All right, so the humor of this headline might be a tad strained and obscure. It will, I hope, be clear by the time you’ve read this editorial installment. I offer these words not so much as observation, but more as optimistic prediction. (Or, as the fortune teller replied when several of her guests complained that she was practicing her craft instead of having fun at her big birthday get-together: “It’s my party and I’ll scrye if I want to.”)
WHAM! Whoa, did anyone get the license on that truck? I can still feel the tread marks running up my back. Four massively jammed days. Is there a point past which “big” is “too big”? I’m not sure, but when veterans with lots and lots of experience start to grumble that the annual San Diego Comic-Con book mass media culture smackdown festival expo and cookout has stopped being enjoyable, is something going on? At any rate, here’s one tired person’s overview of the fun and games.
The final volume in the Grand Quest series of Elfquest manga has been out for a little while. It reprints – dramatically reformatted – the Rayek stories from early issues of Hidden Years, and it provides a backdrop for some thoughts on fight scenes in comics. (Some, being less charitable than I, might say “obligatory fight scenes,” as too many comic book issues seem to contain ten pages of story padded out to twenty-two with a dozen pages of extreme – and extremely boring – fisticuffs.)
The last several days, there’ve been a whole slew of people looking over my shoulder. I wrote a while back (in the Warp blog, which is where the less-Elfquesty thoughts go; check it out) about the travails of relocating the Warp Graphics office from its soon-to-be former location in town to the finallyrenovated basement of what we like to call “the cabin.” (For those of you keeping track, this was back in April. My foot is mostly healed, though I suspect it’s going to remind me noodgingly for months to come of what I did to it.)
I love black and white. I’m not saying I don’t like color, but I love black and white. So when someone writes in and says “I hate the new black and white manga books” I figure maybe it’s time for a few words. (Now, admittedly, I don’t know if the letter writer hates the new DC Comics volumes because they’re black and white, or because they’re in manga format – so I’ll speak to both. Such a bargain!)
When you live in the “now of wolf thought” you gain the blessing of not regretting anything from the past, not worrying about anything in the future. This doesn’t mean, however, that you don’t recognize and remember those events that mark transitions in life.
July 3 – the day before Independence Day. There’s a monstrous irony there; what with all the new work that Warp’s license deal with DC Comics has thrust upon Wendy and me, “independence” is an elusive concept lately! (And yes, I’m aware of the double pun, as Warp’s status as an “independent comics publisher” goes by the wayside, according to some. I’ll have a few things to say about that in a future editorial…)
The Lord of the Rings, Part 1 film, also known as “the Fellowship of the Ring” (and hereafter called LoTR1 for ease of typing) is one of those that we call a “yet” movie. You don’t ask your friends if you’ve seen it; you ask them if they’ve seen it yet. It’s a foregone conclusion that you/they are going to see it, it’s only a matter of when.
(Or: Getting one’s (bleep) together is easy; lifting it is what’s difficult)
February 28 (it’s still the 28th as I write this, though not for much longer, and High Ones alone know when I’ll have it in shape for posting to the website, there’s just so flipping much going on right now) is Elfquest’s birthday. (That’s only slightly arbitrary a choice; the first and sole issue of Fantasy Quarterly was shipped to distributors and retailers somewhere toward the end of February, 1978 and since one must choose a particular date upon which to hang a celebration, why not the month’s ultimate?)
This is one way editorial columns get born:
Last night I flooded the kitchen when, in my attempt to fix a leaky faucet I accidentally (and does anyone ever do this deliberately?) broke the cold water feed pipe. What started out as a relatively simple task has become a major undertaking – and this has put me in the mind to take a whack at answering the many letters I’ve received lately all asking something that also seems deceptively simple: “I want to start up my own comic book company, how do I do it?”
Ambrose Bierce defined a cynic as “a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not what they ought to be.” I don’t know if it’s the natural consequence of an ingrained scientific bent, or the result of being placed on indefinite “hold” one too many times while trying to get through to customer service, but I do get cynical at times – or at least skeptical. Asked if the glass is half empty or half full, I’ll first want to know what’s in it.
That sound you hear — that soft, vaguely metallic crackle — is flakes of rust falling to the ground as I stretch some editorial muscles that I haven’t flexed in way too long. It’s been nearly two years (how times flies when you’re living at the center of organized chaos) since the cessation of the monthly Elfquest comic book, nearly two years since I’ve had both the space and the inclination to tackle the question of just what is buried in rant’s tomb.
June 20, 1997. I thought I might write some words, toss some thoughts hither and yon about next year and Elfquest’s 20th anniversary and all that, but I’m plumb exhausted.
