First I have to say that BLOOD OF TEN CHIEFS is... well, for lack of better words, excellent. I love everything about it. I've seen other people's suggestions for stories to use and I have a few suggestions of my own. My favorites are "Stormlight's Way" and "A Friend in Need." Some other stories I like are "At the Oak's Root," "Song's End," "Tanner's Dream," "Song Shaper, and "Love and Memory." Please consider the first two suggestions. They were both great stories. BLOOD OF TEN CHIEFS is wonderful. Keep up the good work.
Laurie Pillman
<<street address removed from archive>>
Hope you liked "At the Oak's Root" in this very issue, Laurie. We here at Warp are embarking upon an ambitious new direction for TEN CHIEFS. Yes, we're going to keep on adapting the great short prose stories from the anthologies, but we're also starting to craft new and original tales that no one's heard before. The first of these will be a two-part story in issue #10 and #11, and tells of an event that happened to the Wolfriders before Madcoil's attack, when Bearclaw was chief, Cutter was still a cub, and something ancient fell from the sky.
And for all of you Goodtree fans, the next two issues (#8 and #9) will contain an extended adaptation of a couple of Diana Parson's Goodtree stories, including "Spirit Quest." We hope you like 'em!
I was going to write in my opinion about ELFQUEST
and give some suggestions about possible story lines,
but I figured you probably get millions of letters like
that. So instead, I thought I'd send you guys this, in
tribute to David Letterman.
Top 15 Signs Elfquest Is Taking Over Your Life
15. You write weekly love letters to Leetah and
Venka.
14. You glue hats to butterflies' heads so you'll
have Preservers.
13. You call your treehouse in the back yard
"the Father Tree" and shoot arrows at anyone who
approaches it.
12. You scan shelves at local liquor stores for
Dreamberry Wine.
11. Major quote sources for college theses
include Shakespeare, the Bible, and the ELFQUEST
GATHERUMS.
10. Songs from "A Wolfrider's Reflections"
become the background music for your dreams.
9. You have a sudden urge to wear lots of
leather.
8. You refuse to buy insurance because planning
ahead violates "the Way.
7. You say "Timmorn's Blood!" in casual
conversation.
6. The "Tiny Toon" stories in NEW BLOOD seem
like fine pieces of writing and dramatic stylistics.
5. You recognize more than five references on
this list.
4. You have no life.
3. You fly into a homicidal rage any time people
say, "Elfquest? Isn't that the one with the Hobbits?"
2. Your girlfriend leaves you after you kill her
dog trying to ride it.
1. You won't eat meat unless it's raw.
Josh Spears
<<street address removed from archive>>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 17:37:42
From: "Janet L. Johnson"
<janetj@seattleu.edu>
Subject: ALERT! News about Alaska Wolf
Killing!
To: 72077.12@compuserve.com
I just found your email addresses in issue #3 of WAVEDANCERS. I'm sending this to both because I wasn't sure which you'd see first or which one might have fewer messages. This editorial column appeared in yesterday's issue of the SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER and was written by Asta Bowen, a free-lance writer and regular contributor to the P-I's opinion pages. She teaches high school in Hood River, Oregon.
The article is as follows:
There's more than one way to skin a cat, or, as
it turns out, a wolf.
A few years ago the state of Alaska announced
a plan to improve caribou hunting in selected areas
by killing off some wolves. The original plan called for
"aerial control," which means shooting the predators
from helicopters. Aerial wolf control was nothing
new, but when this particular plan got out, it met a
wall of international resistance.
Too many of us noncaribou hunters had seen
movies such as "Never Cry Wolf," showing the species
as needlessly persecuted and harassed by our own.
The prospect of whole wolf packs being gunned
down on the tundra while minding their own business
(a business, it so happens, of killing things like moose
and caribou) was too much to bear. Environmentalists
and other sentimental types threatened a tourism
boycott, and Alaska Gov. Walter Hickel was eventually
persuaded to abandon the plan.
