for ElfQuest fans

[arethinn]

Do you think ElfQuest ever jumped the shark? If so, when? My opinion based on having read only up to "Hidden Years" #1 (I think it is) is that said piscine was leapt over at about "Cry from Beyond". The story starts to have a quality I recognize from roleplaying campaigns/troupes that have gone on too long with the same characters, in that you have to keep inventing more and more outrageous events and powers to keep things interesting (or maybe not have to, per se, but it becomes more and more difficult to make the subtle work). Perhaps there are even worse things in store for me if I were to read all the rest of the series (not that that stops me from wanting to do it!)?

Also, does anyone know the Wolfrider name for "summer"? Spring is "newgreen" (AFAIK), autumn is "nut-fall" and winter is "white-cold" or "death-sleep" but I haven't seen a reference for an idiosyncratic term for summer that I can recall.

Comments

[razorjak.livejournal.com]

It's all a matter of what format you saw Elfquest in first, I guess. I remember it from the late 70's. Damn, I'm an old fart.

Hell, I think I still have the Epic magazine that has the sidestory/first appearance of the preservers and their forest of cocoons. That story was sorta kinda retold when Cutter opens up the cocoon holding the two fugitive human lovers. (- I don't remember if that was PRE Elfquest or not. But there were no elves in the story. -)

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

That was actually after the original series, I think, since it appears in the appendices of like the fifth or sixth book of the graphic novels. "Sidestory" is more accurate, I guess. It was a retelling of that bit for the more adult audience of that magazine (hence the nudity).

[razorjak.livejournal.com]

It may appear in the fifth or sixth book - but it definately didn't appear THAT far along in the series.

I DO know it appeared before the sequence the preservers are introduced in Elfquest. I just don't know if it appeared in Epic magazine Elfquest started. This was definately in the 70s that the story I am talking about first was published.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

I just don't know if it appeared in Epic magazine Elfquest started.

(reading a "before" between "magazine" and "Elfquest")

There's a blurb about it in the appendix notes of the book it's in, but without the book in front of me I don't know what they stated the pub date was. Maybe it was issued more than once?

[razorjak.livejournal.com]

Could be. I just remember it definately being the seventies as I remember reading it the kitchen table at my grandparents house.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

We're both kind of right. "Homespun" appears in the gallery of the sixth book (issues published 1987-1988), but was itself published in 1980 (so I was wrong about the gallery material always being roughly contemporary with the issues they accompany). I would guess the issues in book 2 would have been published in 1979, but it's possible it was 1980 by the time the same episode showed up in Elfquest, thus to have the characters predate their appearance in the series (but not the series as a whole). Meh, who knows.

Re: "eights of seasons" or something, I really don't see any phrase like that in book 2. Might be elsewhere but I seriously don't recall any reference to anything more than 4 seasons, at least not in the material you say you've read. Again, meh. this is getting stupidly picky even for me. So I turn off the faucet now.