Matttt - Elfquest

Hey, you made it to the sources document! You’re my kind of person!

0:00 - Source for this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMJJz_snHQM&pp=ygUad2VuZHkgcGluaSB3b21lbiBpbiBjb21pY3M%3D

0:16 - this story was told to me by the Pinis, and has been told many times in many interviews. I don’t know if they were actually laughed out of the building though

0:36 - I go into this in more detail later, but I know there were underground comix as well as early alternatives (namely Star*Reach and First Kingdom), and Cerebus did beat Elfquest by a few months. BUT none of those had sales close to Elfquest, and I really believe that it was Elfquest’s success that showed mainstream comic creators that they had an alternative to working for the big publishers.

0:43 - Please forgive these Plosives. I took the pop filter off so it didn’t block my face and… well, here we are

1:30 - Richard provided me with a very helpful archive of all of the letters he and Wendy had published.

2:40 - the story of Wendy’s childhood is largely taken from “Line of Beauty, The Art of Wendy Pini”

3:43 - In case you’re curious of the illustrators featured here, here’s the list: Beardsley, Pyle, Erté, Doré, Dulac, Rackham

4:25 - this audio comes from a zoom conversation I had with Wendy and Richard on 2/9/2023

5:58 - this wonderful photo is from 1971, before they were married, cosplaying as Elric of Melniboné and her as Lady Zarozinia at the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston. They won “most beautiful.” Richard believes this photo was taken by Jay Kay Klein.

6:01 - I had to cut the entire episode where Wendy, at 16 years old, begins trying to make an animated adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories. More detail in “Line of Beauty.”

6:26 - Throwback convention footage from https://www.youtube.com/@cbs8sandiego

7:01 - Wendy herself would likely not characterize Red Sonja as haunting her, but during my research I did come across a number of industry professionals who seemed unable, or unwilling, or accused their peers of being unable or unwilling, to look past that part of her history. See “Line of Beauty” pp 250 for more.

7:57 - Wendy and Phil Seuling on the Mike Douglas show is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9wRii6aiUk
Watch these maniacs manhandle Superman #1 on national television.

9:09 - these images come from preparatory work done for the CBS show. I photographed them at the Columbia University Library.

9:48 - This letter is among the Columbia University Library Archives

10:30 - This is Kamuai Gaiden, a 1964 manga by Sanpei Shirato, and apparently one of the first, untranslated manga volumes Wendy ever got according to “Line of Beauty”

11:12 - Yes, there were a few comic shops in the early 70s, but they were limited to a few big cities, and without direct market distribution, I wouldn’t really call them “modern comics shops.” But read Dan Georino’s book and argue with me.

11:42 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y8jInCBygw

12:18 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJMDm1eUoEE

12:46 - I don’t have a good source for the sales of Star*Reach and First Kingdom, but according to Richard and other anecdotal sources, we’re talking a few hundred or low thousands of copies.
Bud Plant’s initial order of Star Reach was only 500 copies according to this interview:
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/54891/icv2-interview-mike-friedrich
If you have better information please email me.

13:04 - Richard and Wendy told me this story in our interview on 2/22/23

13:47 - this document of their earnings is from the Columbia University Library collection

14:57 - Yes, I know that’s not a penciled page, but there’s all these great preparatory documents from the Columbia archives and I had to fit them in somewhere

16:12 - These photos are of Gary Arlington in 1971, in one of the country’s first comic book stores in San Francisco. Not completely accurate to the period we’re discussing, but Arlington was a legendary comic retailer and these photos, I believe by Clem Albers, capture what made early comic shops so different from the newstands that preceded them.

16:30 - Sales numbers come from Richard Pini

16:39 - Yes, Cerebus was first, appearing in November of 1977, versus Fantasy Quarterly #1 (which actually featured a backup story by Dave Sim) appearing in April of 1978. In terms of sales, it’s my understanding that Cerebus never even hit 40,000 copies per issue, and was likely closer to 20,000. Per an interview with Dave Sim in Wizard #17:

Wizard: At one point you had a print run of 36,000 right?
Sim: That was issue #100. Even though Cerebus is one long story, issue #100 still had that stratospheric jump to it, even though it was the middle of a story

19:53 - This audio from my interview with Wendy and Richard on 2/22/23

20:30 - these fanzies are among the Columbia University Library Collection, along with many others

20:56 - This is a somewhat vague claim that Richard has made over the years. My understanding was that Elfquest was selling around 100,000 copies per issue by the middle of its run. Maybe more on some, maybe more if you factor in back issues, I’m not sure. In 1978, X-Men was selling 171,000, and Batman 168,000 (per here: https://rsmwriter.blogspot.com/2023/01/comics-sales-1978-1979.html) so it is conceivable that Elfquest was selling around that amount.

