Saturday, June 04, 2016

Ride like the wolf - it´s Elquest Saturday

Today is the 65th birthday of Wendy Pini so I wanted to pay tribute to one of the creators of the biggest fantasy saga in independent comics.


And I´m saying one of the creators because from the beginning the ELFQUEST saga has been a team effort of Richard Pini, the writer and Wendy Pini, the artist. Normally I would go into my usual spiel of recounting how I first discovered the series and all the books I read of it but since I already did that in this post I don´t want to bore my readers.

Let me just add that I used to read the series religiously and I still have all the original german albums that I bought when they first came out.


Which was way easier here in Germany than trying to keep up with the US issues. One of the main pros of having a creator owned series is that the creators retain creative control. One of the cons is that sometimes the creators have to change publishers to continue with their series which happened a lot with ELFQUEST. So you will see some covers by different publishers further down. Now there has been a new edition of ELFQUEST, both in America and in Germany but it is ib black and white and even if that may be the original comic version I´m used to the BASTEI color so any new repackaging of the original material has to be at least in color.


There is however a new series THE FINAL QUEST which is in color and which I  plan on buying. Because I can be pretty sure I don´t already have these issues. Here in Germany collecting ELFQUEST also became difficult because after the original series had ended there was a long period where different publishers were just republishing the old stuff in new editions. When the new material finally arrived here at first it was published in a monthly series and following that was pretty easy. But when there were more and more short mini series each was published as a new series and it was just too confusing. So I will try to get on board with the new series and maybe see where I still have gaps in my ELQUEST collection - if I can find those old issues. One thing I already know is that I will get this in the german version because they offer hardcover editions of the paperbacks.

If you have read the series you already know what a wonderful book it is and if not let it suffice to say that this is not without reason one of the series every comic fan HAS to read. So here´s a happy 65th birthday to Wendy Pini, visualizer of ELFQUEST and one of the pioneers of cosplay.


Here are a few more examples of the wonderful art in ELFQUEST :


I have no special links for this post but if you want to know more about ELFQUEST your first stop shoud be the official ELFQUEST homepage where you can find all kinds of stuff like THE ELFQUEST SHOW podcast or the complete Elfquest library in digital form. So what are you waiting for ?

And if you still have questions go to THE ELFQUEST WIKI and you might also want to check out COMIC GEEK SPEAK where you can find an off the rack episode about ALL NEW INVADERS 1, DETECTIVE COMICS 27 and ELFQUEST : THE FINAL QUEST. Today we skip the birthdays and go straight to the videos with an interview with Richard and Wendy Pini. 



ELFQUEST has been around a few decades which makes the fact that there still hasn´t been any kind of adaption in movie form a testimony to the bad quality of movie writers. Because I believe the Pini´s would have given their O.K., if they got a half decent script for an ELFQUEST movie.



I think this is the music video that best fits the post´s topic.



Coming from the wolfriders to Doctor Who´s Bad Wolf might be a stretch but then again ..... I tried to find a video that shows all the Bad Wolf stuff but apparently nobody ever made such a video and all you get are dozens of short clips. By the way, if you haven´t seen Doctor Who or the Bad Wolf storyline don´t watch this video because - spoilers, sweetie.



El Hombre Lobo would have been better than El Hombre Tigre but all I could find for that were werewolf clips. And how can you go wrong with the combo of japanese animation, latino dubbing and lucha libre ?



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