Where in ElfQuest lost me.
March 20th, 2007
While I was in California, I raided my father’s storage facility and shipped 12 boxes back to myself of my childhood. Most of this was comics, as I’d long since shed the clothes and toys. Except the GI Joes. Anyway. They sat in the living room for a week, while I was debilitated by the Flu of Death, and now seasonal allergies. Finally, Sunday, I got to the boxes and ripped through them while the Mrs. was out shopping for groceries. I trimmed 12 boxes down to three ‘Sell Us’ boxes, three ‘Read us and think about it’ boxes and two ‘Put these on the shelves- Oh. We need more shelves’ boxes. Yeah, like I needed more books.
The first comics I re-read were the ElfQuest, and while the ‘Original Quest’ held up to my memory, the later stuff had me rolling my eyes and gagging on the self-masturbatory workings of the mid 90s.
Sorry, was that too much?
Okay, let me sort it this way. I adored ElfQuest. I really did. I have issue one of their Marvel printings (in crap condition - for sale if you want it) and I have the graphic novel collections up through Kings of the Broken Wheel. The initial story was cool. Elves, actually aliens, crash on Abode (aka the World of Two Moons) and get their ass kicked by the native cavemen. War ensues. Thousands of years pass, and the humans do a stupid thing and burn the forest. Everyone runs, lives change, it’s a whole mess.
It was 1985. You didn’t do stuff like this in main-stream comics back then. Well, you did, but rarely. And here was ElfQuest, with the latent hippie omni-sexuality/free-love mentality that was pretty risque, and holy crap, people died. And they stayed dead. And when you start out with 12 or so ‘heroes’, any death is a kick in the balls.
I loved it. I played ElfQuest with my friends. We had the RPG (I still have it, again, for sale if you want it), hell, I even have the little die-cast metal guys! I went as an elf for Haloween, sword and all. It was a my Thundercats sword, but gimme a break. I was a kid. I met Wendy and Richard and was fan-spanked with adoration for geeks who did it and did it well.
Then I went to high school, and there was this weird thing. Around the time I was in school, ElfQuest changed. It stoped being about this Quest, and this journey, and turned into wankery. If you re-read the ‘original’ quest (from ‘Fire and Flight’ up through the end of them finding the Palace and starting a new home), it holds up really well. You can re-read it and not feel like your missing anything. The story is all inclusive, there’s no big ‘gaps’ that you fill in with flashbacks. They were consise and they told a story well.
Then we have ‘Return to Blue Mountain.’ The Anime Art nailed Wendy, and the ‘look’ of the elves made me recoil. Naked dancing aside, the story felt a little forced and a lot Plot Wagon. In the original quest, you [b]got[/b] that Cutter was a victim of circumstance and had to adapt with the flow or die. That was his ‘thing’ and you were okay with it. When you found out it was all crafted by Two-Edge in his insane machinations, well, it just got cooler. Half-elf and half-troll? Who or what would do that? And that it was the evil Winowill? Again, made sense. That all this evil was the result of a fractured mind.
In this ‘new’ quest, you just have Winowill trying to continue on with her machinations, but you never get a good feel for what it is. She wants Windkin, she wants to make him a pure-blood, and … things get screwed up. You get a hint of ongoing peace to come with the humans, but that’s not what happens. Instead you get the subplot of Strongbow. Now that, again, could have been cool. For the first time ever, an elf has killed an elf, and Strongbow is fucked up.
But that’s not what we had. The Strongbow story is trumped by Rayek (not my favorite character) and Winowill. Who has now become the de facto Elfus Ex Machina. Rayek’s problem was he was too simply constructed. He was a one-note Johnny and he never had depth. His goal was to be ‘first’. Well … okay. Go do that. Be awesome. Be the bomb. Can we ignore you? But no, he has to screw everything up, kidnap Cutter’s family, and then we go into the psychotic world of ‘Fast Forward.’
I hate the fast forward.
I hated the time it put the elves in. They no longer meshed with the world. It was like poor Timmain when she ‘awoke’ at the end of the Original Quest. She was lost. They were too. The only good thing was the art returned to form.
Then there was this thing with multiple artists and the palace breaking and splitting up the elves and … that’s where I stopped.
Oh, I tried to pick it up again. Hell, I even exchanged long emails with Richard Pini about the matter. I liked the new plots, but they didn’t hold up on a re-read. Richard, if you remember, I was kar120c@ucsc.edu, and I had the signature line quoting Joyce’s Ulysses.
I loved talking to the Pini’s and I still hold them in highest regard … but my love and memory is going to stay with the old-school story. This new stuff isn’t for me. It’s too ‘big’ and the scope isn’t what I liked. There are too many alterna-stories, too many ‘Oh and this happened while they were asleep!’ I don’t understand Forevergreen, and I don’t like Jink.
I love Cutter. I love Leetah. I love Redlance (I wanted to BE Redlance as a child). I’d love to see them grow old and die, and be wolfriders. But I don’t want to deal with Waveriders and the palace and extra weird foo magic and the middle ages. That’s not a place for the elves I loved. If we’d jumped ahead and go to ‘new elves in the middle ages!’ I could have handled it. But this wasn’t for me.
Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to re-read Fire and Flight. “It’s just a little [zwoot]!”
What would you suggest, gentle reader? A net?
Categories: Entertainment
