The Final Quest

Trollbabe wrote:

It fascinated me that Ahdri's webbing lasted as long as it did.

What about all those sleeping in the New Land and Sorrow's end? Those lasted way, way longer than Ahdri's.

So, while I collect Final Quest - because it is ElfQuest - and ElfQuest was such a huge influence and a part of my life and heart, way back in the day... I have to say, I have not been enjoying it as much. Perhaps because there's nostalgia to the OQ, SaBM, KotBW - but I have re-read those (as recent as just a few months ago!) and still have great passion for them (especially OQ - so amazing!)

I think a part of it is - post KotBW, there was just a few ElfQuest stories I had read (mostly that Wendy had done). I think I have managed to pin point why I am not enjoying Final Quest as much.

I feel like there's too many moving parts. Before, it really centered on Cutter and his small tribe. Now there's characters from numerous tribes, and they're all doing different things, different directions, some are at the Palace, some are fighting with humans - it just feels like this would be better as separate comics, rather than one comic. Because there's quite a bit of characters - it feels like it's jumping around a lot to give everyone a little bit of spotlight - but that's making it too jarring to really follow. Because it's so many different "quests" happening at once.

Am I making sense?

Am I alone?

Redhead Ember wrote:

What about all those sleeping in the New Land and Sorrow's end? Those lasted way, way longer than Ahdri's.

They had one or more Preservers to restore it ... not sure whether ahdri had one staying with her. Definitely not during the time she was carried along with the Trolls ...

Embala wrote:

Redhead Ember wrote:

What about all those sleeping in the New Land and Sorrow's end? Those lasted way, way longer than Ahdri's.

They had one or more Preservers to restore it ... not sure whether ahdri had one staying with her. Definitely not during the time she was carried along with the Trolls ...

Preserver webbing can make whoever's in it fall into a trance, unaffected by the outside world, I'm sure it can last a fews years being carried around by trolls.

Tymber wrote:

So, while I collect Final Quest - because it is ElfQuest - and ElfQuest was such a huge influence and a part of my life and heart, way back in the day... I have to say, I have not been enjoying it as much. Perhaps because there's nostalgia to the OQ, SaBM, KotBW - but I have re-read those (as recent as just a few months ago!) and still have great passion for them (especially OQ - so amazing!)

I think a part of it is - post KotBW, there was just a few ElfQuest stories I had read (mostly that Wendy had done). I think I have managed to pin point why I am not enjoying Final Quest as much.

I feel like there's too many moving parts. Before, it really centered on Cutter and his small tribe. Now there's characters from numerous tribes, and they're all doing different things, different directions, some are at the Palace, some are fighting with humans - it just feels like this would be better as separate comics, rather than one comic. Because there's quite a bit of characters - it feels like it's jumping around a lot to give everyone a little bit of spotlight - but that's making it too jarring to really follow. Because it's so many different "quests" happening at once.

Am I making sense?

Am I alone?

You're making sense and you're not alone, Stonehowl, but on the other hand, I really disliked it when they fractured the storyline back in "Shards" and "Hidden Years."

manga wrote:

You're making sense and you're not alone, Tymber, but on the other hand, I really disliked it when they fractured the storyline back in "Shards" and "Hidden Years."

Yeah - I agree. I think they took away when they took away what really made ElfQuest stand out - they broke up the family.

And that's what ElfQuest has always been about. At the root. Family.

Ah, sorry I mixed up your name! I thought you were going under Stonehowl here.

"Elfquest" is about family... on the other hand, I really dislike that bit about the "royal family" in "Shards."

manga wrote:

Ah, sorry I mixed up your name!  I thought you were going under Stonehowl here.
"Elfquest" is about family... on the other hand, I really dislike that bit about the "royal family" in "Shards."

No worries on the name. I was going as Stonehowl here. Because originally I was just going to stick to the Grab Bags (and the tribe my story focuses on is called "Stonehowl Holt") - so I adopted that name here, thinking that's all I'd be writing. But with all these familiar faces, I began posting outside that section, and everyone remembers me as Tymber from the "official" forum - so I asked an admin just to change my name to that. Sorry about the confusion!

I need to re-read everything after OG/SaBM/KotBW - to refresh my memory.

I never minded them splitting up the storylines. I just wished they had found some better artists. I don't understand why that was so impossible. Maybe the art was being done for free or something?

Lunakat wrote:

I never minded them splitting up the storylines. I just wished they had found some better artists. I don't understand why that was so impossible. Maybe the art was being done for free or something?

Well to be fair, Wendy's art is very difficult to "mimic" or get close to. And for me, if you veer too far away from Wendy's art style, you lose my interest. Unlike other comics, like X-Men, Avengers, I have read them for over 30 years, with so many different artists putting their own spin on the characters. But ElfQuest, I admit, I need it to be as close to Wendy's art as possible.

