Here is where I introduce to you the closest thing I have to religion. I found my first Elfquest book at the library as a child and fell in love with it instantly. Good thing I was a mature child, too, because that shit has some adult content in it.
Elfquest starts out as the brainchild of Wendy and Richard Pini, husband and wife team, publishing their home-brewed fantasy comic in the early 70's. Wendy's talent is remarkable, and her illustrations are artful, delicate and detailed in every single panel. The early story is full of laughter, heartbreak, strength and sorrow. Oh, yes, I am attached to this series. But when a series goes on for well over 25 years, some things begin to stagnate.
During the comics boom of the 80's, demand for Elfquest rose beyond what the Pinis could produce. Artful, soulful illustrations and heartwarming stories can only be churned out so fast. Unfortunately, the Pinis decided to outsource production of the comic once the story lines of Elfquest kept splitting off again and again.
The original story is far too long to give a quick recap of, but suffice to say, they put one Barry Blair in charge of a “loose end” storyline. Whatever happened to Dart and the Sun Villagers? Thus begins the hackneyed, poorly conceptualized, unfunny, unsoulfull adventure known as “Forevergreen”
(I am biased. At this point, you kinda just have to go with my bias.)
What makes me hate Barry Blair the most?
1) Barry Blair can't draw wolves. This is Elfquest. The elves ride wolves. You pretty much need to know how to draw wolves since
all of the main characters ride them.This is a Wendy Pini wolf.
This is a Barry Blair wolf.
That poor, mangled beast. Good thing Barry tries to angle wolves out of the panels so that he doesn't have to draw them.
2) The lazy characterization. Everything about it is lazy. The elves were already designed by Wendy. All Barry had to do was recreate them, but I guess that was too hard.
3) Barry has two hairstyles he knows how to do. 80's Blown-out straight, and 80's blown-out curly. All hair is roughly the same length and thickness with variations in colour to tell the characters apart.
4) Barry Blair is faceblind. He has no idea how to draw an appropriate expression for a closeup. Characters in agonizing pain will look worried or confused. Characters that are sad will look curious or like they smell something so bad, tears are running from their eyes.
5) Height and weight are too difficult to keep continuous, so all female characters become busty, small-waisted dominatrixes while men get separated into Creepy Old Men and LITTLE BOYS.
6) Same goes for personality. Quirks? Past history? Nah, artistic license. Characters are seperated into ANGRY/SHRILL (for no apparent reason), ATTEMPTED FUNNY or DULL AS FUCK/CONSTANTLY TERRIFIED OF SOMETHING.
7) Barry Blair likes to take artistic license with his work. And by “artistic license” I mean “anachronism”. And by “anachronism,” I mean “I can't tell if he's blatantly trying to retcon something, just forgot about the previous story, or didn't care either way.”
The. Fucking. Belt. Buckles. BB, as I shall now call him for the sake of ease, has all the fashion sense of a greasy fat dude who draws comics for a living. That is, none. His repertoire of character outfits consists of tunics and cloaks for everyone, Leather belts with metal buckles, calf-length foldover boots and either tight, crotch-visible britches or loincloths for LITTLE BOYS.
“Hey, man, this is a fantasy series. Stop arguing minutiae over dumb shit.” Except that this is a well-established, 25-year fantasy series, and you are contributing to an established time line, BB. The comics that you drew for were PREQUELS. Neither the elves, nor the humans had knowledge of or access to metal. Not soft metal, not iron. No silver metal spear points, no daggers, no FUCKING BELT BUCKLES ON CAVEMEN GODDAMN THESE ARE NEOLITHS YOU LAZY FUCK LIKE ROCKS AND LEATHER AND SHIT. NO METAL. It is established in the
very first book that humans don't have metal. Then, later on, it was shown in a flashback story exactly how the elves came into possession of metal. You're putting metal items with elves and humans long before either ever got ahold of it.
Every single delicately rendered, flashing, sparkling belt buckle that you LOVE to draw on all my favourite characters is an affront to my eyes, SIR. Also, they're fugly. So, yeah.
The story itself isn't too much to go nuts over. It's boring, unfunny when it tries, and has gaps and loopholes that leave you scratching your head rather than seething in rage. My first time reading Forevergreen, I started out lamenting over the loss of Wendy's beautiful illustrations, and their replacement with Barry's creepy obsession with scantily clad prepubescent LITTLE BOYS.
