In a sense, “One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock” is the quintessential Neil Gaiman short story, combining the two major themes of his body of work: recollections of childhood (Violent Cases, Mr. Punch) and the power of stories (Sandman, Signal to Noise). Originally appearing as prose fiction in the 1994 anthology of Elric stories Tales of the White Wolf, Gaiman’s piece is the tale of an awkward English public school boy named Richard Grey whose relationship to books, especially Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, helps him to endure the traumas of adolescence.
As a prelude to Topps Comics’ forthcoming Elric miniseries, occasional Gaiman-collaborator P. Craig Russell has adapted the story to the comics medium. While the cynic in me suspects Topps would leap at any excuse to plaster Gaiman’s name on a cover and sell more copies (as have Negative Burn, Wiindows, and various Tekno comics), this is one case where Gaiman’s fans will not feel ripped off.
Russell’s adaptation is painstakingly faithful to the source material, preserving most of the original text. A few pages actually seem a bit too text-heavy, but this is a minor flaw in a moving and insightful work. Russell’s characteristically superb drawing and storytelling skills eloquently contrast the drudgery of young Richard’s reality with the flights of fancy that form the basis of his maturing and questioning intellectual life. This is far and away the best Gaiman comic that Gaiman never actually worked on.
Size - 8.4 MB.
Enjoy :)
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