Wolves and Trees, or How Elfquest Changed my Life

When I was a child-- a tiny, tiny little thing of three -- my mother pulled a colorful comic down off the shelf for me to look at one day, when I was asking for "Book book book!" and wouldn't leave her alone. There were such amazing characters moving across the pages, so much action and color! It was visual heaven to a tiny me. I didn't understand what was going on (after all, what three-year-old understands like sex, war and all the subtle, interwoven complexities that fill the World of Two Moons?), but I knew that I loved it. A week later, I asked my mother for "Puppy book.".

"Puppy book" was, as you might have guessed, Elfquest. Elfquest is the reason that I'm who I am today. No, really. I'm not joking-- if I look back, the things that I found between those pages (some of those things unconventional, but much loved) have shaped my life. The love between partners, the bond between a Wolfrider and his wolf, the sheer love of art and comics that I have now and the idea that family is what you make it-- those are just a few of the things that I took away from the comics. As I grew older, after we went to church on Sundays, we went out looking for Elfquest. My mother called it our "Sunday Quest". We'd go to a rib place called Texas Lucy's, and then as soon as I scarfed my meal down I'd ask to go over to the comic shop next door. I remember the first few times I went in. The owner tried to direct me to things like Marvel and DC. I asked him where the Elfquest was, and I remember him smiling as he led me to a row of longboxes filled with mixed comics. After a few months of Sunday visits, I had a stool waiting for me to sit on as I spent hours looking for those elusive, magical books.

I would spend my afternoons when school let out down in the garden, a bag full of Elfquest at my side, pretending to be a Wolfrider. Now, let me explain the garden-- I was fortunate to grow up in a beautiful area called Rolling Hills. It was a gated community with people like Chuck Norris and Rosanne Barr living there; but the entire place was like a forested getaway. A good portion of the people who lived there owned horses, so horsetrails crisscrossed the entire area. Our garden was no exception, and was certainly not low on the asthetic scale. We had 24 rose bushes (I remember the number, because they were planted in rows of twelve), a peach tree, plum tree, apple tree, apricot tree, two avacado trees, raspberries, blackberries, tangerines... it was a paradise for someone who wanted to escape to a forested paradise. Well... if that forested paradise was like an orchard. But the imagination of a child is a spectacularly powerful thing-- and I'll be damned if that place wasn't Goodtree's Rest.

I know that people will argue that Elfquest isn't exactly a good read for a young child, what with all the adult subject matter. But those who know me know that I was no average kid. I figured out the relationships early on-- my mother delights in telling the story of how one day, I came up to her with Elfquest in hand and demanded to know if Cutter and Skywise were married or not, and if they were, why was Cutter running off the Leetah? After laughing at my complete indignation, she explained to me that sometimes, men love each other. And sometimes, men love women. And in the rare instance, sometimes, a person can love more than just one person, and all three of them love each other. This put the idea into my head that, surprise surprise, love and respect was what mattered-- not gender, sex or the traditional, two-person relationship. However, that's not to say that the "sanctity of marriage" was lost on me; I understood the soul-deep bond of Clearbrook and One-Eye. I understood the childlessness of Redlance and Nightfall.

As a child, I fell in love with it all.

I'm going to skip a bit about now, to the last few years-- and will say, right now, that Wendy Pini is my hero. She's been my inspiration as an artist and storyteller since I was child. Her work is the reason that I picked up a pencil and started to scribble. I also firmly think that she's the reason I'm anal retentive about having well-rounded characters in a well-developed universe, but that's beside the point (and isn't a bad thing at all).  Anyhow, one year I was working at Anime Expo in the dealer's hall. I was helping friends of mine with their booth- they sold costumes and runes and such. I was leafing through the program when, to my complete joy, I saw the name "Wendy Pini" written down as someone important who would be attending the convention. So naturally, I scoured the program for where she'd be-- and discovered that she was (as I was reading) sitting down at the booth directly across from mine.

My girlfriend at the time (I don't think we were engaged yet?), a fantastic young woman named Meg, burst into laughter as I suddenly dropped out of site behind my table, suddenly terrified. Here was my idol, sitting right across from me. I needed to do SOMETHNG! I grabbed my sketchbook and -- dressed as Rock Lee, from Naruto, a blindingly green and orange combination -- went to go say hello to Wendy Pini. As it turned out, the autograph session was about to start, and I'd beaten the crowd! I was nervous. Terrified. My heart was beating a thousand miles a minute in my chest, so I did the only thing I could think to do.

As I stepped up to the table... I hid behind my sketchbook. I didn't know what the heck was going to happen. I was, as I though, making a fool of myself. But then, from the other side of my hiding spot, I heard "Why, if it isn't a little green elf!" I peeked over the top and stammered something about my lifelong love of Elfquest and how she was my hero and what was the Masque of the Red Death comic (what she had come to the convention to sign for). Needless to say, it was a fantastic meeting-- I got to meet the one person that I'd said all my life that I wanted to meet AND I found out she had a new comic going! I was thrilled.

Fastforward a few years to the future. I moved down from Belmont to Fullerton, and was now in a relationship with Robby-- someone who would become my husband. We had this secret santa exchange, and one person in our group (for privacy's sake, I'm going to call him Mr. Physics, because he's an absolutely stellar and brilliant physicist) is VERY well known for giving complicated-to-open and/or find gifts. He had drawn me that year, to my joy. I was up for a challenge! I was ready for whatever he was going to throw at me!

I wasn't, however, ready when I opened a hardcover copy of Elfquest. There was an envelope in it, with writing on the outside that I hadn't seen before... or had I? I opened it and read through. Then read through again. Then again. And then shrieked in delight. I may have cried. The note simply read:

"Loki,

Good luck on your Quest!"

- Wendy Pini"

The next week was spent trying to find the rest of my gift (three more hardcover Elfquest compilations and 2 gigs of RAM for my laptop)-- it involved sneaking into the men's locker room at the YMCA to retrieve one out of a friend's locker. It took me to a friend's backyard with a suspicious, angry possum to dig in the middle of the night under a spot marked with "X" to find the last two books. The RAM was inside a Chinese puzzle box that took me all night to figure out. It was the best christmas I've had in a long, long time. I have that note framed on my wall, because heck, who WOULDN'T frame something that cool?

Elfquest is still something that I love, just as strongly, today. I had a little boy three months ago, and I've already started telling him all about the Wolfriders and Trolls, the Sunfolk and the Go-Backs. He falls asleep to the songs that make up the 'soundtrack' of Elfquest-- strangely enough, Winnowill's song puts him right to sleep. And he's much braver than I am-- because Madcoil's song? It's terrifying when distorted over baby monitors. He giggles and coos when I tell him how Cutter and the Wolfriders traveled across the burning hot desert, and how he found Leetah. I tell him about how Skywise will never stop dreaming, how Moonshade's magic is in her sewing, how even silence can sometimes shout the loudest.

I will never stop reading or enjoying Elfquest. I look forward with great, great happiness to the day that I can hold my son in my lap and listen to all the questions that he'll have for me, like I did for my mother. I hope that in sharing it with him, I can teach him all of the love and tolerance that I learned from it. He'll form he own opinions and follow his own path, of course, but I hope that this will help foster a love of comics and art, and teach him about hunting and howling, loving and leaving. He'll learn that nothing lasts on this earth forever, but somewhere just out of our reach, the ones that left us are waiting.

Shade and sweet water, dear reader.

- Loki