Back when I was about thirteen or so, my family lived in San Antonio and every now and then, Dad and I would take a Saturday drive up to Austin. There was a bookstore we used to go to; I don’t remember the name, but it had all kinds of shiny crystals and New Age stuff, and in its small selection of fiction and art books, I stumbled across a thing called Law & Chaos, by Wendy Pini. This book collected the artwork that Pini had created while attempting to adapt Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer as an animated film.
At the time, I’d never heard of Michael Moorcock, but I was seriously sucked in by Pini’s artwork—being a thirteen-year-old girl, my main reaction was “oooh, PRETTY”, but I was also intrigued by the darker elements of the whole thing, the unwholesomeness of Elric and his world. After quietly obsessing over the book after a few trips to Austin, I finally begged my father to buy it for me. It took some persuading and maybe one or two more trips, but he relented, and I went from there to the original Elric novels, and thence to seriously sprain my teenaged brain on Jerry Cornelius, Gloriana, and more.
Law & Chaos has been out of print for a long time (and you better believe I prize my slightly beaten-around-the-edges copy enormously), but now you can read it at the link above. It’s well worth your time.
