Dear Elf-friends,
I just read Richard’s thoughtful Matter of oPINIon and realized this WendyWords, which I’ve been writing off and on for a while, is also long, long overdue. Elfquest is never far from Richard’s heart or mine (though he’s the main keeper of the digital flame for the nonce), so I’ve created a break in my Masque of the Red Death webcomic schedule to check in and share, or rather sum up, some thoughts about the ebbing year.
Hello elf-friends!
What is there to say but: AYOOOOOAAAAAH!
You can’t imagine how hard it was to sit on this news. The deal memo had been done for a week and a half, but Richard and I were told by our agents to stay mum until Warner Bros. gave us the go-ahead. Apparently the Hollywood Reporter magazine checked with WB before breaking the story online last night, then many other news entities picked it up and ran with it.
So now we can all howl with relief and joy because the word is out and there’s no stopping the freight train that is the Elfquest movie.
Hello elf-friends! Just had to come back and check in with you for a bit. A few weeks ago I completed the 160-page graphic novel Masque of the Red Death Volume One. Honest to Citadel Mound, I don’t know where all this totally-oppositefrom-Elfquest stuff is coming from.
Dear Elf friends,
My gosh, it’s been months and months since my last WendyWords! Well, blame it on Masque of the Red Death. (It’s so convenient to blame stuff on that bad pretty boy these days *wink*). The web comic – which Gocomi.com will soon be describing differently because it’s so much more than that – launched in July and has been steadily gaining momentum. (450,000 hits in November! Clocked!) None of us at Go!Comi knew Masque would turn into such a cinematic viewing experience.
Dear Elf-friends,
Wow! Guess there’s no turning back now! The new and improved Go!Comi web site went up sometime last night and Week One of my newest venture, “Masque of the Red Death,” is now available for viewing.
Dear Elf-friends,
I’ll bet you didn’t know that one of our elves is named after a human being – really and truly! This human being was a very quiet, very private person. Comics were not his thing. He never read Elfquest or talked to me about the characters or story. But he was always interested in how Richard and I were doing…always solicitous about our ups and downs…always rooting for the movie. He really enjoyed movies, particularly film noir. He also happened to be gay, but not “way out there” gay.
Dear Elf-friends,
Well, I’m baaaaaack!
Boy, that went by fast! Honest to goodness, I can remember writing my summer vacation post in “Ask Elfmom” as if it were yesterday. Summer and fall are an absolute blur of sand and sun and heat and ocean waves and travel, travel, travel and every hue of autumn leaf and haunted hayrides and Renfaires and powwows and the everpresent glow of my computer monitor – which, on more than one occasion, has been in danger of being tossed into the street.
Dear Elf-friends,
Y’know, there are times when I really must defer to Elfpop in the area of descriptive talent. Between his photos and his personal impressions of San Diego Comic Con 2006, you’re getting an excellent (and unnerving) idea of what it’s like to navigate your way through a giant, buzzing beehive. I’ve never seen the like of this particular convention…and I’m not so sure I like what I’ve never seen the like of! There is such a thing as too much of a good thing!
In many ways it’s a strange and moving thing to paint the last pixels on the last page of a series you’ve been laboring on for more than half a year. Elfquest – The Discovery issue #4 is now completed, finishing a tale that, because of tight deadlines, seemed to us to whoosh by like the WaveDancers caught in Surge’s raging vortex. Strangest of all is the feeling of swimming up from the depths of an iridescent, light-and-shadow-spattered dream, for The Discovery has been a most mystical creative experience for me.
Dear Elf Friends,
Well, ElfQuest the Discovery Part 1, the comic book, is officially at your local comics shop (small kazoo fanfare).
As a package, by today’s definition, it is a comic book in every sense. The production values are slick, the color reproduction is, as usual, the best. (And I gave DC Comics some pretty tricky PhotoShop FX to duplicate!) But, as some of you have noticed and commented on, it does contain ads… some would say highly incongruous ones.
Dear Elf Friends,
As I write, I’m on a jet heading back to Los Angeles from Reactor, an animeconvention in cold, drizzly Chicago. As many of you know, Richard and I are bicoastal; I’m eager to get back to my west coast studio and pick up where I left off on ElfQuest: The Discovery. Yet my mind lingers on many pleasant memories of this trip…
Dear Elf Friends,
WHEEEEOOOO!!! San Diego Con 2005 has come and gone, but our ears are still ringing and our little bods are still vibrating from all the chaos and commotion. (Click on each picture to get a larger image.) Time was, in the not-so-distant past, Warp graphics had its own booth and running it ate up most of our energy and much of our sanity. After signing with DC Comics, we thought, “Aaahhh… no more booth manning! We can walk around in comfy shoes and enjoy this gi-normous event at a leisurely pace!”
10% inspiration and 90% perspiration…
As anyone in the business will tell you, it’s more like 99.5% perspiration.
When we’re kids we dream…we envision worlds…we invent characters – or find those we love and identify with – and imagine stories about them. The lucky few who are gifted with the ability to write and/or draw are able to set those imaginings down for others to share – but usually, only to a point. Because when an amateur (which means, literally, someone who does something for the love of it) makes the first mighty attempt at a graphic novel, he or she gets a bittersweet taste of exactly how much hard work it is and how much of one’s personal life must be sacrificed to realize a vision from beginning to end.
