Although Rodney Matthews has designed and illustrated many paperback covers for fantasy and science-fiction stories including those by A. Merritt, Andre Norton, Clark Ashton Smith and Stephen Lawhead, he is most closely associated with Michael Moorcock who he first worked with in 1976.

After seeing some of Matthews' illustrations, Moorcock asked his publishers to commission Matthews for cover art commencing with 'The End of All Songs' from the 'Dancers at the End of Time' trilogy. Many more followed for publishers Granada/Mayflower and W. H. Allen, and in 1976 Matthews also commenced illustrations depicting Michael Moorcock fantasy scenes and characters for a series of twelve posters published by Big O, London, Germany, and USA. Some of these images were licensed for Michael's book covers internationally, most notably for Germany, Italy, Spain, and Holland.

In 1980 Archival Press, USA commissioned a colour frontispiece and fifteen or so black & white drawings for their version of Moorcock's 'Stormbringer', featuring of course the famous albino warrior Elric. Sadly, it is not known if the book was ever published as Archival experienced cashflow difficulties prior to publication.

The finest hour of Matthews/Moorcock collaboration came with the book 'Elric at the End of Time', published after some delay by Paper Tiger books in 1987. In hardback and paperback it contained 120 pages with illustrations in colour and black & white. More details can be found in the Illustrated Books section.