Elfquest - Two-Spear #2 [1995] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Elfquest - Two-Spear #2 [1995]

This 5-issue mini-series was one of my few exposures to Elfquest comics not done by creator Wendy Pini. There was this unusual period in the early-to-mid 1990s where there was a small publishing empire built around EQ, with as many as six books a month, set in different time periods in the complex universe the original series spawned, plus some alternate universe stuff.  For my part, shortly before this time I had caught up to 1993, the point where Pini began opening it up to other creators. Continuing beyond that seemed more than a bit daunting, but this series, set in the past of the original series, seemed like it might be a good way to dip my toe in.

The Two-Spear of the title is the fourth of the previous chiefs of the Wolfriders, who gave main series lead Cutter his "Blood of Ten Chiefs" title. A few bits of his back story had been alluded to in the earlier comics, as some of them affected the main narrative, and I believe there were several prose short story Elfquest books that I haven't read which also flesh out parts of his story. This seems to be the main place where he's explored, courtesy of writer Terry Collins and artist Delfin Barral.

It's a pretty intense story. Elfquest was always known for displaying a lot of Pini's disparate influences, so it would casually go from adventure to high fantasy to humour to horror to drama in telling her long and complex tale. In this series, it's like taking one thread of Pini's tapestry and focusing on it exclusively for over 100 pages.

It's been a long while since I've read any Elfquest, and even longer since I've read this series (I tried to start THE FINAL QUEST when it began in 2013, but quickly decided I needed to go back to the beginning and also fill in some holes in my reading before reading that). By itself this is an intriguing story, advancing Two-Spear's war with the humans and eventual descent into madness and drawing on some of the origin backstory of the elves (I don't think any of the main backstory was newly presented in this book). Barrel's artwork, a lot of it seemingly done just in pencils, sometimes with greytones, is an interesting contrast to Pini's usual slick animation inspired style, while remaining true to her character designs. Looking at the other issues, there seems to have been some struggle to reproduce the art, too light in some places and too dark in others, this issue seems to strike the best balance.

I think sometime soon I'll finally start at the beginning again on Elfquest, and then re-read this whole series when I get to that point, and finally get to THE FINAL QUEST series.

The entire series is currently available free on-line, along with most Elfquest comics published prior to 2013. The first issue starts here. It also appears in Volume 9c of the 1998-2002 Elfquest "Readers" collections, but not apparently in the more recent reprints yet.