Final Quest #19

I'very been thinking about this, and I know there's people who would argue and say a lot happened in the final quest - we had Ember recognize, then be kidnapped. Vena got shot. Cutter found out about his connection to Timmain. Dart and Mendes commit as lifemates.

All those things happen, but they aren't exactly told as a story. It feels more like a laundry list. There are times when the Pinis seem to be holding tight to this idea of the hero's journey, but they're forgetting about the transformation of the hero. I don't get any feeling of how anybody has been changed by their experiences. There's got to be conflict, resolution, and growth.

And, yeah, maybe that's happening "off-camera", but then the story is not being told. Storytelling is about the journey, and bringing the reader with your characters, and that's where I think the final quest fails.

Cutter found out this fundamental piece of knowledge about his very being. Yeah, he freaks out for a while, but basically he just gets over it. So far everybody just gets over whatever's happened and moves on. I have no feel for why any of this is important, for the characters or for me.

Here's a sum-up of the final quest:

Cutter and Timmain-
Timmain: You know, Cutter, you just like a mini-me. I mean, really. You are literally a little piece of me.
Cutter: AAAIII!
Leaves.
Comes Back.
Cutter: Timmain, I was a little freaked out by what you said. But then  my wolf died, I got licked by some trees, and I found your stupid old troll. So, we’re cool now.
Timmain: Was that so hard?


Strongbow and Moonshade-
Moonshade: Did you just see Ruffel get fried? I’m moving into the palace.
Strongbow: How could you leave me, you bitch!
Moonshade: Excuse me?
Strongbow: I’m sorry! I love you, come back!
Moonshade: I don’t know, I’m making so many new friends…
Strongbow: Know what? Screw you!


Dart and Mender-
Mender: Dart, hey! We should so hook up!
Dart: I don’t know. Things haven’t worked out so well before…
Mender: But this time it will be forever!
Dart: Uh…
Mender: Come on!
Dart: OK


Ember and Tier-
Ember: Recognition!
Tier: Yay!
Ember: It’s the Djun!
Tier: Shoot. Run!
Ember: You run. I’ll stay here.
Tier: What?!
Later…
Ember: That was intense! I got kidnapped…
Tier: I almost drowned…
Ember: I don’t think I want a baby.
Tier: What?...Yeah…OK


Rayek and Winnowill-
Rayek: Let me get this straight…if Winnowill gets healed, she’s stuck in this rock forever?
Thinks…
Rayek: Sound boring. I don’t think she’d be down with that. Call me when you have a better offer.


Venka and Two-Edge-
Venka: You and your contraptions! You know you almost got me killed? I am so tired of this shit!
Two-Edge: C’mon, baby. I love you!

FiQu is a surreal piece of art where nothing happens and yet, events are condensed in a few panels.


That Moonshade-Strongbow horse is so dead, there aren't even bones left. BTW, I have this image of Sunstream heading out to fetch her and some voice in the air mumbles "I'm already here" and she materialises and sends Strongbow into a fit

*sees Strongbow faint like a Victorian age lady*

Poor Strongbow!

I think Final Quest is better if you read it all together in graphic novel form. Not enough happens issue to issue to feel as if the story is moving at less than a slow pace-- but it does come together and feel fuller when all put tog in print. Also-- this last book out (final quest 2), the colors work much better for the printed page. It's quite pretty, in fact. The first volume, the colors were often too dark for print, but in the second, they are quite nice. I hope the third follows suit. I'm reserving judgement until it all plays out.

I have to take it back. I just looked at it again. Sonny Strait does not know how to color. It' awful. There's no sense of value and contrast or any solid logic to his coloring. And it's so muddy half the time. I showed it to my boyfriend (also an artist-- he doesn't read Elfquest) for a second opinion, in case this was me being prejudiced. He said, and I quote "this person has no knowledge of color theory. He's just randomly picking colors- like 'this is a pretty color' and 'I like that' but he isn't using them in a smart way." And he also agreed "this art could be really striking if someone [was coloring it who] knew how to paint." So I showed him the Starblaze editions and he could immediately see the difference in how the color was applied.

I can see that Somny is trying to use color harmonies-- like yellow and purple or blue and orange... but he's so remedial at it. I just don't know why they couldn't find someone who understood color better.

And I bet you anything he's painting in RGB, not CMYK-- possibly on an u calibrated screen. Because he isn't taking into account the difference between print color and screen color. One is backlit and will always be brighter. There are more color variations in RGB as well-- but if you are going to print something, you have to use CMYK. Because That's the color range that can be reliably printed. And you have to consider values-- because subtle gradations won't show up in print half the time. Also the fuzzy photoshop shading is so remedial-- I can't even. I've never said that before-- but I literally just can't even.

