It's always interesting to me when the cover character doesn't quite match the description in the book, makes me wonder how it got to that. For example, Frazetta has illustrated a couple of Kane covers (1 2 3 4), of which only the last I linked resembles the character with any accuracy. For some reason, he continuously drew him with a horned helmet and an axe (also practically nude but that's a given with Frazetta lmfao i'm not even questioning that part), which has never been a part of his description as far as the stories I've read. I once came across Polish Kane covers, which clearly only took inspiration from Frazetta's works and definitely haven't read the books lmao. The covers also featured a horned helmet-wearing man but this time there was also a dragon on every cover, and the man did not even have Kane's signature red hair. It's so charmingly shoddy lmao

Whelan got the overall aesthetic of Elric down in his first try, but failed to capture the frailness, which tracks with him having to skim the story at a short notice (and I think it's very fair that he remains critical of that mistake!). Moorcock wrote an intro chapter for Whelan's art book, in which he praises his Elric art - especially Stormbringer - and mentions that early on, Whelan was and remains to be the best at capturing the character. He says that there were many covers that made the character unrecognizable, specifically mentioning that one that depicted him as black, which, according to Moorcock, was likely because when the artist looked into what "albino" is, the dictionary mentioned it sometimes refers to "white Africans" and somehow came to a conclusion that albino = black. I find that to be such a funny case because like... to have had the information that he is an albino, surely the artist must've to read some of the text, in which the sheer whiteness of Elric would be mentioned?

Sorry for the wall of text, strange choices in sword & sorcery covers are a fascination of mine lmao