Dart* is well over 500 years old by the time Forevergreen rolls around He is also a father. Too bad for that, he is now a LITTLE BOY.
Kimo is roughly the same age as Dart. LITTLE BOY.
Suntop is 16. LITTLE BOY.
ShenShen is over 1,000 years old. BUSTY FEMALE.
Yun is about 30-50. BUSTY FEMALE.
Jethel is 7. LITTLE BOY, though why they would take an infant on an adventure is beyond me. Jethel is magically aged up a bit, or something. Honestly, I think Jethel was just made up and thrown in there so that Barry Blair could have more LITTLE BOYS.
Chot's age is unknown. CREEPY OLD MAN.
Dodia's age is unknown. BUSTY FEMALE.
Door is thousands of years old, but immortal. CREEPY OLD MAN.
*
- Spoiler:
One thing I can't fault BB for is that despite having a child, Dart is canonically gay. While all elves in this universe are kinda pansexual / not restricted, Dart seeks romantic relationships primarily with male characters. It doesn't excuse the little-boyness, but it does explain the sexuality.
There is no variation on this for main characters. For background characters, there is the occasional fat, haggish woman or hideously-deformed-by-disease character, but both of those are simply variations on BB's “creepy old man” archtype.
Barry Blair is obsessed with LITTLE BOYS. You know how I said that he separates all of his male characters into creepy old men and little boys? It is exactly like that. There are no young adults in BB's world. There is no middle-age. Only young, luscious, plump-lipped, small-hipped boys (God, I felt dirty writing that) and 40+ fat, wrinkly old men. Like, BAM. Puberty hits them like a truck to the face. Upon reaching puberty, these boys no longer have the sacred right to wear nothing but skimpy loincloths and frolic around in their little-boyness. They are a man, now, and must wear ugly, ugly half-calf foldover boots. And like, a vest.
9) The fucking porno-face. It only takes a few pages to start to see it. Those that started out reading Wendy's work will be puzzled, and won't see it right away, but the porno-face will creep up on you.
No matter which angle he draws the face at, BB always draws mouths going in the same direction. Sideways. With the lips sticking out as far as possible in an “OOU” vowel, no matter what the dialogue is. Are they exclaiming “DIE?” = OOU-mouth. NO VARIATION. BB needs his O-face on little boys, so that his work will always resemble the rest of the “exotic” pornography he's produced in his time.
If it looks like all of his drawn characters are missing a giant cock in their mouth, it is because they are. BB simply redraws his porno repertoire in each panel, minus the cocks and there we go. Action fantasy.
10) Now, why is BB obsessed with little boys and porno? Because BB is an actual pedophile.
- Quote :
- Cooper became a published cartoonist in his teens, creating sci-fi comics stories for Barry Blair's Aircel Comics. Blair has caused controversy with some comics that have featured young boys being tortured or eroticized, and while Cooper has never said that he was molested by Blair, he told The Comics Journal that their relationship was awkward and "inappropriate" and it served as the inspiration for Cooper's book Dan and Larry in: Don't Do That! The book features a childlike, "duckish" creature named Dan who is mentored by a pushy, older creature named Larry, and at one point Larry holds Dan down and presses against him, saying, "THIS is how we should play sometimes." Despite Larry's disturbing relationship with their son, Dan's parents are cheerfully oblivious. The Dan and Larry graphic novel culminates in a scene wherein Larry dons a leotard that reveals his small, erect genitalia and invites Larry to "touch it if you want to." This leads into a sexual encounter that culminates with what appears to be a cathartic expression, as Larry trips and suffers a gruesome accidental death.
BB's artistry has found him working on such groundbreaking art as:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Also, dubiously legal, considering all the kids on there.
This is a fansite, but the intro picture just kinda sums up his work pretty nicely:
Busty, fake-boobed women with giant pancake-nipples? Check.
Little boys in tight, revealing clothing and OOU-faces? Check.
Creepy old men? Check.
Inability to draw noses? Check.
Colour-coded genitalia? Check.
Pick any piece of BB work on this fansite (Pick any of it. The site itself is worthy of its own sporking) and you can have any or all of those things in one image.
