The Final Quest

Guys, guys, BoingBoing is hosting ElfQuest: The Final Quest.

It’s the first day and it’s already agonizing. They’re only posting one page a week. A WEEK, for the love of grod. But oh, the art. This is my ElfQuest: it’s not the super-soft painted work of the late nineties and early noughts, it’s not the too-sharp work in the first SIEGE/KINGS books, it’s not the still-finding-the-way roughness of the earliest issues, it’s not the well-meant-but-almost-entirely-wrong art brought to the table by other artists as ElfQuest branched out in the 90s, it is not the too-harshly colored material produced in some of the later graphic novels, but is rather rich and soft without too much saturation…it’s my ElfQuest. These are my elves, and honestly, I nearly cried to see them again.

And I am astonished at how touched I am to see it again, because I thought I had left my Holt years behind.