Michael Moorcock is my absolute favorite Fantasist. With the creation of the Multiverse it allowed him to create pastiche editions of commonly known tropes and update them, modernize their tellings and address small issues he had with stories.
He's tackled such things as The Grail Quest (The War Hound and the World's Pain, which is probably my most beloved fantasy work), Victorian Romances (The Dancers at the End of Time series), John Carter of Mars (Sojan series), Epic Fantasy both High and Low fantasy of various pagan mythologies or original worlds (Elric, Corum, Hawkwind), and he's even revisited his older works to retell them in newer, altered settings (Jerry Cornelius is the most famous of this, his first story essentially being a retelling of the first Elric story).
My introduction to Moorcock came in the early to mid90s through the White Wolf Publishing Omnibus editions. Around 11 volumes aimed to collect his work into print in new omnibus editions. They were large trade with new artwork, short introductions by the author to provide a bit of context, if you were lucky there was some art from previous editions included as well. If you were unlucky you got a page and a half intro and then you were on your own.
The issue with this is that it's all about context. Context, Context, Context. Without it, you have some stories which seem somewhat familiar but you don't know if it's ripping off the original, is merely coincidence or even if Moorcock did it originally and your own experiences are filtered through others writing in reaction to Moorcock.
The new editions of Elric started with yesterday's release of Elric The Stealer of Souls (Chronicles of Sthe Last Emperor of Melnibone) which can be had for $10 through Amazon. Beware the reviews. They're written about any one of several different previous editions by previous companies with varying degree of quality of presentation.
Within this edition you'll get new artwork by John Picacio (known for doing a lot of the artwork for Monkey Brain press and other smaller publishing housing) which is good and story specific (unlike the horrible artwork included in other editions like the aforementioned White Wolf editions) with an excellent cover (if the sword is off. It looks like the eye of sauron is embedded in the hilt).
You get a new seven page forward by Alan Moore (cheekily entitled The Return of the Thin White Duke) which traces a bit of history and personal experience with Moorcock's writings.
You get a fourteen page introduction by Moorcock tracing history and his influences and to whom he was paying homage. You also get a bit of history of the writing of Elric and he speaks of his time editing New Worlds where he namedrops several of the authors he published and with whome he interacted such as Ballard, Amis, Distch, Pynchon to give a bit of context as to the crowds he was running with and what he was aiming for with his works.
You get the the essay "Putting a Name On It" where in he gives birth to the term Epic Fantasy and sets genre boundaries while discussing who came before him and why they are or are not Epic Fantasy.
You get the first two volumes of the Elric saga, The Stealer of Souls and Stormbringer. The Stealer of Souls exists without pretense of an overall story arc. It seeks to be episodic like the early Conan novels though in the mid90s, he updated the stories to provide a bit more flavor to tie them together so that if you read it now you have a sense of the journey of Elric that originally only became evident with Stormbringer. I can't speak to which is better, the unadulterated or the these because I haven't read the original texts. My introduction was through the "updated" versions and so my preference would probably be tainted by which edition I had read first.
Melnibone' is a dark place. It exists before history of after history. It doesn't matter. It's savage, dark, with Gods who take no interest in the affairs of man, either benign nor malignant. The world was ruled for a thousand years by Elric's people, yet they grew weary of it and retreated to their island paradise, outside of man. The new kingdoms rose up and warred and fell and yet Melnibone' endured, decadent, removed from its humanity, hated by the new kingdoms.
There are two factions of gods at war within the world. Law and Chaos. Neither seeking to win, for if Chaos reigns then entropy will eventually shatter the whole of existence and the lords of Chaos would have no one and nowhere to rule, and they themselves would face certain extinction. If law were to succeed then all would be stasis and even the gods of law would be unable to move for the sheer rigidity of their existence.
Elric, through tradition set by his forefather's sacrifices, sides with Chaos, though seeks to know if there is something else outside of the two sides. If Law and Chaos are themselves merely pawns in a greater existence. He had been usurped twice to the throne by his own brother, Yyrkoon who wields Mournblade, the runed black sword which is companion to Stormbringer. His sister, Cymoril, cast into a deep slumber of the soul by her Yyrkoon as protection from Elric's revenge.
It is in the beginning of The Stealer of Souls that Elric raises the largest fleet ever assembled to attack the island paradise of Imrryr, the sleeping city, once capital of Melnibone'...