But this isn't about BB's porno work. I wouldn't so much care about his cartoon kiddy-diddling if it didn't infect my favourite comic series.
This is about
Forevergreen, and about how Barry Blair ruined Elfquest.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]The first few pages aren't so bad. We establish Chot returning to the frozen mountains, alone (Unlikely, but not impossible. It would have taken him several years to do so)
Aside from a little bit of OOU-mouth, it's mostly just a recap of previous comics. (Yeah, that electric blue and green outfit of Windkin's, I can't pin on BB. That was Wendy's idea.)
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Yun is inexplicably wearing the same outfit she arrived at Sorrow's End in, despite it being several years later. An outfit designed for the arctic. In the desert. During a drought. Good job, BB.
Also, take note of the scripting. See, when you take a porno, but have to remove all 18+ content, all you're left with is an hour of a pizza delivery guy with a wrong number and two non-actors. That's pretty much how the Forevergreen script goes. It's not really funny, it's not really dramatic, it's not really a lead-up to a porno, since there's no actual porno allowed in it. It's a non-script with young boys and busty women flailing about amongst various plot elements.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]“Now, quiet. I need to listen for a stream. These caverns are full of them. I know a thing or two about trolls.”
O... K...
“Over here!”
“I hear it, too. Zey, you're so clever.”
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]BB seems to have studied the Liefeld book of anatomy and passed the test on Way Too Many Fucking Teeth.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Get used to it. The language and colloquialisms really are that stupid.
Poking = fucking.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Another nice sampling of OOU-face.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]WHAT? NO, I DON'T EVER USE PORN FOR REFERENCE, WHY DO YOU PERCHANCE ASK?
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Also, there is only one type of running. Full-sprint on your tippy-toes. No jogging, no trotting, just full-on face-forward sprint.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]The mountain! It's erupting! But we don't know this because we've spent all of half a day in the desert consciously and have been cocooned ever since. We don't even know what a volcano is, since neither of us has ever experienced one before. But shit, we gotta move!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Here's the part where things get interesting. And by “interesting” I mean “completely smothered in airbrush as an excuse not to draw backgrounds.” Holy SHIT can we ever not tell what's going on. I get that a scene like this can be chaotic, but this reeks of lazy to me. Don't know how to draw it? LOST IN TEH HAZE OF WAR. HAZE OF WAR. HAZE.
P.S. BB doesn’t know how to draw wolves, so he just says `fuck it`and gives them human eyes. LOOK AT THEM. They are the same as Dart`s eyes.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Transparent excuse to draw young boy butts and sprinting.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Have I mentioned that BB likes to rip off Wendy's more quotable passages? I'm sorry, “make reference to”.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]PA-KOOOM!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Psst. Bows don't work like that.
And that is one powerful fucking bazooka arrow that can knock an elf
sideways off his mount several feet.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]DERP DERP DEAD.
NOOOOOH!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]“With the son of Strongbow, something changes...”
Perspective?
Foreshortening?
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Kimo just looks... worried. Not enraged. Sidemouth.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]“My son and lifemate tied me here for safety.”
1) THEY WOULD NEVER EVER DO THAT. EVER.
2) Flimsy excuse for bondage? Probably.
BB also doesn't know how to draw braids. Check it.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Those aren't dreads, or some kind of “tribal” hair wrap. They're regular old braids. BB just can't be assed to draw them, and instead settles for “turds coming out of her head with pom-poms on the end”
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]“What? Kahvi's not tanned? Shit, I forgot. Say it's because of the lighting.”
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]“I don't know how to draw elderly women who aren't porn stars. Derp.”
“And I have completely forgotten what Kahvi's outfit looks like.”
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]DERP DERP.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Wrong expression. When molten rock has just penetrated your shoulder, you do not ponder over it casually with a 'wuh-huh?' look while tears roll down your face.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Did Kahvi stab Zey through herself? The world will never know. Really. It's never explained. Also, both Yun and Chot magically survive with no disability being stabbed in the spine and nearly cut in half respectively.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]It's conveniently raining for this dark moment!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]The End of Chapter 2.
Why is the water green?
For... EVER... Green?
Now go cure yourself with the original series to realise just what a disappointment this is.