A Glimpse into the Comic Book Known as Elfquest

Out of boredom while visiting my dad's house as a seven years old girl, I wandered into my step sister's bedroom and came across various issues of a comic called Elfquest. I was drawn by the elves on the cover, so I immediately sat down and scrolled through the pages. Little did I know that very day would be the first day of the most intense obsession I have ever had. Eighteen years later, I am still in love with this world called Elfquest and I feel obligated to share this world with the rest of you.

The woman responsible for this world would be Wendy Pini who claims these elves have lived in her head for years before she finally got it on paper. Wendy then met Richard Pini, her future husband who became the editor and helped her publish Elfquest. Together, the world of Elfquest was born in 1978 and in 2006, Elfquest is just as alive and full of untold stories waiting to be shown.

The story begins with a palace crashing onto a planet called Abode where the humans were at the mentality of cave-mens. Terrified, the humans approached the palace and to their surprise, confused tall and slender elves and small trolls wandered outside of the palace. The elves, inexperienced when it comes to the human instinct to destroy what they don't know or understand, reached out to the humans and quickly learned that was a big mistake. The humans slaughtered several elves and the rest ran, along with the trolls, into the forest. Shattered, was their reality as they were forced to survive in an alien landscape full of cruel beings.

Fast forward ten thousand years later, the elves have changed in many ways. They are shorter, stronger, agressive, and quick to distrust anything that they don't know. These elves are called the wolfriders because they have a connection with the wolves and ride on their backs. They communicate in two ways, verbally and mentally as they have the ability to "send" their messages to other elves, including the wolves as well. Telepathy is not the only power that the elves have, certain elves are born with powers such as healing, flying, and the ability to shape yourself along with other powers yet to be discovered. The wolfriders have a custom where each elf has a soul name as well for the public name that everyone knows.

A soul name is something very personal and is basically, your very soul. To discover an elf's soul name they would usually have to recognize the person. There's two types of recognition: one where two elves recognized each other, breed a child and more often than not, become life-mates. The other kind is where two elves recognized each other, but do not breed and are thought to be more like siblings in all but blood. But it's not always so black and white as you would discover as you read on.

The chief of the wolfriders is a young male elf called Cutter, whose soul name is Tam. You quickly see how protective he is of his tribe and yet at the same time, full of curiosity. In the beginning of the story you watch as Cutter's tribe gets burned out of their holt, forcing them to turn to the trolls for help. The trolls have changed as well. No longer were they smaller than the elves and somewhat dependant.

They live in caverns where a king ruled and the main goal for every troll was to obtain as much riches as they possibly could. Instead of helping the bewildered wolfriders, they tricked them by promising a beautiful forest with no humans but instead gave them a desert with not one tree in sight. The wolfriders were unable to backtrack as the trolls closed up the cavern, the only answer left was to wander through a land so unfamiliar to them. What they find, I won't spoil for you but I promise you that you will not be disappointed by this story.

Elfquest is full of adventures of love, death, birth, betrayal, hatred, passion, mystery, sadness, happiness, fear, and most of all, curiosity. You will follow Cutter through countless of adventures and quests to find answers to the ultimate question, "where did the elves come from?". Cutter is the first of the previous ten wolfrider chiefs to try to find the answer and in turn discovered more than he ever dreamed of.

There are too many volumes to list here but the first several would be Fire and Flight, Forbidden's Grove, Captives of Blue Mountain, Quest's end, Siege at Blue Mountain, The Secret of Two-Edge, The Cry From Beyond, and Kings of the Broken Wheel. There are many, many others after these eight volumes. There also are also prose fiction under the titles of The Blood of Ten Chiefs, Wolfsong, Winds of Change, Dark Hours and several others. Do yourself a favor and pick up Fire and Flight and discover the world that I practically grew up in.