Comic Con, Day 2, pt. 2: Keep On Truckin’

This was an amazing crossplay of the Riddler.

After the Titan panel, I stayed for the Neon Alley panel. There were some techinical difficulties that started during the Titan panel and persisted into the Neon Alley panel, forcing a late start. So, instead of just getting into the programming, they started off with some Q&A.

A lot of the news that they shared wasn’t much different from the information I heard about at the Viz Media Panel at San Diego Comic Con and at the Viz panel at Fanime.

Things that weren’t talked about at those panels were that Set 2 for Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan was to be released on August 2, Set 18 for Bleach was released on September 10 and Set 2 for La Grange will be available this winter.

I did have quite a bit of downtime between the Neon Alley panel and the panel I was eagerly awating, 35 Years of Elf Quest.

In that time I did another turn around the dealers’ room. I visited the Viz booth. This year they were

A fabulous Chun Li.

doing this neat scavanger hunt through the dealers’ room. I also got to play a demo of the next Phoenix Wright game. This might be the game that makes me want to get a Nintendo 3Ds. It was fun to play and I loved playing it as much as the previous installments.

When it came to be about time to go to the Elf Quest panel we went in early enough to sit in on the panel before it. The panel was about Pongo. I had heard of Pongo, but I had never read them. It was neat to hear people talk about. It piqued my interest in the Pongo comics.

I was thrilled to see that there was an Elf Quest panel. It made so incredibly happy to hear about all things Elf Quest… because, yes, I’m that kinda nerd. I started reading Elf Quest back when I was in middle school. I fell in love with the story when I first read it. It was amazing for me to get the chance to meet Richard and Wendy Pini last year. They had

Cutter, Leetah and Pike.. oh my!

written a story that was more formative of my than I had realized.

The panel started out talking about Wendy Pini’s personal history. They talked about Elf Quest had started in Fantasy Quarterly. They formed their own company, Warp Graphics. She then moved to Hollywood for an Elf Quest movie. They still hope an Elf Quest movie will happen, to this day. I think that Elf Quest would make for a great series of movies. It also turns out that Johnny Galecki (of Roseanne and Big Bang Theory fame) is a huge fan of Elf Quest.

There is currently a 5 minute Elf Quest short movie online, you can watch it here. However, their information about their being an Elf Quest movie in development is outdated… unfortunately.

Kokiri Link, FTW!

We Love Fine is also selling a line of Elf Quest t-shirts… They are really cute and I would love to have them all, except price woud preclude me from doing so. They are really neat looking shirts and perfect if your the same kind of nerd as I am when it comes to Elf Quest. Wendy’s personal artwork will be kept at Columbia University as well.

There are 2 artbooks coming out as well by Flesk. One will be an art of Elf Quest book and the other will be a book of Wendy’s art and may not necessarily be Elf Quest oriented. They both should be out in 2014.

The most exciting and saddening part is that there is new Elf Quest. They will be released through Dark Horse. The first book will be starting something called Elf Quest: the Final Quest. And that’s where it’s sad. I hate to think that Elf Quest is ending. The series had meant so much to me. In many ways it was something that gave me the push to be a writer. While I’m glad there’s new Elf Quest (yay), I’m also sad that that’s it. I don’t know if they’re going to re-release the earlier editions of Elf Quest.