Before we get into the letters for this issue, there are some bits of information I'd like to pass along.
*** About the signed, limited print of the cover art to HIDDEN YEARS #1 that you sent your coupons in for: All prints were mailed as of June 15, 1993 - this includes the U.S., Canada, and all overseas addresses. We know that it will take up to 4-6 weeks after that date for delivery in the States, no idea how long to foreign addresses. But they've all gone out. (What we did was to extend the deadline for coupons all the way until end of April. just to give all the Johnny-Come-Latelys extra time. If you sent in after that, shame on you!) If the address that we had for you as of mid-May was correct, you should have no problem. If you changed your address (remember, we told you we needed an address good from April 1 trough July 31), keep your fingers crossed.
*** We received a longish letter from a reader in Finland, who asked that his/her name not be included if we decided to print the letter. Well, it was a fairly unambiguous Vegematic letter, and so didn't make the final cut, but it did raise a couple of questions.
First, the writer asked why the tone of the letters that were chosen to see print was so positive; why that tone is "not at all the same as in nearly all the comments I have seen? Do those letters in Elf-Addressed really represent all the letters you receive? Who wants to listen to only praise?" The implication was, I think, that I select the letters that appear here to give some false impression of the "approval rating" that ELFQUEST gets each month.
We get a lot of response to what we do here at Warp Graphics, especially since we made the decision to open up the world of ELFQUEST to new ideas, stories, and artwork. As editor-in-chief for the entire line, I get the task - sometimes frustrating, always challenging - of choosing what letters to print in any given issue.
No matter what the mail looks like, however, the selection process is always the same. I give each reaction's "side" the amount of space in the letter column that is proportionate to the number of letters received expressing that side. So if it looks like 90% of the letters here are saying "Good show!" it's because 90% of the letters we received really said "Good show!" Actually, I tend to skew the letter column away from the totally positive if I can. All glowing praise is boring, and those letters that do provide constructive criticism more often than not also provide the springboard for interesting discussion. But you, the readers, get the same "response picture" of the world that we get.
(I will grant this particular writer that, by and large, a greater percentage of negative commentary comes from Europe than from the States, though the overall number of pans is small. Why this should be, I have no idea.)
The second topic has to do with electronic mail (e-mail for short). The letter writer said that we'd get lots more response - at least from him/her, make my day - if Warp were "on the net." It's not a bad suggestion, and in fact for some time now I've had accounts on several of the larger information services. Here's the list of addresses:
On CompuServe it's 72077,12.
On GEnie, it's RPINI.
On Portal it's richard.pini.
On Odyssey it's Skywise.
That's the list for now; i've not yet gathered up
the nerve to tackle the Internet directly. I know that at
least CompuServe, if not the others, will accept e-mail
from the Internet. So all of you who want to
communicate à la modem, go for it!
And now on to our regularly scheduled letters page...
I read "How Shall I Keep From Singing" part
2 yesterday, and I've got to say that I like the story as
a whole better than I liked the first part alone.
However, I still have a bad taste in my mouth from
certain parts of it, so please allow me to place a
disclaimer on my comments that they do not come
from any animosity toward artists other than Wendy
touching the series. (I feel exactly the opposite!)
My main objections stem from the feeling of the many monumental events that took place being rushed in order to fit them in a two-part story, and the exaggeration that resulted. The worst parts dealt with Haken, who descended into madness and megalomania at a breakneck pace and ended up much further from the ideals of the High Ones than Winnowill, Rayek, or Kahvi have ever come. Perhaps Haken's story, spread over the course of years, might have been a little more believable, but I found it very hard to swallow that by part two of the story, he would actually take a spear to an injured and helpless fellow elf. Why wouldn't he attempt to convince them to leave the planet when they were all on the ship and he had the humans under control? In fact, the other High Ones resigned themselves all too quickly to staying on the World of Two Moons, considering the relative ease with which elves kept getting into the palace. And I'm sorry, I had a problem with so many of the High Ones being exact carbon copies of present-day elves. Any time a story attempts to fill in the past, it has to convince us that the present we are familiar with really follows from this new material. In the case, Timmain, Aerth, Sefra, and Kaslen just seemed like cross-dressing knock-offs of Cutter, Leetah, Skywise and Redlance, and Haken was an exaggerated hybrid of Rayek and Winnowill. Did you have to keep every physical appearance the same, right down to Aerth's and Haken's eye colors? You could have developed new characters with some traits all their own and let us figure out that they had goals and beliefs that would shape later generations, rather than driving these points home with a sledgehammer. Haken was even dark-skinned among his lily-white comrades. And why, within the context of the story, would Haken and Timmain only have called Aerth for help, and none of the others? I was waiting for one of them to slip and call him Leetah.