Why can't I just get over this? I can't-- because it is such a disservice to the art. It's taking something that should be beautiful and making it ugly. Like-- flat out ug.

We all realize that the variation in the quality of the coloring over the various incarnations of Elfquest is the reason Darkhorse is doing black and white collections- right? Because the drawings are solid. That quality is consistent.

There are a lot of issues with the art (Copy Paste, the colours, the shading), but my main issue is the story.

The overall package is simply underwhelming.

Remember Cutter saying that everyone left behind by Rayek in his plan to save the High Ones would be worse than dead?

Cutter isn't just a Wolfrider riding out his mortal coil to become "more himself than ever" (as Ember explained it to Lehrigen).

Cutter will be worse than dead. He will be subsumed into an alien entity. There's no way he won't be simply folded into the rest of Timmain's consciousness. Unless I guess if she willing lets him be in the forefront but then what's the point of her being his "higher" self?

Rayek honestly has the better fate... there's at least the possibility of the outcome he desires and he knows he chose it open-eyed.

Outlier wrote:

Rayek and Winnowill-

Rayek: Let me get this straight…if Winnowill gets healed, she’s stuck in this rock forever?

Thinks…

Rayek: Sound boring. I don’t think she’d be down with that. Call me when you have a better offer.

That's brilliant. I love it!

All this talk of fainting Strongbow is making me really eager for him to find out about Tammain.

manga wrote:

Cutter will be worse than dead.  He will be subsumed into an alien entity.  There's no way he won't be simply folded into the rest of Timmain's consciousness.

I don't yet get the Tammain dynamic. ^ This might happen, but what about all that swooning and the "*gasp*... ooh, the tearing away" histrionics? Perhaps they're not quite so intimately bound anymore...?

Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting: storytelling is out, meandering drama is in. But I'm sure it'll all be explained in a future "SHOCKING" issue that "you won't want to miss!!!"

I just don't follow the story any more. I don't care about the characters, nothing makes sense any more and it's just depressing. Sometimes you get a few pages of art that provoke the good old days, and then you get pages like the ones that had Rayek in them- where you get a face cut and pasted on an awkward looking costume.The characters are not even recognizable any more. This comic is just plain awful.

manga wrote:

Cutter will be worse than dead. He will be subsumed into an alien entity. There's no way he won't be simply folded into the rest of Timmain's consciousness. Unless I guess if she willing lets him be in the forefront but then what's the point of her being his "higher" self?

Rayek honestly has the better fate... there's at least the possibility of the outcome he desires and he knows he chose it open-eyed.

Outlier wrote:

Rayek and Winnowill-




.

That's brilliant. I love it!

Anyone see the movie Being John Malkovitch? The line "What happens when a man goes through his own portal?" goes through my head.
@manga - I thought of that when I read what you wrote. If you (or anyone) haven't seen the movie, it's very odd but I love it and it is pretty much perfect in terms of Cutter. That one scene where John Malkovitch finds out there are people out there paying $40 a pop for 15 mins to enter a portal (with a tiny door lol) directly leading to being in his head, and he's so appalled, he pushes to the front of that line and enters his own head .
Here's the scene, if anyone is interested. I dunno, I find it very amusing, and I now will always think of it when I think of the Tam/Timmain thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIpev8JXJHQ

Pretty much sums up my feelings when he crabs Cusack and goes: "I have been to the dark side, I have seen a world NO man should see!"

*pops in to share weird middle of the night thought*

What if Timtam merged and that's how Jink came to be? The two parts of the soul are so different now they create a whole different character.

*leaves to go check her temperature.*

Spoiler:

Exactly this. Goddamnit.
And on top of that, the art is too much clone tool and while some panels are gorgeous, sometimes the colours are just meh. Idk what happened but everything went downhill since Wendy started drawing digitally.

Yeah... I think that's the thing. There are a lot of events that occur-- but so far, they don't feel as if they are leading up to a coherent narrative. In the Original Quest, everything felt as if it was pushing toward a singular goal... which it was... first, to track down other elves, which morphed into finding the palace. And it had a focused theme-- identity. Who are we?

Seige at Blue Mountain and Secret of Two Edge were similar-- the goal was to get Windkin back... and stop Winnowil. The theme was guilt.

Shards-- to recover the Palace.

The parallel story for Ember's tribe was all about Ember's coming of age. They were on a search to find a home, which drove the story forward. Otherwise, everything else... from her interactions with Skywise, to Moonshade's irritation, to choosing her weapon, to meeting Tier and having to make judgement calls about him, to fighting the funky shapechanged animals... was all about her growing into an adult and a leader.

