[The following editorial appears in Shards #8, Hidden Years #21, New Blood #28, Blood of Ten Chiefs #17, and Jink #5. --MK]
There's a certain type of endeavor, generally regarded as doomed from the start, that humans occasionally attempt. This activity is defined in various ways, one of the more socially acceptable being "spitting into the wind." (There are also things that one can attempt to do "up a rope" and "against the tide," but ELFQUEST is still an all-ages kind of comic book, so I won't go into more detail.) One of my favorite futile efforts is answering, from time to time, the oft-asked question, "When are you going to have elf-human hybrids in ELFQUEST?"
The short answer, of course, is "never." But then readers want to know why, since nearly every other fantasy sub-genre allows the beastie. And our reply to that particular cliff-jumping logic is that it's because nearly every other fantasy sub-genre allows elf-human mixes that ELFQUEST doesn't; we don't want to be like every other you-know-what.
There's another answer, of course, one that's very deep and very personal and strikes to the core of what ELFQUEST is all about. I knew that someday there'd be an occasion to spell it out (as opposed to dropping hints about it as we've been doing for years), but I never knew when that time might come.
Opportunity took the Poughkeepsie exit off the information superhighway and knocked a couple of weeks ago, in the form of a letter from reader Layla Voll, who posted the following onto one of the numerous ELFQUEST lists in cyberspace:
"I've been reading this list for 'bout eight months now, and I've seen this question pop up a number of
times. For some reason, a fair number of EQ readers would like to see an elf-human crossbreed. Anyone out there
got a good/bad/fanciful explanation for this?"
It's true: it's one of those issues that keep popping up, even after Richard says "no way, not possible, not
ever." Some people just really *want* it to be possible. My own theory is that it's because many readers (myself
included) tend to identify with the elves so well that the idea that humans and elves *can't* interbreed -- that
humans and elves can't seem to live together openly and peacefully -- really hits hard. And I suspect that's why
Richard is so firm on this: because having human/elf hybrids really feeds into those "cultish" aspects of EQ.
There was another thread a while ago that speculated that we *are* the elves. It goes like this: while
the World of Two Moons is definitely *not* Earth, the home world of the Coneheads might be. And the early
Coneheads who polluted their planet so badly they had to leave just might be us.
Ideas that make you go hmmm.
Layla
[Another reader] writes (among other things):
I love it when someone gives me such a perfect opening.
From the start, the World of Two Moons was stated to be Earth, not as it is in reality, but as we'd like it to be. Without the pollution, without the intolerance. Sure, our allegorical planet would experience natural and human-made upheaval; of course civilizations would rise and sometimes fall back into their own foolishness; inevitably, there would be dark alongside the light. But at the end of it all even if we never actually told the story - you'd have the unshakable sense that humans and elves had indeed found the way to live together. You'd know that somehow, humans had found within themselves the same wellsprings of spirit and - for want of any other word - magic that the elves originally brought to the world from the outside.
Remember where the elves came from? From the "conehead." And what was the coneheads' origin? Ordinary folks, living and growing and evolving on some nameless world, far far away. Whoever they were, they resisted the urge to blow themselves to smithereens, overcame the desire to feel superior to each other, and over eons of time, became High Ones. And when they left their ancient home to find the vitality they'd lost, it was the raw, heady potential of the World of Two Moons that they sensed, and that drew them onward--to their great fall and slow climb back.
The High Ones thought they'd heard faint echoes of themselves in the minds of the humans who already inhabited that world. The riddle of ELFQUEST, posed only as a challenge and never intended to be answered by us, has always been: Did the High Ones come because the humans already believed in "spirits," or did the humans start to believe because the elves were there from ancient times?
Loren Eiseley, that wise and compassionate evolutionist who surely would have understood "the Way," in an essay written for THE SATURDAY EVENING POST in 1958, asked whence would come the answers to today's pressing questions. Not from the past, for the here-and-now is our responsibility. "Nor," he said, "can we call to those pleasant, wide-browed people whom we strive to conjure up as inhabiting the comfortable future of our novels and dreams. They are lost in the unfathomable, formless future which we are engaged in shaping. Do we want them deeply? Do we want them enough, in the heavy-handed violence of this day, to live toward them at all cost... to stand up and face, as every man must face, that ancient lurking shadow of himself? ... A future worth contemplating will not be achieved solely by flights to the far side of the moon. It will not be found in space. It will be achieved, if it is achieved at all, only in our individual hearts."
The rock-bottom reason you'll not find elf-human hybrids in ELFQUEST is that so many people want them. In truth, however, we can ourselves, here and now, strive for what the elves have. It takes hard work and time, and each of us must find his own path. Layla Voll came close, but missed the mark just a bit. It's not that we don't want to feed readers' desires to see elves and humans living in harmony. It is that, ultimately, ELFQUEST is our personal testimony that homo sapiens - "wise man" - can indeed achieve that harmony--that soul-magic of the elves, no matter what body shape we inhabit at the moment. We won't show you the answer, but it doesn't require any inter-species sexual relations. Just soul-searching, honesty and courage. And that, dear readers, is your homework.
Richard A Pini