Forgive the melodramatic title. It’s a movie reference. It appeals to my bent sense of humor.
It’s a very dark, very cold evening. Winter’s here with a vengeance, at least temperature- and wind-wise. Thank the High Ones there’s no snow yet. Shortly I’ll be going out for the evening to catch a spot of dinner, methinks.
I’m in that quiet space between the busy-ness of the day and the small chaos of a pre-Thanksgiving evening. (Even though it’s a Sunday, I’m certain stores are already open late, getting a jump on what used to be the the post-Thanksgiving retail season.)
(This will make sense by its end.)
Because the local Circuit City store was going out of business, I was able to purchase a GPS for my van at a deep discount. This is one of those devices that, if you don’t have one, you can’t imagine ever needing one, but once you get one, you can’t imagine how you lived without it.
(I felt the same about a fax machine, and then about a cell phone. I am not an early adopter of technology.)
“So tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for youuuuu…”
I know the Kinks wrote that song from the point of view of a frustrated guy whining to a disinterested girl, but right about now I’m wondering if they might also have had a movie contract in the works as they were penning the lyrics.
It was almost a month ago that I wrote the previous blog, upon finally receiving a draft of the Elfquest licensing agreement from Warner Bros. Took me just a couple of days to read it top to toe, hack my way through the denser legal foliage, and get it back to the lawyer and agent critters.
It’s Friday evening. It’s been a gorgeous, gorgeous day. I drove around, I walked around, I had a delicious lunch. I’m home now, and I’m reading the nearly fifty pages of the draft agreement between Warner Bros. and Warp Graphics regarding the option and (oh we do so hope) production of an Elfquest movie.
At the moment, it’s me and Mr. Gumby, big time. “My brain hurts!”
Several people have gone over this document, prior to my getting it. This is not a first draft.
A timeline of sorts…
A week or so before July 9, 2008: Got the news from Elfquest’s agents that two or three major studios were in contention and negotiation for the rights to make an EQ film. Very exciting to think about, but we can’t say anything because the various players are still indeed in negotiation.
July 8, 2008: Email from the agent-in-charge. Warner Bros. has come in with the best offer. Huzzahs all around, but in a sense it’s not quite real yet.
Where to begin?
Maybe with this – there’s a slideshow here that gives a tip-of-the-iceberg taste of what this year’s show was like. The news reports said attendance over the four (five, if you count the preview on Wednesday night) days was 130,000. I’d heard the con committee was capping attendance at 125,000 – and for the first time every ticket was sold out a week in advance of the con.
Where to begin? This is a show that can no longer be described except in fleeing impressions.
It’s still too early in the morning to be creative – or even coherent much. There will be much more to say in a bit. For now, go here to read the news, which started to fliter in around 4 am east coast time. Ayoooah!
So a few weeks ago I arranged to have a parcel shipped to me, overnight, via UPS. Warp Graphics has an account with them, and I used the most expensive of the next-day options, because I wanted this package in hand no later than the 10:30 am guaranteed delivery time.
I began waiting in the driveway about quarter after ten. Ten-thirty came and went. I began to fume, something I do well. Finally, close to eleven, the driver showed up, handed me the package, did the little trick with her hand-held scanner, and drove off.
Sometimes an LCD monitor provides a glimpse into something more than the contents of a web page. This evening, sitting here, prepping scans to upload into the Digital Elfquest online comics project, I suddenly realized that EQ’s MySpace friends list is approaching a thousand names. Granted, there are plenty of folks, groups, bands here that have much larger networks. But this one belongs to the denizens of the World of Two Moons, and that makes it rather astounding, at least to this self-professed late-adopter.
It’s after midnight, thus officially Tax Day, and a weird juxtaposition of agonies – one ending and the other ongoing. Taxes never end, you see…
Elfquest.com is finally back online and, Data-like, fully functional. The migration to yet a newer server was not as smooth nor as simple as I might have liked, but neither was it as horrible as the past month with The Hosting Company That Shall Not Be Named. (Except that they’ve managed to garner several blog sites dedicated to their malpractice.)
I spoke too soon. Within a very brief time after going back online, Elfquest.com is back down, this time because of bad (spam/phishing) code hidden somewhere in the site. The host has shut things down until they are satisfied the problem is corrected. Apparently there are infections we didn’t find the first couple of times. Also, there are solutions I was not aware of. These solutions may be a bit dire in the short run, but should allow the site to be restarted until more robust measures can be taken.
Challenges and opportunities.
The past several days have been a trial, with respect to the Elfquest.com web site. If you’ve been reading here, or have subscribed to the Elfquest Yahoo news group, or are a member of the Scroll of Colors forum, you know that the site was down for three solid days over the past weekend. Every few hours, I would contact tech support at the current soon-to-be-ex) hosting company, only to be told that the problem was being worked on.
Saturday morning. I should be enjoying the day, but instead I am trying to cope with a server that is being very balky. If you’ve been following the continuing adventures of the relaunched Elfquest.com (since about mid-March) you’ve been treated to a litany of small woes. Outdated code, hackers… and now by sheer luck, the machine that Elfquest.com lives on, is having troubles. I just spent an hour on the phone waiting in the queue for tech support only to be told there’s nothing for me to do, I just have to wait until they fix it.
Elfquest.com has been on the web in one form or another since 1994, but it feels as if it’s all been completely restarted as of only two weeks ago. That still astounds me to say out loud. “Only two weeks ago.” Three million hits to the web site, over 500 new friends on the MySpace page. Something’s happening that has never happened before in the thirty-year history of Elfquest.
No, I take that back. It did happen once before.
When Elfquest got started, word of mouth – the interest shown by you, the readers – catapulted this little tale of elves, wolves, trolls and humans into an indy comics phenomenon that, at its peak, was on a sales par with many of Marvel’s and DC’s top titles.
Sunday night.
Elfquest2008 hasn’t been up a full two days but the response has been amazing. Startling, even. So many friends wanting to be added. So many heartfelt messages. The same thing is happening over at Elfquest.com. The new server went on-line March 14, the same day as the launch of the Digital Elfquest Comics project. The site’s received well over two million hits in under ten days as a result. Now, this may not compare to, say, the number of downloads of a spectacular new movie trailer as soon as it’s released, but for EQ it’s mind-blowing!
If this were Gaia Online, I’d say “Jeebus!
If this were a deli, I’d say “Oy vey!
But since this is the World of Two Moons, the proper phrase is “By the High Ones!
This page hasn’t been up the best part of a day yet but I can’t even take a leg-lift break without new friend requests, messages and comments coming in. Many of you may be used to this sort of activity but for us denizens of the Holt, it’s head-spinning.