For me, the artist has to have a line of beauty, I think. Joellyn Auklandus did a good job. I liked the original Wavedancers. Joelle from the SoC and Multimedia, I'd pay to see stories by them. But most of the artists from those other storylines were stiff and blocky. Some of them actually made the elves ugly.

Was I the only person major bugged and bordering on seriously creeped out by Barry Blair's art...?

@ Koji: Nope, I was accused of Blair-bashing before - his pederast 'style' has crept me out ever since Elflord! I couldn't believe my eyes when he was hired to draw EQ and almost dropped out of EQ-fandom altogether.

Yeah, Barry's art style is a bit too skeevy for me. I really disliked the stories he drew. I read them once and then never again.

manga wrote:

For me, the artist has to have a line of beauty, I think. Joellyn Auklandus did a good job. I liked the original Wavedancers. Joelle from the SoC and Multimedia, I'd pay to see stories by them. But most of the artists from those other storylines were stiff and blocky. Some of them actually made the elves ugly.

Yes, that's what I mean. All these elves in ElfQuest are beautiful - men and women alike. And it takes a very special talent to capture that ability to make that happen.

Kojiyumi wrote:

Was I the only person major bugged and bordering on seriously creeped out by Barry Blair's art...?

Stormcatcher wrote:

@ Koji: Nope, I was accused of Blair-bashing before - his pederast 'style' has crept me out ever since Elflord! I couldn't believe my eyes when he was hired to draw EQ and almost dropped out of EQ-fandom altogether.

I will say I liked Barry Blair's ELFLORD. His original 6 issue limited series didn't have the overly sexualized fetish tones that the ongoing eventually picked up. His original 6 issue limited series, yes, had sexualized women (and men) - but when the series got it's on going, you had wizards using telekinesis to fondle women. Granted, I still collected it then too - and just took it all for a grain of salt. It was a weird, fantasy, fetish, S&M (at times) type comic, that was definitely a "unique" style (both in writing and art). But Barry Blair (RIP) was also known for doing that one - really sexualized comic - "Leather & Lace" - and it was nothing but two (lesbian? I can't even remember?) women on an adventure in (modern? futuristic?) times - and it was boobs, nipples, and nudity left and right. So seeing a "tamer" version of that in ElfLord did not surprise me. There was some definite fetish tones throughout the ongoing (ElfLord) series. ElfLord for me was what I chalked up for "brainless" reading - right up there with Judge Dredd comics (which is nothing but weird stories and people getting their brains blown out).

All of that said - Barry Blair was definitely not the person for ElfQuest art. His art and stories, as I said above, were too "out there" - and granted, in ElfQuest he was much tamer (at least with the story, and to some degree, the art) - but yes, Barry Blair should not have been doing ElfQuest art.

Blair's online comics like "When Orcs Attack" cannot be unseen and I'm glad they seem to have been taken off the net.  Those were not about nudity and boobs which I see nothing wrong with.

Always liked this review: http://www.whygodwhy.org/t3158-how-barry-blair-ruined-elfquest

Tymber wrote:

Well to be fair, Wendy's art is very difficult to "mimic" or get close to. And for me, if you veer too far away from Wendy's art style, you lose my interest.

Not if you can actually draw. It's not that hard. What's hard is her line quality and her sense of layout and composition. But to simply draw the characters is not hard because they are very shape based. They are constructed like characters for 2D animation. They aren't impossible to draw, simply because you aren't Wendy. She just chose bad artists.

And I don't require her art style to enjoy the comic- but I do require a good art style. I liked the Wild Hunt issues that veered dramatically from Wendy's style. Those weren't bad. And they weren't similar either. I thought everything else was lacking.

And btw- Sonny can't draw that well either. I think "Wolfshadow" and "Troll Games and Soul Names" were mediocre but passable, artwise. He was very hit and miss. His coloring is decent. I'm glad she's having him do that.

I think I liked some of the BOTC artists. The one who did Rahnee captured the dreamy, animalistic quality of her story very well. Most of the other artists honestly aren't as good. But then, sometimes I don't really like Wendy Pini's art that much, either.

Some weeks ago I read SaTS and Discovery for the first time and god look they terrible... Final Quest still looks sterile, but it's way better.

Sonny's drawings look like he's copying panels from earlier Wendy-drawn issues

kathleen3.0 wrote:

I think I liked some of the BOTC artists. The one who did Rahnee captured the dreamy, animalistic quality of her story very well. Most of the other artists honestly aren't as good

Oh yeah, I loved that artist!
But yes, I didn't like so many of the others..elfquest has always been about the beauty in the story, and when a artist draw ugly elves that don't look like themselves...Nope! The old wavedancers was nice, and first part of the new wavedancers was ok.

Lunakat wrote:

And btw- Sonny can't draw that well either. I think "Wolfshadow" and "Troll Games and Soul Names" were mediocre but passable, artwise. He was very hit and miss.