The story was really just a little too revisionist for my taste, compromising the letter of what we've known before in a few places and the spirit in many others. As I recall the Wolfriders's history, they were a group of elves that had been living in the mountainous area near the palace until the ice age came and made survival difficult. A High One, Timmain, still remained in the tribe and gave birth to Timmorn Yellow-Eyes, who then led the elves to the forest regions to the south. In "How Shall I Keep From Singing", Timmain almost immediately developed bonds with the new world and started regaining her powers. The gradual process of her becoming one with nature on this new world was replaced with her straining in order to turn into a bird, and the other elves in the tribe were all made High Ones in order to have everything happen in the first few years after the crash. There are other small things, such as what I said above about the High Ones returning more than once to the palace, rather than scattering, "Never to return" (ELFQUEST #1). This story should have stayed as faithful as possible to established ELFQUEST lore and built upon it, fleshing out the bare bones of what we'd been told before. Instead, it changed things around in a story that makes us suspend a lot of disbelief.
Still, there was a lot to like. The story definitely drives home one of the big tenets of EQ, that utopia might not be the most desirable of all possible worlds. If any readers still had doubts that Cutter did the right thing by stopping Rayek from rescuing the High Ones, this should make them stop and rethink. Aerth's pain from Recognizing, then losing, Timmain, was very touching. (She truly had become more wolf than elf if someone who knew her soul name couldn't get her to leave the den.) It was also nice to get at least some clues into the origins of the various elf tribes. We've now known Vol as a helpless infant and ancient leader; I'd love to see a story someday that deals with the early days of the Gliders. Gibra, Vol, and Haken were clearly the seeds of this tribe, but I'm sure there's much more to the story. And I'm betting the unnamed daughter Timmain bore is Savah's mother. (Pleeeeeeze don't get totally revisionist and try to tell us that was Savah herself! Savah stated when she first met the Wolfriders that she'd never known any of the High Ones; also, we know that her mother was one of the elves that crossed the desert with her, and that she is younger than Ekuar.) Hmmm... Savah's two kids sort of remind me of Suntop and Ember, except with the genders reversed...
Actually, despite my misgivings, I'd love to see a follow-up to "How Shall I..." I mean, it happened in the HIDDEN YEARS, not in NEW BLOOD, so it all "really happened," and I can accept it. It would be nice to see Ekuar, Mekda, and Osek in their few happy years before their capture, and well as dozens of other possible story threads. My only request is that the next chapter allow things to happen over the course of many years, the way KINGS OF THE BROKEN WHEEL did. Oh, also, thank you for leaving open the question of whether any High Ones other than these eight survived. It's nice not to have things like that cast in stone.
Sean Sinclair
<<street address removed from archive>>
Melanie Harris must be new to this comic. Her
comments about Haken's legacy - "Maybe he found
another tribe of elves..." made me laugh. Wake up,
Mel! These are the High Ones, parents of all World of
Two Moons elves. If they were a play, they'd be "High
One and Only." ELFQUEST doesn't do cop-out
maneuvers. What's going to happen? He's going to be
exiled to the elfin equivalent of Job? I don't think so!
If the new troupe stays true to the tale, Haken will
presumably become the seed of elfin malignancy,
spawning both Rayek and Winnowill's ancestry. There's
also the argument of genetics. He's the only black-haired
High One; they had to come from somewhere.