All you travelers who were ready and willing
to cash in that Alaska cruise will be pleased to know
that, thanks to your selflessness, none of the little
wolfings in Management Subunit 20A have been
massacred from above. You will be pleased to know
that no wolfpacks, old or young, have been placed in
rifle cross hairs by flying game wardens. You may be
less pleased to know that as of this month, 98 headless,
skinless wolf carcasses have nonetheless been
deposited in a Fairbanks landfill.
There being more than one way to skin a cat,
it should come as no surprise if game managers in
Alaska know several ways to skin a wolf.
The way they skinned them was simple.
While the state calmed protesters by abandoning the
aerial part of the wolf plan, it calmed caribou hunters
by keeping the control part. Instead of exterminating
whole packs from the air, individual wolves were
snared and sometimes trapped in a longer, labor-intensive,
more costly ground-based effort.
So, instead of dying under the rain of chopper
fire, most of the wolves hung themselves. Snaring, for
the nonbiologists among us, is done with a wire loop
hung from a tree. When the wolf walks into the snare,
the noose quickly tightens around the neck as the
animal struggles. Unlike trapping, which results in a
slow, and tedious death (usually from "Hypothermia,"
in fish-and-game terms), snaring is relatively quick
("asphyxiation").
You've got to hand it to those game managers.
They figured out how to ease the protesters' outrage,
lynch enough wolves to satisfy the caribou hunters,
and to do it all in such a way that made the helicopter
hunt look positively genteel. A few more years of
snaring and trapping (the control plan for next year
was just approved), and those sappy old
environmentalists from the Lower 48 will be begging
Gov. Hickel to gas up the helicopters and start sighting
in the rifles.
The success of the wolf-control campaign is not
reduced predation on the Delta caribou calving grounds,
although the skinless, headless, luckless 98 in the
Fairbanks dump won't be eating much caribou this
spring. Biologists can't say what will happen to the
game herds, whose populations are notoriously
unstable. It's even possible, according to conservation
manager Ken Taylor that the wolf population "may
pop right back up to where it was before."
So the great success of the campaign is not
ecological, but attitudinal. It has normalized wolf kill.
The protests were in vain, and now "control" seems
inevitable, even reasonable. The very ugliness of
trapping and snaring will soon convince us Southern
saps that the aerial method is cleaner and more, to
abuse a word, humane. If wolves have to be killed,
better to do it a pack at a time, rat-a-tat-tat and lights
out. "Like rats in a dump," says Alaska State Sen.
Robin Taylor.
Thanks, but I do not go gentle into that good
night. From the ground or from the air, the relentless
persecution of wolves is a costly relic of the days when
we humans, in a fit of hubris, believed we could control
nature. The control of wolves in Subunit 20A will be a
temporary thing; predator numbers will rise and fall
and caribou numbers will rise and fall, as they have
always done.
The rising and falling will outlast state
politicians, caribou hunters, game managers and
newspaper columnists. It might even survive a tourism
boycott.
Janet Johnson
Publications Writer/Editor
Seattle University
From asoderbe@cap.gwu.edu Thu May 5
17:09:20 1994
Reply-To: asoderbe@cap.gwu.edu
I am pleased with the expansion of the universe of Two Moons, and I know that it would be impossible for Wendy to draw for all of the new series. Still, it is often distracting to see the friendly faces I know distorted in new and different ways.
NEW BLOOD is definitely interesting and a pleasure to read, and the HIDDEN YEARS idea is brilliant -- I hope that the children continue to have children, and the humans stay away.
My favorite, though, is BLOOD OF TEN CHIEFS because of the incredible opportunity for multitudes of stories. The comics have come from the novels which are a joy themselves to live within. Not only can we see what has shaped who the Wolfriders and Go-backs are now, but we are allowed a peek at the many different life-styles (nomadic, and where the elves settled) which were a part of life in Two Moons.
I am looking forward to the adaptation of "Spirit Quest" by Diana L. Paxson. This was beautiful, and the love of hers for Lionleaper, Acorn and Songshaper touched me deeply, especially in her next story, "A Very Good Year for Dreamberries."
Anna Kristina Soderberg
Keep writing, and see you in 30! - RP