Thank goodness, it's not just me! I've seen people gushing about Sonny's art, but I always thought it was a bit cartoony and patchy. I agree his colouring isn't bad though.

kathleen3.0 wrote:

I think I liked some of the BOTC artists. The one who did Rahnee captured the dreamy, animalistic quality of her story very well.

Could anyone tell me which one this is? I didn't read all BOTC, but have been going though every issue these last 30 minutes to find this one. The only one in which Rahnee appears, as far as I can find, is #1 which is mostly about Timmorn. I was quite pleasantly surprised about this one though (never read it before). The watercolors are amazing, so are some of the animals and Timmorn is mostly very well done... the other elves are quite ugly though...

I read one of the stories done by Sonny the other day and actually I didn't read the credits and thought it was done by Wendy at first, though after a couple of pages I seriously began to wonder in what state she was when she drew it...
Well... Sonny's definitely not the worst, If only he had done all the artwork that has been done by other artist beside Wendy over the years, he might have have gotten quite good in the end

Couldn't stand Barry Blair. He was the main reason why I stopped buying back in the day. His art was increasingly awful, his characterizations lazy, stories just didn't seem to go anywhere, and well, yeah, creepy vibe. I was sad when I heard he passed on, though.
As for Sonny, I'm tempted to blame him for my dislike of the current books. But that really wouldn't be fair, as there is much amiss with the storytelling as well... In my respectful and probably unpopular opinion!

Tymber wrote:

I feel like there's too many moving parts. Before, it really centered on Cutter and his small tribe. Now there's characters from numerous tribes, and they're all doing different things, different directions, some are at the Palace, some are fighting with humans - it just feels like this would be better as separate comics, rather than one comic. Because there's quite a bit of characters - it feels like it's jumping around a lot to give everyone a little bit of spotlight - but that's making it too jarring to really follow. Because it's so many different "quests" happening at once.

Am I making sense?

Am I alone?

No you're not alone and you are completely right. There is a complete lack of focus in the FQ books. It's not necessary to tie up every lose end ever left to be in 35 years of storytelling. However it is always completely necessary to tell a compelling story! And in order to do that, it needs to be clear who the main characters are. It's OK to give a bit of screen time to secondary characters every now and then, but there are now so many sidelines that the whole thing is a muddled mess. It's been a bit better in the last few books, though, so maybe there is hope.

I actually think the story itself is coming along nicely. And I do think that the line art is fine. The main problem Wendy had with PhotoShop was in coloring. And it was a pretty common problem. I actually don't draw or paint as well in PhotoShop as I do by hand. You really miss something there, I think, in not being able to feel what you are laying down.

The program was new to her, and it took her some years to figure it out. In those years, we got Searcher and the Sword and The Discovery- and Masque... which has it's own style. One of the issues she had was super saturating things. I think another issue was not realizing (until after print) how much the screen is backlit in a way that paper can't be. So what probably looked great on screen was most likely lost on the page. (I'm thinking of the recoloring of Book 2- when Leetah was just disappearing into a dark woods. The water-color painted version didn't have that problem.)

A third, very common thing was-- she discovered all the bells and whistles and tried to use them all. Not a good idea in and of itself- but she went and used the clone brush and the standard, PhotoShop grass and leaf brushes in a really obvious way. It probably seemed really cool to her at the time- and I remember doing the same thing the first time I painted a pic in PhotoShop (grass everywhere!)- but to anybody who has ever used the program, it was like "Oh that brush! And that brush!" Which gets distracting after a while.

It wasn't a problem with Masque- because Masque was it's own precedent (also, because I don't think she did the brush thing that much!). Masque was super saturated- and that fit the story very well. It just didn't fit Elfquest as well- because it didn't fit with what had come before and it also seemed to be used more klunkily. Not sure why.

But the bottom line is- she's really an amazing artist. She's has wonderful line and composition. When she draws by hand, there is a beautiful feel and a really strong grace to it. I think she was brave to transition into a new medium. Her PhotoShop art is still much better than a lot of art in most other comics. Now that she's focusing on the drawing again, we are seeing a lot of the old Wendy style come back- the characters are taking on more natural poses, and there is more attention paid to line weight. It looks almost like the old inking.

All in all, I like a lot of things about Final Quest. It's not fleshing out characters in the same way the Original Quest did- but then, it doesn't have to. We know who all these characters are- and anyone who doesn't should really start reading at the beginning anyway. I'm in it to see how it all wraps up. I like that everyone seems to be getting a cameo. I think it will work it's way toward a cohesive conclusion.

If you read the first graphic novel all together, btw- it is a lot more fast paced and more solidly knit than if you read it with two months between installments. I think part of the reason the story may feel disjointed to people is that there is such a gap of time between issues.

I've been kind of wondering if Wendy is having trouble with her sight because of the way everything is neon candy-colored.

Huh... Maybe she's doing it on purpose? Because I just realized how well the colors match up with stuff like "Wreck-it Ralph." It is literally like a computer-animated movie. Maybe she likes it or feels it will catch reader's attention better.