A few years later, Claremont and Byrne would take X-Men into the 300,000 range, but I don’t think that is what Richard is referring to.

22:10 - I *think* that Elfquest, in this realm, is even more important that I make it to sound here, but without sales figures, I can’t be sure, so I downplay it a bit. But for additional context, yes, both the term Graphic Novel and Book-length comic stories predate A Contract with God, it is generally accepted as the start of that wave, coming out just a month after the direct market-focused Sabre. But, according to the Wikipedia page (I have not seen the cited source), “The book succeeded in getting into bookstores, though initial sales amounted to a few thousand copies in its first year; stores had difficulty finding an appropriate section in which to shelve it.”

If that is true, Elfquest 1, coming out in 1981, would probably have been many bookstore customers first exposure to graphic novels. The wiki cites the difficulty in finding a shelf for A Contract with God, but Elfquest was shelved with Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is probably where it found that new readership.

As always, if you have some better sources or facts and figures about the birth of graphic novels, please email me!

23:00 - In researching my Carl Barks video, I found a list of the American comics that were among Tezuka’s belongings when he passed. In the small pile of graphic novels, he had a copy of Elfquest Volume 1. He also apparently kept the drawing Wendy gave him on his desk until the day he died.

24:40 - Interview 2/22/23. Richard is referring to the period of 1984-1986.

25:09 - I have not been able to find an archive of Eisner award nominees dating back to the 70s, but Richard did confirm for me that they were never nominated

26:01 - like many other folks, I actually like the Donning colors, but Wendy didn’t!

26:20 - later issue of Elfquest advise fans of how to try and hunt down the VHS and Album producers to get refunds

26:40

All of these issues are available to subscribers of The Comics Journal archives at TCJ.com

The Comics Journal #108 (May 1986), pp. 7-12.
The Comics Journal #110 (August 1986), p. 17.
The Comics Journal #115 (April 1987), pp. 11-12.
The Comics Journal #123 (July 1988), p. 8-9.
The Comics Journal #125 (October 1988), pp. 15-16.

Around 2008, Doran would tell more of her side of the story, as well as her eventual dispute with Donning, on her blog. The entire saga begins here:
https://colleendoran.substack.com/p/very-bad-publishers-part-i

I asked the Pini’s about the disputes, and they chose not to comment, beyond saying that the matter with Donning was settled and they reclaimed the publishing rights.

28:30 - Elfquest at Marvel was part of their Epic line, which grew out of Epic Illustrated. They launched that initiative in 81/82, and to me it feels like a direct response to Elfquet’s success.

28:49 - Yes, the first printing of TMNT #1 came out before Elfquest #20 by a few months, but it wouldn’t be until the reprints and issue 2 the following year that it really became a sales success. I believe I made a janky sales chart in my TMNT video.

29:37 - Richard told me that Siege at Blue Mountain #1 was half of the sales of Elfquest #20.

30:00 - Even after watching an episode, I refuse to believe that there was a popular network TV romance series in which Ron Perelman plays a sewer dwelling monster under pounds and pounds of prosthetics that was written by George R.R. Martin. Someone is playing a joke on me.

30:42 - DC claims that they did this variant cover gimmick because distributors had over ordered copies of LotDK #1 but… I dunno. Do you believe that?

31:57 - One point of comparison between Image and WARP that the Pinis brought up, is that they had made their reputations at Marvel, while the Pinis, like Dave Sim, had always been outsiders. The Image model of bouncing between the big two and creator-owned seems like it became the dominant mode of self-publishing in the 90s and beyond.

38:11 - I don’t really explain this here, but Warner’s reasoning I guess was that they wanted to launch new material when the movie came out, and maybe so the story didn’t change in the meantime? Weird strategy by Warner, I wonder how things will work out for them after 2012.

38:19 - Sorry to Wendy’s Masque of the Red Death, which either would take a lot of time or, what I ended up choosing, skipping entirely. Someday.