Friday sorts of stuff

[annathepiper]

So the word's out about new Elfquest, finally, in January. I wish I were more interested in this than I actually am--because the story we're going to get is the Recognition of Suntop and Brill. Er, um, I mean, Sunstream and Brill. (Yes, Cutter's boycub is finally going to get a grownup name, it seems, but it's going to take me forever to make the transition in my head.) My problem? I never was terribly interested in Suntop as a character, and from what little I saw of Brill in the Wavedancers Mark Two, I am not interested in her either. The impression I had of her was of a whiny moper who spent way too much time just lying around bemoaning the fact that she didn't have a lifemate yet. BOR-ing.

Also, since a few new folks are looking at my journal now and I know of at least one of you who's taking on Nanowrimo, it's time for another plug for my little writing community, scuzzboppers. I'm trying to encourage folks to post about their Nanowrimo experiences there this year. We have at least half a dozen folks who are making noises about taking on Nano, so if you're doing it too and you're interested in having a place to talk about it, consider yourself invited to drop by!

Last night, as previously mentioned, mamishka and I went to go see a sneak preview of the new Zorro flick, The Legend of Zorro. Picoreview: not as solid a story as the first one, and in places has way too much cheese. However, Antonio Banderas is still very pretty, Catherine Zeta-Jones does an excellent job kicking ass, and the kid playing Joachim de la Vega, Alejandro's son, is a hoot. Worth seeing if you're in the mood for something fluffy and (mostly) brainless.

Today so far: more working on contract job nibbles, some email, some going down to the shops to pick up necessary food items and my next round of Synthroid. Still to come: balancing checkbooks. Oh joy oh glee Tomorrow, though, there will be pumpkin carving and that will be fun.

ETA: And oh yeah, I learned something! All these posts I've seen with ETA and edits in them were confusing me, but I have learned that in this context, the abbreviation means "Edited to Add". Which makes a lot more sense than "Estimated Time of Arrival". ;)

Thursday evening miles: 0.2 (addendum to yesterday's projected total)
Friday miles: 2.0 (walking)
Miles out of Hobbiton: 431.65
Miles to Rivendell: 26.35

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Wait, I thought it was Banderas supposed to kick ass, and Zeta-Jones was the eye candy. Did I miss something?

[annathepiper]

*snicker* Actually, they're both extremely pretty and kick a lot of ass together!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm joining up to the community. I plan to beat last years nanowrimo record, for me, of 0 words.

:)

And yes, bot Antonio and Catherine are yummy.

[annathepiper]

Cool, glad to have you! And yes, aren't they just? ;)

[irysangel.livejournal.com]

New EQ? Where?

[annathepiper]

Nowhere yet. It's not due out until January!

[irysangel.livejournal.com]

No, I meant, what's it called? So I can pre-order on Amazon. :)

[annathepiper]

Ah! I believe the title is "Discovery".

[irysangel.livejournal.com]

It's going to be in regular comic book format. Horrors.

My enthusiasm (despite it being for 2 characters I don't give two sh*ts about) has suddenly waned. Wendy has a proclivity to go WAY behind on deadline, and I'm sorry, but I just can't get fired up if I know it's going to stretch on endlessly.

[ravyngyngvar.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard any confirmation, but the number "four bimonthly issues" has come up, so I am not really worried about delays now.

[annathepiper]

I may go actually peek at the first issue in a store, just to see if it's interesting... but yeah, it's going to have to work hard to make me interested enough to actually buy it. I think Wendy's still capable of beautiful pictures, but that's not enough to get me to buy a story about characters that just do not interest me at all.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

It is sad, but ELfQuest lost me years ago. They might've kept me if they'd gone on with the single title stuff, but the break was just too long, and so much of the multi-title stuff was just so bad that, eh. Who cares anymore. And a Recognition story with Suntop is not the way to bring me back in. Not that a Recognition story with Ember would be either, for that matter...

[annathepiper]

And that's kind of another beef I have with EQ anymore. They left a halfway interesting story with Mender infiltrating the local human village unresolved and as far as I know won't be finishing it any time soon, and instead are going to go off and tell me about a Recognition that honestly just won't interest me. Sigh.

[irysangel.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I didn't like that storyline either. It seemed more fanfic than anything else, especially given the rough pencil art, which I hated.

What's wrong with the original wolfriders? Why can't we go back to them, dammit?

You're reminding me why I lost my Elfquest buzz here. ;)

[ravyngyngvar.livejournal.com]

Well, there are a *few* of the original wolfriders there. Ember, of course, and Scouter, Dewshine and Pike. I think that's all. The "young generation" of the original quest, and Mender was born in its final issue. But when "The universe revolves around Cutter", I guess any story without him in it can't be seen as being about the original wolfriders.

