Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, it all started out in the days........
well, actually it really "started out back in the days"!

More exacly to be in October 2000, when I went to an animation class. It was the class, in which I invented the Furry Pixie Elves, feel free to issue evil fatwas on that school. But they started out as some sort of an elf-troll-pixie furry, and I went to the library to get more information on trolls. The librarian gave me some copies of the Elfquest comic books
First I thought: Oh hell noooooo, not anything with fairies! But one of the issues was the one, in which Cutter and Skywise drinking at the trolls cottage and I was rolling on the floor, laughing. Because I always fancy a laugh, I borrowed some more issues. For example the one, in which Rayek was beaten by Cutter in the Trial of Hand, Head and Heart and lurked around in the desert, and Savah suggest him and Cutter and Leetah to live together, and Rayek says No. By then I found out, I dealt with some serious quality :)


First thing for me was to get on the Net to get more information on Elfquest, and I stumbled into a lot of cool pages. There was the Meister der Zwischenwelten, where they had vampire elves on, and I had a comic book manus on a vampire around my place.......
Also I had wondered what a child of Rayek and Winnowill would look like.......

Then I read the story on how Redmark became Redlance, and I felt so much with him in the scene, where he painfully had to realize, that his magic hasn't shown yet. And that sort of got me going...


The script came shooting out of me, but there was one major problem, and that was, how the vampire concept was to be brought in the Elfquest Universe. In one of the first drafts, it was just a vampire that told Black Moon that he could gain the greatest powers, if he went one night with him (the classical rape thingie) but it came out unnatural and totally awkward. Then it was Winny, but this did never fit into the Palace flying away and the Blue Mountain collapsing and the Egg Thing.

I also didn't want to let dimension windows to be opened or other miraculous big things, the story should be kept claustrophobic, and therefore a bat who was caught in a pool of old Elven magic, that has gone bad seemed like a good idea, and finally the scripting took off :) That bat also is the one connection between this Elfquest World and my own T.O.W.

Back, when I put out the comic, there were some die hard Elfquest fans out there, who wanted my head on a stick. I have since learned, also with my adventures in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, that this was not unique to the Elfquest fandom, but is more a universal thing, like the Mohammed Cartoon Row, just with fourteen year old losers on the other side. I had some fun, poking these in the arse, but it got old. But, what I said on this page years ago, still applies:


First and foremost I didn't do this piece to denounce the name of Elfquest, and I have big respect for the work of Wendy and Richard Pini and their associates. That's why you won't find any Pini-Elfquest graphics on this page, even though their Terms of service and Copyright notes state, that this is allowed in a very restricted manner. I didn't feel like copy-pasting, I wanted to pay tribute by working hard, even though the result would not be able to measure up to theirs.
Another reason to "The Other Elfquest" was, that I did not really have access to comics, that were both deeply depressing and screamingly funny. So I wanted to do a comic, which I would like to read myself. Although I had fun provoking people, I did not do it to predominantly provoke.

Also I was really sick of "superelves" that were just superbeautiful, and supertalented, and supereverything. I know, it is all about dream images and ideal fantasies, and there is nothing wrong with that in my opinion, but it is done before and about 70 times better, than I could ever have pulled off. I really wanted to explore the opposite, and bring darkness in these fantasies; therefore I developed this rather untalented elf, that really has a piece of work to do with his low self esteem. Since that, I have sort of specialised in losers of that type, all my elves have one big black spot, be it not being able to shoot a bow, be it not having personal hygiene,
or similar sorts of non-elven traits.

Also I will mention that I put a lot of work into keeping the persons multidimensional, because else the emotions will fall flat on their faces. In comic, and movies and anywhere else, where a fiction story is told, you do actually lie. And people decided to be lied to if they want to be entertained by a piece of fiction art. But they won't swallow anything, there has to be an inner logic to it, so therefore you can use words like "real" and "unreal" also in science fiction and fantasy pieces.


I made an effort to show Pike as a very caring person, who knows, what emotional responsibility is. He defended Black Moon and offered to raise him at the very beginning. Cutter, I hope is shown as a good, open-minded chieftain, who doesn't get emotional, but still asks his guts, when he has to make a tough decision. Black Moon accepts him as a kind of father figure from the moment, Cutter decided, that he might stay, because he felt save without knowing the meaning of the words, Cutter said. Children do feel like that, and therefore one accepts that in a comic book. Rayek I felt, should in no case just be the moron, that is all over the place with his demands on perfection. It is clearly shown (or at least I think so^^' ) that he really wants the best for his son, and that is in his opinion to have lots of magic powers to use and to have the whole world in one's hand. You see that everyday, and it is a very loving sign from a father. But it seldom works out........


My apologies go to fans of Nightshade and Strongbow, who don't come out very sympathetic and Preserver Fans. There are no Preservers. I honestly forgot them, and I didn't notice it by myself. Waldmeister was the first one to ask. But there are no Preservers :(


Also I know, that a lot of Elfquest Fans, to whom the "sugarcoated" style of the art is essential. Those will feel repelled by my not-so-sugar-coated style. People, who do not know Elfquest, are probably not getting half of the story, because I used the Elfquest terminologies a lot.

This article is revised 24 Dec. 2009