So, last month I talked about my friend Steve who was my best buddy for a lot of years. One of the things that Steve and I were really into was a comic book (I prefer “illustrated epic”, myself!) that was known as ElfQuest (ElfQuest) by Wendy and Richard Pini. This was a story that had a tremendous impact on my life. The values and traits that were revealed in these stories were a large part of what makes up my personality today. It’s sort of an interesting story about how I got into this series.
One day, when I was about 11 years old, I was looking through the Budd Plant catalog of comic books and saw a listing for ElfQuest. Although the picture was in black and white and there was only a two sentence description of the story, I decided that I wanted Book 1 and Book 2, which (unbeknownst to me at the time) were compilations of the first 10 issues of the comic book. I had no idea what the story was like, but I just ordered these two books – or should I say, my mom ordered them for me. Anyway, the books arrived a few weeks later and I devoured the two books. The art was incredible and the story was great. At the time, I was just getting into playing Dungeons & Dragons (yeah, I was a little geek in the making!) so the story went well with everything else that I was into at the time. But there was more to this story than just action and elves and wolves and trolls. There was a sensitivity to the characters and a great underlying message.
About a year later, I introduced the series of books (ElfQuest Book 3 had just been released) to Steve and he liked them as much as I had. We began reading and re-reading the books over and over. I had to know every last detail of these characters and the story. Luckily, I found that there was an ElfQuest Fan club that had produced a lot of additional material about the stories. There was a group of folks out there who were as into this series as we were! One day, my other best friend at the time, Allen took time out of his busy schedule of reading all of Stephen King’s novels to read the stories and loved them as well. At this point, we were in 7th grade and were smuggling (“comics” were not considered to be fine reading material in middle school!) the books into school and a couple of other folks got wind of the series and wanted to read them as well. Now, you have to remember, we (Steve, Al and me) were 12 year old boys so we started to fantasize, thinking that each bore a particular resemblence (in demeanor – certainly not in looks) to the characters in the story. I was Cutter (chief of the Wolfriders), Steve was Skywise (Cutter’s best friend and a constant stargazer) and Al was Redlance (a gentle, nature loving elf). When others in my class caught wind of this, they actually wanted to “be” a character as well. We actually held some kind of a vote as to who would be some of the more popular characters – Leetah, Cutter’s “soulmate” was a coveted prize! That was probably the first and last time I had girls fighting over being my “girlfriend”.
By this time, we had found a comic book store that carried the ElfQuest comics so we were able to follow along with the story as each new issue was released. Everyone in our class wanted to see issue #17 – the infamous “orgy” issue.
We stopped just short of asking our teachers to refer to us by our elven names! Can you say obsessed?
Anyway, this was a fad for some and only lasted about a month before most of the class went back to being into whatever it was that they were into before ElfQuest. Al moved away that summer and Steve and mine’s friendship faded. I followed ElfQuest until it “ended” the following summer with issue #21 of the original series. If you are a fan, you know that that was not the end of the series though.
I have had this habit in my life of just falling into the things that have really had a big impact on my life and molded me into the person I am today. This probably explains why I believe so strongly in fate and that each of these encounters must have some meaning. I firmly believe that if I had not chanced upon ElfQuest, I would not have the appreciation that I do for nature, the respect for life and diversity that I do today.
I encourage you to look for the ElfQuest series at your local bookstore or go to the website and order directly from Warp Graphics. There are a lot more than 21 issues of the comic today, but, in my opinion, those first issues are the best.