Sparklebrain Reason One: Wendy Pini

Have you ever met your hero? I have–and she’s even more amazing in person.

If you like fantasy or awesome or elves or stories of the Other or great art or amazing storytelling or any of a number of wonderful things, you’ve heard of (or should have heard of!) ElfQuest. It is, of course, the magnificent creation of Wendy and Richard Pini. She’s the artist and author. He’s the publisher, businessman, promoter, sounding board, supporter…together they are an incredible team.

If you haven’t read ElfQuest, go here and scroll down. It is all online for free. That may not seem such a big deal in this age of webcomics, but what if I tell you WaRP Graphics (for Wendy And Richard Pini) started putting ElfQuest out in 1978? That’s right. These two are so cool, they went back and scanned it all and put it up for free because they are just that awesome. Not to mention they self-published when self-publishing was hard. (No, it’s not hard now. For serious. Marketing, getting noticed? Yes. Actually publishing? No.)

I don’t know just when I first read ElfQuest. In the eighties, certainly, when I was somewhere around 12-14. It was summer–summers were boring. When I’d read everything I could get my hands on, I’d go bug my big brother for books. If I harassed him enough, he was sure to throw something good at me. (I mean that “throw” literally. Ever seen the SFBC edition of Dragonriders of Pern? 750 pages. OUCH.)

Anyway. Big brother at some point gave me the first graphic novel of ElfQuest. Can you say devoured? Very soon I was back at my brother’s door, harassing for the next book.

I could go on and on about ElfQuest, but a lot of it would be “squee!” and “OMG!” and “You have GOT to read” so I’ll skip that part. The important part here is that I went from the graphic novels to the Marvel comics to the original black-and-white WaRP Graphics comic books, completely uncaring of the format so long as I got more ElfQuest now. I read them cover to cover, and then I re-read them. I hoarded them. When my brother wanted them back I made him come and fight me for them.

Before ElfQuest, I think I’d tried to write one story. It was very hard, and the words on the page did no justice to the story in my head, and I gave up. But an incredible thing happened in my devouring of everything ElfQuest I could get my hands on–in the back of the Marvel editions, they had pages dedicated to reader questions. Richard handled those, with input from Wendy (I remember one where a question stumped him and right there in the column it read something like “…but he shouldn’t have been on a poster so how could you have seen him…Wendy! Help!”)

Through the columns, through the Gatherum that I eventually acquired, through sheer awesome making me read every single word (I doubt I’d ever read an author’s bio or notes or any such before) I got a peep at the writer’s life. This cartoon in particular spoke to me, because that abandoned story hadn’t gone away–and more kept showing up.

Wendy and Richard created an entire world that went far beyond the story on the page, and they let readers in. I realized that every book I’d ever read was written by someone. (Amazing, I know. Hey, I was maybe 13!) That every story I’d so enjoyed was just a small part of what could have been written. That someone else (my interpretation here, not hinting that Wendy Pini hears voices!) had stories unrolling in her head at the most inconvenient times and dear lord look what she’d done with them!

I never wrote ElfQuest fanfiction. I was far too clumsy to touch the World of Two Moons. I dreamed of it though, and I wrote other things. And more things, and more things.

Two years ago at Yaoi-Con I met Wendy Pini. At her signing I hovered over her table waiting for her to get through the line because I wanted to talk to her, to tell her what she’d meant to me. I made a fool of myself and if she were any less gracious and amazing she’d probably have called security on me. (If I scared you, Wendy, I’m sorry.) I did manage to tell her that I’d written a book and I was going to publish it and I told her thank you though I’m not sure I managed to clarify just what I was thanking her for.

Last night at Valley of the Moon I met her again, and met Richard for the first time. I gave her a copy of my book. I made a fool of myself again. I enjoyed the incredible and treasured opportunity to sit for hours with Wendy and Richard Pini while they talked about ElfQuest, telling stories and talking about telling stories and had Preservers come down from the trees to flit about my head I could not been happier.

So, uh…hi. My name is Moonpath, and I’m a Wolfrider when I’m not someone else. Most of the “elses” show up in my own books, but Moonpath I keep closer than that.

And I realized as I wrote this that though I did thank Wendy again and this time may have made some sense, I didn’t say thank you to Richard.

Thank you, Wendy and Richard, though that just doesn’t cover it. My daughter started reading last night and she’s already up to Winnowill.

Here’s the Facebook page in case you didn’t know it existed, fellow Wolfriders.