An obvious example would be the Black Sword Stormbringer from Michael Moorcock's Elric stories. Stormbringer is a being of a race of demons that take the forms of large black blades with red runes etched across their surfaces. It hungrily drinks the souls of those it cuts, and despite its need for a wielder it has a mind all its own.
Here is Robert Gould's interpretation of the sword (from his cover art for Stormbringer, the last novel in the core Elric series by Moorcock):
That is some prodigious and beautiful shit, Robert Gould. This was illustrated in 1977 - do you think it influenced the tendency towards impossibly large weapons, most notably in anime and manga, that started (by my estimate) in the 90's and continues on today?
Thanks for visiting my blog. With it I intend to write about things I love; the music I listen to, the films I watch, the books I read, the games I play; but most of all, its intention is to celebrate the strange and wonderful tools of speculative fiction.
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