I don’t promise I won’t do one of these for every issue, so you should probably be glad that it’s not a monthly title. OTOH, it’s the first time in a loooong time that I’m really impatient for the *next comic*, so hurrah and huzzah!
So this is a 60 page prologue and it’s…wow. A lot happens in it. A *lot* happens, and I’m torn about…it’s well done. I mean, given how much they were trying to do, it’s well done. And to give them props, in 60 pages they delivered *four* gut-punches. I don’t know if they’d have been equally gut-punchy for new readers–probably not, but as Ted said, “They’re not exactly going for growing their readership here, are they?”–but four of them, ranging from startlement to dismay to horror and finally to an actual gasp-out-loud moment of shock that’s actually still making me reel.
But it’s so much that I, who haven’t read ElfQuest in ages but have vast amounts of RAM dedicated to it, felt overwhelmed. I do think they did their damned best to introduce about 40 characters in 60 pages so new readers might have *some* chance of hanging their hat on something, but man. Information overload.
They answered some questions that I think must have been niggling at readers and had to be dealt with immediately so The Rest Of The Story could come along. Some of them I don’t actually care about, and the rest of this sentence is going behind a spoiler cut because spoilers and incoherence
Windkin, for example. I liked Windkin fine as a youth but he fell off (or floated off) the face of the earth and eh, didn’t miss him. I didn’t much care for his look in his reintroduction (although seeing Sorrow’s End and the shattered Bridge–! That was gut-punch #1!) and I’m kind of hoping he proves to be batshit crazy or something. I assume his story is going to tie in with the rest of the Final Quest and so it was important to get him back on screen, but otherwise, eh.
OTOH, Tyldak. It turns out, when push comes to shove, that I really *like* Tyldak, and *waugh*. Did we know about this? Was this story told anywhere else and I missed it, or am I supposed to be hit in the face with it, because FACE HIT OW
You know what, if I was Skywise I wouldn’t form any really serious attachments either, Jesus.
What is UP with Strongbow TALKING ALL THE TIME NOW, I mean I’m all like okay Shuna yes fine okay but EVEN WHEN NO HUMANS ARE AROUND this is NOT RIGHT
Speaking of Shuna, um, wow. Her and whoosiz, Yun’s human kid…this is going to be a problem. And Ember knows it.
But frankly, all that pales in light of MOONSHADE. HOLY SHIT, MOONSHADE. HOLY *SHIT*. That–what–that–holy SHIT!
Look, Moonshade’s always been kind of a background character, albeit one who has certainly got a solid, quiet presence and a wonderful skill and a joy in it: I mean, she’s got personality, she’s just never been really front and center and she’s exactly the kind of character that fangirls madly in love with Strongbow blithely write out of the story so they can have him for themselves.
Except I never did. That’s the level of my love for *Strongbow*, if not Moonshade herself: back when I wrote/daydreamed ElfQuest fic/stories and inevitably of course wrote myself into them, I did not fuck with that love story. I broke my own heart bajillions of times because OF COURSE my characters were always hopelessly in love with Strongbow and never once did I shunt Moonshade out of the way in those stories for my own emotional benefit. I love those two, even if Moonshade has always been eclipsed by virtually everyone else in the comic. They were the Way, and now–now–
Now what?!
I just, holy *shit*!!!