I do have to wonder at the mysterious skin color. He's
the only one with a tan. Did the coneheads drop him
on a Hawaiian vacation before crashing their ship?
As for the recent critical onslaught arriving in Po-Town, the explanation is simple:
1) It's like your best friend getting a nose job. It's not bad, it's not what she was born with, but it's still different. And...
2) Pure and simple jealousy. Most EQ readers fantasize of one day being handed Wendy's golden skill. We've tried it with tracing paper, but it's still not right. Not even close, for those in the know. So here come these people who can; you approve; we hate them. "Stupid humans - if we don't understand it, we fear or worship it." Thus we worship Wendy and fear (hate, etc.) those who understand and recreate her talents. Why does she have to be so damned inspiring?? When you're dealing with someone so talented as to inspire tattoos, any successors are in for a great deal of criticism.
Now down to business. Personal jealousies aside (what, do you think that theory was based on guesswork?!), the new work is wonderful and true so far. However, I do have a few criticisms.
First, and most importantly, children (elves included) have big heads! Granted, High Ones are proportioned differently from Wolfriders, whose cubs are 4 1/2 heads tall. But really! Even if you go by the human standard of eight heads tall, children should still only be five heads tall, the average size and proportion of an adult Wolfrider. Remember the first encounter between Gliders and Wolfriders? OK, so I have a slight fetish here, too...
Less technical, and more a matter of personal preference, is the comparative stiffness in issues 6 and 7 of HIDDEN YEARS. Again, maybe Wendy's spoiled me, but I'm used to more natural speech. Sarah, this is not meant as an attack on your writing. You're doing a great job; it's just so formal. The elves didn't speak English anyway, and even Shakespeare used contractions. Stop writing for college professors and tell Timmain and friends to relax a bit. They're not being graded on their language usage.
OK, one last thing before I annoy you into ignoring this letter entirely. The humans are drawn naturally (why does the female have hair on her arms, shoulders and face, but not on her chest? Do I detect a note of sexism or gratuitous ness here?), the wolves flow with natural grace, but most of the elves look as if they'd break apart if they breathed too deeply. Their physical appearance is enough to convey their incongruity to the World of Two Moons. They just don't seem real. Stop worrying so much about whether or not they look like Wendy's. Sit down and talk to the elves, get to know them three-dimensionally, adopt them in your hearts as your own. It's OK. Wendy already gave them to you. I have a feeling that once you make them your own, "your" elves will move with the same grace and fluidity that Wendy's do.
Lorraine Piscopo
<<street address removed from archive>>
See? We're not slaves to glowing, complimentary letters here! These two longish missives are presented in their entirety because they represent, in different flavors, two facets of the critical gemstone. Each writer has made some observations and drawn some conclusions. Some of those are well-reasoned, some are more precipitous, some are - or may be - wrong. Therein lies the fun!
When I first heard of a new creative team on
HIDDEN YEARS, I was quite apprehensive. But I decided
I would read the two-part story "How Shall I Keep
From Singing?" and judge Byam, Abrams, Barnett
and Paty afterwards instead of before.
And the verdict is... good. Real good.
Throughout the entire story in issue #7 I found myself drinking in both writing and art, enjoying Timmain's half-wolf, half-elf form to Haken's disturbingly familiar "black sending." I have no complaints, except for one: GO MONTHLY! But even that can't really be considered a complaint, because I realize that one can not rush greatness.
So, to conclude my first letter to a comic book after eighteen years of reading them, may ELFQUEST last for another fifteen years, and more!
Shade and sweet water to all!
Greg McNutt
<<street address removed from archive>>
Not that we're completely immune to glowing, complimentary letters, mind you...
Next issue, the fourth installment in what sharp-eyed readers will discern as "the Rayek arc," dealing with our favorite egoist's early years... all of which leads up to, in November, a spectacular Solstice Special, written and pencilled by Wendy Pini with inks by John Byrne, which offers the ultimate, final, complete and no holds barred confrontation between Rayek and Cutter. See you in 60! - RP