ElfQuest

Over the years, Elfquest has been showcased by a number of different publishers, even though the property - the stories, the characters, the world - has remained under the wing of Warp Graphics, the company started by Wendy and Richard Pini way back when. Whenever the elves have gone to visit a new publisher, it's always been for one reason - to take advantage of different avenues to bring the adventures of Cutter and company to new readers.

Most recently, early in 2003, we made the momentous decision to license Elfquest to DC Comics, the keepers of such iconic characters as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. This is a big company with big plans for our diminutive heroes, and we're thrilled that they are approaching this long-term project with resources that we've long dreamed of, and - more importantly - with respect for everything that's gone before. With all that in mind, DC has launched three distinct Elfquest projects.

The first new line of Elfquest publications from DC is their entry into the fast-growing manga market. "Manga", if you don't already know, is what Japanese call their comics (which are a huge business in that country). Although manga have been available in the United States since the early 1970s, the volumes were very difficult to find, and fans of this new and exotic art form had to go to great lengths to find any copies at all. Over the past several years, however, American readers have come more and more to appreciate - and demand! - the stylistic freshness of manga and now bookstores have entire sections devoted to these compact comics.

DC's initial plans for Elfquest in manga form are to reissue the entire story of the Wolfriders in chronological order, beginning with the time of Bearclaw. The first two volumes in the EQ manga series are, appropriately, "Wolfrider #1" and "Wolfrider #2." The actual tales reprinted here are taken from various of the comics series published by Warp Graphics, most notably "Blood of Ten Chiefs" and the new (1996) "Elfquest". Because the storyline wasn't originally published in nice, neat timeline order, we worked very closely with our editor at DC Comics, Bob Greenberger, to snip and weave pages from the different publications into a cohesive whole. Sometimes entire pages were able to be reduced in size to fit the manga format, sometimes Wendy would take a panel or two from one page of a story, add some new art, and fit the resulting action into the appropriate place in a different, but related, story.

"Wolfrider #2" ends with Cutter's ascendency to chiefhood, which makes a perfect lead-in to the "Grand Quest" series, which will showcase what we've all come to call the Original Quest - the stories told in the original Elfquest issues #1-20, plus "Siege at Blue Mountain" and "Kings of the Broken Wheel."

Now, if you're thinking that these are simple reprintings of those tales, the reality is far more interesting! Manga comics, because of the small page size (usually something around 5 by 7 inches, compared to 7 by 10 inches for American comics) employ a different artistic vocabulary. There are usually far fewer panels per page, and manga artists use many different types of visual "shorthand" to move the story from page to page. Because Elfquest was originally drawn for magazines that were even larger than standard comic books, each page is dense with detail - sometimes, according to Wendy, too dense!

So for the past several months, and for the foreseeable future, one of the challenges that she's set for herself is to study every page of artwork that she drew, way back in the beginning of EQ, and look for ways to take the panels and word balloons apart and literally reconstruct them so that they read both comfortably and powerfully on the manga-sized page. The result, even to someone who's completely familiar with the original publications, is an entirely new reading experience!

Currently, the plan is to release a new Elfquest manga volume every two months.

Sometimes, when you're just starting out on a project that ends up taking up a major portion of your lifetime, you have to do what you can, and see what the future holds. In a nutshell, that's the story of Elfquest itself. Wendy and Richard began publication of the adventures of the Wolfriders early in 1978. Wendy's skills as an artist, though considerable, were still less developed than they have come to be. Warp Graphics was able, in those bygone days, to afford a black-and-white, newsprint magazine that appeared three times a year.

But Wendy had always seen her creations in color, and when the opportunity presented itself in 1981 to license Elfquest to another publisher who wished to enter the then-untested waters of the graphic novel market, we were happy to go along. And, once again, we worked with the materials and resources given us, to produce the first appearance of Elfquest in color.

In 1988, Warp Graphics finally had the opportunity to release its own series of Elfquest volumes in color, using a style reminiscent of cel animation which - at that time - was how we envisioned a possible Elfquest animated film or television series.

But an artist never stops growing and evolving, and when DC Comics said that one of the Elfquest projects they wanted us to consider was an Archive series (which would compliment their already impressive line of quality reprint volumes), we knew at last that this would be the version of Elfquest that we would want to leave as our legacy. For by now, Wendy had become proficient with the computerized artistic tools of the new century, most notably Photoshop and its accessory, the graphics tablet. And the results - between Wendy's vision finally realized as she's always imagined it, and DC's high production standards - are nothing short of amazing!

Look for one Archive volume per year, at minimum. Each volume will contain the same material as appeared in the Warp Graphics edition.

As if the reworking of existing material into manga format plus the recoloring and relettering of the Elfquest Archive artwork weren't enough, there are also brand-new stories in the works.

The first of these is "The Searcher and the Sword" which is a 92-page full-color volume scheduled for July, 2004. Briefly, it's a tale of parallel quests. One belongs to Shuna, the human girl who aided the Wolfriders in the "Shards" storyline and who subsequently has been adopted by Cutter and Leetah as their "daughter." Shuna, taking a cue from Cutter before her, wishes to try to unite the various human tribes who inhabit the World of Two Moons. The second quest is Treestump's, as he wrestles with the problem of how to repair and replace the Wolfriders' troll-forged metal weapons, now that the trolls are gone. Or are they...?

"The Searcher and the Sword" is only the first of at least four or five new story projects that we've got on the drawing board, but we don't want to give away too much too soon. Stay tuned!