Dear Elf Friends,
Some of you who have been with us for a long, long time may remember editorials or interviews in which Richard and I explained that I was born with congenital hip dysplasia and that we were going to be doing things to correct it, bit by bit, over time. My first surgery in 1984 was a big ‘un that interrupted the publication of EQ magazine for quite a few months while I recovered. Other surgeries followed, culminating in the replacement of my left hip in 1991.
Dear Elf Friends,
Over the years, Richard and I have had many deep conversations about how the media, and the public in general, look askance at works of fantasy. With its magical, mystical, even spiritual qualities, high fantasy in films tends to be shunned by adult audiences afraid of appearing uncool. It’s a peculiar prejudice – one that Star Wars, for example, avoids by having all of its fantastic elements coated with a high-tech science fiction sheen (sci-fi, y’see, is cool at any age and always will be).
Dear Elf Friends,
It seems I have only a bit of time to write you between projects, these days. Including the special EQ 25th Anniversary issue, which came out this July, that’s four books completed for and published by DC in 2003! Whew! And the year’s not even over yet!
Dear Elf Friends,
This week represents another milestone of sorts, for Richard and me and we’d like to share our sense of accomplishment with you. After four months of solid, concentrated effort, we’ve both completed our parts in DC’s Elfquest Archives Volume One slated to be released later this fall. It’s been a huge, labor-intensive task that compelled us to learn entirely new ways to color and format each and every page. But I’m delighted to say, from the mock-ups we’ve already seen, the results are beyond anything we hoped.
AYOOOOOOAH, elf friends! And WHEW! If you’ve read “Kings of the Broken Wheel” you know my take on waiting: It’s a bitch! Talk about carving notches in trees!
In its long and checkered existence, Elfquest has broken ground in many ways. A bit of history the elves made, of which Richard and I are particularly proud, is that back in the early 1980s Elfquest was the first full color continuing graphic novel series to be published and released in big chain book stores in America. It caused a minor sensation and created a niche for all similar publications to follow. It’s no exaggeration to say that Elfquest is the reason that, today, you can find an entire graphic novel section inBarnes & Noble and Borders stores, as well as in your local comics shop.
Dear Elf Friends,
Anybody out there think Rayek’s been messing with time travel again? Well, if not him, then some unknown mischief-maker’s gone and speeded up the Cosmic Clock, ’cause here’s 2002, laughin’ and scratchin’ at us, when we haven’t even begun to process the ups and downs of 2001 yet!
In any case, with flutes of bubbly a-clink and eyes a-blear, welcome to another New Year’s installment of WendyWords.
Dear Elf Friends,
10/11. One month to the day. How strange. In New York they’re still cleaning up the rubble – and will be for some time. It could take up to a year. As many of you know, Richard and I were in the city last week (October 2) to videotape an edition of the “Speaking Freely” show for PBS, at the First Amendment Center uptown at Madison Avenue and 56th Street. Before the taping we felt compelled, as thousands of others have been moved, to visit the site of the disaster and… and what?
Dear Elf-friends,
They don’t know much about us Americans over there in the Middle East… not really. But one thing they do know: We tend to be unable to conceive, on a gut level, of people being willing to commit suicide, and to take thousands of lives with them, in the name of hate. The terrorists who struck on September 11th took advantage of our naivete in that area.
November. And so another month is upon us. A new moon graces the night sky and new energies are being released. Even though it’s the very tail end of harvest time, it’s also a great time for new beginnings. With that in mind, after a long hiatus, I bid you all a delighted “Hi there!”
Well, we all made it, fairly blipless, to the year 2000! And here in “Jollywood” things are chugging along pretty much as they do every spring. Warp Graphics, Wolfmill Entertainment, Sceneries Entertainment and our European partners on “Elfquest – The Movie” are revving up for the American Film Market, first of several annual industry events held here and abroad, where distributors and press congregate to size up the upcoming feature films. In many ways the AFM resembles a comic book convention, except the booths are individual hotel suites and everybody goes around in dark suits.
An editorial column wherein the “WP” in WaRP shares her distinctive perspective on topics from “Art” to “Zen.”
That wasn’t so hard! Are you beginning to get the idea? Are you starting to see that events in your life do fit into the structure of a classic fairy-tale? Pretty cool, huh?
Certain of the archetypes’ questions were easier to answer than others. That’s the idea. If you haven’t already picked the one you identify with most, please review and see which of the questions you answered most easily and readily.
This question was most sweetly and earnestly asked of me by a young woman during Richard’s and my autographing session at the San Diego comic convention last month. I don’t remember my exact response – something tantalizing about “The Final Quest” perhaps. But as I spoke, I really felt like asking her, “Which Cutter?” Because there are two versions of him coexisting in my mind right now — the mature chieftain born of twenty-one years of intricately woven, serialized plot, and the Cutter of 1999 — the movie Cutter.
Hello, Elf-friends,
Well, there’s much excitement here in La La Land as I and my writing partners, Marv Wolfman and Craig Miller, hurry to meet the deadline for the first draft of the new screenplay for “Elfquest – The Movie.” (see announcement elsewhere on this web site). The previous script, which I completed three years ago, was aimed for commercial reasons at a younger audience. This new version, however, is quite a bit more faithful to the adult content of the original quest.
Most of you, I bet, have been bitten by the writing bug at one time or another. Perhaps there burns an all-consuming desire to pen, for the world, a sweeping saga of tragedy and triumph. Or, perhaps, something quieter and more intimate brews beneath the surface, meant to be revealed only to the few and the privileged. If you have a yen to tell a tale but believe, for whatever reason, that you don’t have what it takes, just know that everything you need, the stuff of legend itself, is already inside you.
