Heads up, Elfquest fans

[annathepiper]

Why the hell didn't I know about Wendy Pini's new project Masque of the Red Death before?!

spazzkat found out about this tonight when he happened to stumble across the first print volume of the collector's edition, and I was "wait what new Wendy Pini WHERE?" So I looked it up online and discovered that it's actually an ongoing web comic. If you go to the site, you can go through it all panel by panel, or even let it play as a sort of very slow animation. The story summary is here. Chapters 1-4 are up and Chapter 5 is in progress; all of the major players have been introduced and things seem about to go splody very soon.

Style-wise, the art's akin to the more recent Elfquest releases since Wendy's been doing things more digitally lately; this means sadly that it's not nearly as complex as early Elfquest. But it's still obviously Wendy art, and it is rather pretty, and fairly Elfquest-y; I keep doing double takes that the characters aren't actually elves, especially given that most of them are built like Gliders.

I am massively amused that one of the two lead characters is a dead ringer for Strongbow, except for having too many fingers and the wrong shape of ears. The innocent young lad that's just shown up, too, looks suspiciously Cutter-like. The only way this could amuse me any more is if the other male lead looked like Rayek. ;D (Especially given that this is a "mature content" comic; unlike with Elfquest, there's on-camera sex.)

So yeah, this is fun; Elfquest fans on my Friends list, you might consider checking it out.

Comments

[annathepiper]

While I must defer to your superior Savah expertise, I'm pretty sure her hair was never, ever that scary. ;D

But yeah, Chapter 5? Totally Blue Mountain, although with a livelier color scheme. And while the Rainbow Suite is one of the things Wendy's lifting from Poe, that's very, very Blue-Mountain-y as well.

And I think I could buy Steffan as a young Voll.

[janne.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes... Voll isn't half bad, if we're matching gliders! (And hey, maybe Savah always wore that giant headdress for a reason ;) Though I concur with Eveshka, Kabala is otherwise more Winnowill. And the ambiguously gendered party arranger is sort of preserverish -- I was amused at the interaction between them and 'Prince' About preserving Steffan as a statue =)

[annathepiper]

You parsed Bunchh as ambiguously gendered? Interesting! I totally read 'girl'. Possibly because Bunchh has very Nightfall-y hair. I'll have to go back and look again. What I wasn't sure about is whether Bunchh is supposed to be an alien species, or just a weird blue offshoot of humanity.

I see echoes of Tyleet in Fronda, too, although Fronda has much wilder hair. About the only major character I don't see echoes of somebody in Elfquest in is Fronda's father. (Whose name I have totally dropped now. Heh.)

*snerk* Imagining scary hair on Savah underneath that headdress is going to make going back and re-reading any of her scenes an entirely new experience.

[ellerisse.livejournal.com]

I could swear there were cues in the text - in the language - implying that Bunchh is either ambiguously gendered or has been (possibly perceived as/passing as) less female or more male in the past. However, without going back and rereading I'm not sure if I just saw 'preserver' and read that, itself, as a cue.

[annathepiper]

I completely missed any hint of confusion in the dialogue between the characters about Bunchh's gender. Now I'm going to go back and doublecheck just to be sure. ;)

But yeah, I can also totally buy any Elfquest fans getting "Preserver" and therefore "gender neutral" off of her. That's definitely a Preserver-blue going on there, not to mention a Preserver-like ebullience about her. And at any rate she seemed to be wearing more "female"-style clothes, as compared to the males in the cast.