Searcher and the Sword (which I liked!)-- for Shuna to stand up to her abusive spouse-- and by extension, conquer the memory of her abusive father.

Discovery-- to find and meet the Wavedancers-- and the theme was the debilitating nature of fear.

So what's the driving story behind "Final Quest"? We know the central issue is "who goes and who stays"-- but otherwise... it does feel meandering. I guess the obsessed humans are supposed to drive the elves to leave... but I think there are a lot of things thrown in there that don't help to focus the story, they just distract.

It seems to me that loss of identity is a strong theme in FQ, but that may be unintended...
Like, Moonshade who seems to have lost her original identity, while her lifemate desperately hangs on to his. Rayek and Winnowill, who try but fail to change each other's identity. And then there is Cutter who is at risk of becoming literally somebody else, and fights it.

And Skywise of course, who did not realize that without his wolf blood, he has a different identity, and his relationship with Cutter would never be the same. And now that Cutter is going trough an even stranger change, he is left deeply upset and unable to communicate with somebody he could once communicate without words with.

Those are really good points Elwing. Yes, I think disruption of longstanding relationships has been happening throughout the story.

Just got caught up on things and I wanted to add my agreement that the rape scene was really unnecessary. OK, we get it, they're bad horrible people. Having them rape a mortally wounded woman until she died was taking it too far. Elfquest is already gritty enough, it didn't need that.

I'm really really late to the party but I've been re-reading New Blood recently, having the idea of making a "I'm still salty about Dart and Kimo" thread (might still happen) because all of the Dart and Mender stuff in FQ was a sh*tshow and a half and I don't really know where to begin with it, but then I was googling Barry Blair because as much as I was kinda meh about his art back in the day, I've grown really fond of it now and I wanted to, you know, see what other stuff he did.

And then I learned Barry Blair was gay.

Might be old news, but it's the first I hear of it. I had a suspicion from his art, but it was always just that. And it just adds so much more insult to the entire thing. An actual gay man created a couple, made them soul bond, and then the f*cking Pinis go 'nope, we'll take one of those characters, gay him up with a different character and kill off his partner', because you know, some of us were vocal in the comments section on the blog on their website about the lack of representation - the request being, but not worded explicitly (can't remember if it was? at least it wasn't what stood out in the end I guess), make Dart/Kimo official already, but somehow they found a loophole, ending up with Dart/Mender as a here's your representation you f*cking whiners

I'm glad Mr. Blair wasn't alive to see this.

I didn't dislike Dart and Mender (I even made art about them) but I loved the forevergreen story and I will always ship Dart with Kimo harder than Dart with Mender. They were just so cute together.

I have not read Elfquest in ages because the Final Quest left me with a huge hangover but I might re-read the Forevergreen story. That comic has a special place in my heart.

What about Dart and Shushen? They were canon lifemates, and drawn by Barry Blair.

Yes, the official website recognises (ha!) Shushen (or Shu-Shen) as Dart's lifemate (at least NOW it does, can't remember how it looked like in the early to mid 2010's). However the topic at hand at the time, when the representation stuff was being discussed in the comment section in the blog, was of present ElfQuest, The Searcher and the Sword to be specific.

In hindsight though, I should have realised that the Forevergreen plot was being retconned as Dart keeps referring to Kimo as his 'friend' and like 4 other things that should have made me realise it was over. That their relationship was no longer canon. I was flogging a dead horse, I realise that now. Edit: Or, they did have something, but then they broke up? Because... reasons, I guess? So now Kimo is listed as Dart's 'wolf-friend' and Kimo is Dart's... student? Heh?

Anyway after thinking waaay too much about this over the past 2 days, I've started thinking it's a bit of a 'death of the author' thing? It's become pretty clear from what RP has said in the past that he's/they're opposed to the Dead Author idea of - that once the work leaves your hand, the story sort of belongs to your audience. To him/them, the elves belong to them, and if they want to retcon a story or go back to a previous interpretation of a character or plot point, it's in their full right. It's their elves. Whatever story we were sold (literally) and grew to love, they can just, poof, nah that's not canon any longer. RP was the editor, approving the scripts and the final versions of all the issues not created by him and Wendy, so, it was fair to treat them as canon; but, if they want to change stuff in hindsight, saying 'nah, we get that this is what was told, but we're not sticking with that version any longer', you know, suck it up.

