is a bit of a stretch, I will take any opportunity to share more of Druillet’s art, and I can easily see Yragael as yet another manifestation of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion. Here are several pages from Yragael that I feel most closely connect with Elric and Moorcock.
#Philippe Druillet#Yragael#Elric of Melnibone#Comics#Euro Comics#Art#Illustration#Fantasy
