Books like ElfQuest: The Secret of Two-Edge

Still continuing my quest to complete the first eight volumes of the collected Elfquest, plus a bit of accessory material….obviously this is my little disclaimer. Go back to the beginning if you have wandered here in curiousity or error somehow. You MUST start at the beginning, this is no place for the uninitiated. I don’t care if you found this volume in a stack of your Dad’s old porn mags or at a garage sale or what. Put it down and find a way to get yourself a copy of the preceding books. Do it. Now.Boox Six is titled “The Secret of Two-Edge,” but the half-elf, half-dwarf anti-hero plays only a peripheral role in the HUGE events of the saga in this volume. Yes, his madness is revealed for what it is, but it’s hardly a shocker given what has come before. His fate is to be a catalyst, which is what he been to the Elfquest universe all along. But I’m getting ahead of myself.“The Secret of Two-Edge” concludes the two-volume sequel to the first quest. The siege at Blue Mountain comes to a violent and fitful end as Winnowill and her machinations are finally revealed in all of their sinister glory. In truth, this book should have been titled “The Secret of Winnowill,” as our favorite Evil Queen is unmasked completely as the story progresses. Cutter and several of his band have managed to invade Blue Mountain just as Winnowill threatens to bring the entire outpost down around them in a cacophony of falling rock and scattered lives. Leetah, her son Suntop, and the now super-powered Rayek also manage to enter the fray in an attempt to “heal” the mental wounds that drive Winnowill forward in her desire to commit Elven genocide and escape the world of Two Moons. There can be no more secrets now as the battle comes to its ultimate conclusion.There is still this great sense that Wendy Pini picked apart Michael Moorcock’s “Elric of Melnibone” series for a good chunk of the inspirational bones of this project. The dark, eldritch beauty of the Blue Mountain and its amoral and evil inhabitants reminds me of nothing so much as Moorcock’s vision of the latter days of the decline and destruction of Imrryr, The Dreaming City at the center of the Melnibonean empire. Derivative or not, this similarity to the Elric mythos gives these two volumes of Elfquest a sort of shimmering and slightly glamorous sense of darkness and corruption. We are way past the the events of the first Quest, when the characters still had a wide-eyed sense of innocence and optimism. There is far less humor or playfulness in these pages. Even the scenes of Elven frolic at the end of the story are drawn in muted, dusky tones. And maybe that’s good. Brightness and light and a happy ending were fine for the original Quest. This story is more about finding out what evils lurk beneath the surface of the world. It’s a more grown-up Elfquest here, one that doesn’t shy away from the hideous motivations of a dank character like Winnowill, whose desire to bend the Gliders to her perverse intentions proves to be the ultimate in betrayals. This is intense storytelling, and I’ll give the Pinis credit for taking the story in a direction that I really didn’t see coming after the end of the initial 20-issue run. The art is beautiful, the colors rich and vibrant. Wendy Pini manages to bring out a lot of emotion and drama though her character drawings, The backgrounds are full of detail, and it’s worth taking a long look at each panel to get the full sense of what’s happening in the story. I like the fact that the Pini elves continue to grow and develop like real, living….well, elves, I guess. Lessons are learned, lives are lost, and an entire Elven culture is brought down in a cascade of rock and ruin that lays waste to both alien and human continuities. Overall, I loved the book, but I still get a sense that the initial Quest and the main ideas behind it have been lost a bit in these pages. That sense of a search for home…..a search for place….has been subjected to a bit of revisionist history. I don’t get a sense that the Pini elves can ever really go home. There has been too much lost in the transition from the High Ones to those who came “after.” Too much time has passed, too much blood has been diluted through the passing of generations and the melding of the Wolfriders to the world of the Two Moons. The story has lost a bit of its initial sense of wonder and fun in exchange for a more robust and complex style of storytelling and plotting. We are moving into epic fantasy territory now, kids. Don’t let the big eyes and delicate physical frames fool you, this is some heavy shit we’re dealing with.Volume Six concludes with all of the cover art for the original comic book releases as well as an 8-page stand alone story featuring the Preservers that was published in 1980 in a Marvel Comics teaser magazine titled “Epic Illustrated,” which was a short-lived attempt to reach a more mature segment of the comic and graphic novel audience. So onward I shall go. I have two more collected volumes and a couple of Compendiums and at least one peripheral story yet to go to complete my personal Elf Quest. It’s been fun thus far spending time with Cutter and Winnowill and the rest of the gang, even though I now want to go and spend a little more time with The Albino Price and his doomed City again as well……..