(Shards issue 16, by the way, about Dart having "lost himself in the Forevergreen", screw that, that's not the story I was told. I was told the story of a young chief who lost his lifemate, lost himself, grew angry, bitter and anxious, doubted himself, and then grew confident. 'Lost himself', f*ck off, I'd rather say he found himself, but you know, whatever.)

((I also keep visualising that panel where Dart tells Kimo to stay put near their newfound holt because he can't bear to lose him [like he lost Shushen], saying "feck it I can't speak words like you Kimo but goddamn please stay put because I need you to not fecking die on me" and I just -- --- it's just so in character for him. I just love capable wolfy yet vulnerable gaylord Dart so fucking much.))

As for Mender... it's really hard to put into words why I think the Dart/Mender match, as told at that point in the story (if New Blood and Wild Hunt is still considered canon), is a giant clusterf*ck; "they're both tops" isn't really what I'm trying to say nor doing it justice. However. Both Dart and Mender, I think, are characters portraying both healthy and toxic parts of masculinity, but in their own ways. And this is where it gets hard to explain... somehow Mender's toxic masculinity parts comes of as toxic masculinity parts often portrayed in heterosexual males, while Dart's... don't? And I feel like Dart's were resolved during the Forevergreen story, while Mender... boy did he have a way to go. A looooooong way. Someone in this thread mentioned how Dart is Mr. Relationship Guy while Mender is Mr. Sleep Around and that is so accurate. Mender, in my opinion, has a long way to go before lifemating anyone, and in same opinion... he might never. He'd probably recognise someone to produce an heir to keep those precious healer genes alive, that makes sense, and in a few hundred years time he might end up sticking with Yun because... she's more reasonable, in his eyes, than most elves he knows, she gets him, and he likes having her around. But it wouldn't be an 'I feel like settling down' situation, it'd just... grow into it. And he'd accept it. And maybe even like it a little.

All of this, because of Wild Hunt. Because what I realise is, the Mender I fell in love with when creating the Mender thread on the original Scroll and all that... that was Joellyn Auklandus' Mender. I thought he was cute and all in HY#4, but that wasn't what did it for me. It was how Mender was beautifully flawed and conflicted (and even kind of a bad guy? in a world of perfect elves) in the Wild Hunt plot.

(I find it kinda funny though, that the characters/ plot points that I've become the most passionate about from ElfQuest, are not original Pini works. Heh.)

So, ... it's not like I can't see Mender with a guy, it's just - not Dart, and more importantly, not being the character I've learned to know Mender as before FQ. (Heck, I'd even ship him with Kimo before I ship him with Dart!) That being said, before Wild Hunt, I definitely sorta could see him with a guy with a personality like Dart? In HY#4 as well. But then Wild Hunt came along and made him that wonderfully flawed bastard that I just... it's not that I absolutely can't see a love story between retconned FQ Dart and FQ Mender work, but my upset is, they're not the same characters. It feels like they erased the character arcs these character had been on and were still on, and decided "this is what this guy is like now, and this other guy is like, and what the hell, let's have them marry". To me, Mender isn't a cute healer still pining for Ember, Dart isn't the sensitive youngling he was in Book 6, and Kimo isn't the sexless twink (sorry) he was in the 'Sun Villagers' poster; Mender is a conflicted cock with a long way to go, Dart is an angry, anxious rooster with the softest of hearts, and Kimo is a passionate, cheeky*, loyal, funny half wolf.

(Also at what point did we forget Dart is actually Strongbow's son? Urgh.)

Barry Blair just made these characters and their relationships come so much alive. There are some pages in Forevergreen I keep reading over and over again because the dialogue and characters feels so real. Then to have that just snatched out of your hands, because, wait we regret our decisions and we're gonna pretend you didn't read any of it.

Okay I think I'm done ranting for how...

I guess what it comes down to is... I'm just gonna continue pretending Final Quest never happened, basically. Oh, and Searcher and the Sword too. I like this version of reality better.

* "This isn't how I wanted to spend the day" no Kimo we know what you wanted to spend the afternoon doing... you insatiable bastard

I stopped caring about the representation thing ages ago because Wendy is so weird about the whole thing. If it was just representation Dart X Kimo would have been fine???
I found Dart X Mender an odd match at first, too. They don't seem to make sense together.

I also loved the part of Forevergreen where Dart wanted to keep Kimo safe. That was so cute! I reread that issue so many times!
I also love Kimo's attitude. He's so funny and sweet and just such a nice character, especially in Forevergreen.

I agree with pretending the Final Quest never happened. I tried but it's just a weird story and when it was done, I found myself no longer enjoying Elfquest.
We can make up an alternate timeline where Dart and Kimo stay together forever!