Actually, there are *two* unresolved stories about the same set of characters now. Four years ago, there was a single issue called "Recognition" that apparently took place years later than when "Mender's Tale" was put on hiatus, but without resolving that storyline. It just started up a new one, and didn't finish that either. I was more interested in that one.

As for Lorraine Reyes' (or Lorraine R. McLees now) art style, I think she did better when she didn't have to put out a new segment *every* month.

[annathepiper]

Wait, I don't remember the "Recognition" tale you mentioned--remind me of the general gist?

And me, I kind of liked Lorraine's style, too. Sure, it wasn't Wendy--but I never was one of the "if it ain't Wendy, it's crap" crowd. I was perfectly happy to look at other people's artwork as long as it was in fact good artwork. ;)

[ravyngyngvar.livejournal.com]

"Recognition" was drawn by Brandon McKinney, the artist from most of the "Shards" storyline. It was the second "Summer Special" issue in 2001 (the first being "Wolfshadow" which has already been included in the "In All But Blood" collection).

General gist? Well, things seem to be building up to a battle between Ember's tribe and Angrif Djun, the son of Grohmul Djun. Khorbasi, a kid from "Mender's Tale", has grown up and apparently still lives with the elves. The bounty hunter Lehrigen, now an old man, shows up again, having decided that he prefers to die with them. When he talks about atoning for all the elves he killed, Krim gets annoyed and says that "we're not that easy to kill!" At which point Lehrigen reveals...

Well, if you don't know, maybe I should stop here. We never get to the titular Recognition, but the cover seems to hint that it's Ember and Teir.

[annathepiper]

Ohhhhhhh, I remember that bit with the bounty hunter now but had totally spaced on where it appeared. And I remember the grown human who was calling Yun "Mother Yun". You're totally right, they need to finish that up too.

[annathepiper]

Well, the Pinis did split up the original Wolfriders--a lot of them are hanging out at the site of the original Holt now, as of The Searcher and the Sword, and I suspect that the new Sunstream/Brill story is going to start there as well. (Though I don't know for sure.)

The thing I actually liked about the Mender story was that it covered one of the few aspects of Elfquest that still interest me--how the overall relationship between the humans and the elves develops. It's one of the reasons I liked The Searcher and the Sword, too.

But enh, yeah, mostly the buzz is gone for me, too. :)

[janne.livejournal.com]

Nice fandom icon there :D. I've been happily reading the Wolfrider comics they're belatedly publishing in norwegian, one book a month from the Bearclaw era. Better than I remembered, really, I think I read the originals when in a grouchy state of mind about Elfquest in general.

I lost interest in the future of EQ when those horrid Jink comics were published, but Elfquests past can still pull me in -- now if they could get somebody to do a decent one-off in color from the relative past it would be good. (Me, I think the original comics skipped far too quickly past the wolfriders first meeting with the gliders. That could have been an interesting revisit :)

[annathepiper]

I was totally behind the "Wolfrider!" series until it abruptly switched from Wendy to someone else--and while I am not, as I just mentioned elsewhere on the thread, in the automatic "if it's not Wendy, it's crap" crowd, I did not like the final artwork in that series at all.

Plus, it turned into yet another story about the universe revolving around Cutter. Sigh.

I don't know if I'd like going back and filling in missing bits of the established stories, though. That can sometimes be cool and sometimes not. My most beloved, favorite series of novels did that recently, and established a few things that I didn't think fit in with the characters at all, so it turned out be a disappointment.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

See, in fact, I think the ElfQuest universe did/does revolve around Cutter, and that when his story was finished, so too should the ElfQuest story have been. If they'd done a more graceful handoff to different generations or different stories, I might've been happier, but so much of it was badly done, and ... eh. Yah. Preaching to the choir here. :)

(P.S. Thanks, Janne. :) I think my fandom icon is very funny. *giggle*)

[annathepiper]

AH, yes, you've totally nailed it. Even when trying to hand off to different stories that shouldn't have revolved around Cutter, somehow things had a habit of rolling right back around to him when they shouldn't have done!

Preach it, Sister Kit! ;)

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

They can't *help* coming back to Cutter. He's the focus point of ElfQuest. Honestly, the only way to really pull the world away from him would be to kill him, and that wouldn't make anybody happy either. It's like trying to tell the Serenity story without Mal, or the Highlander story without Connor/Duncan, or etc etc etc. It's very, very hard to do something generational when your original hero is still alive. Bah. :)

[annathepiper]

Yeah, makes sense. Which is part of why I'm still annoyed that Ember's tribe is still out there in plot limbo! But enh well. I've certainly got other things to read, like, oh, say, that anthology coming to my mailbox soon. The one with the words "C.E. Murphy" on it. I hear she writes good. ;)