Obdormio.com

This digital Elfquest thing has got me pondering reading order (I suspect my imminent exams also have something to do with my dwelling on these thoughts; the alternative is just to horrible to contemplate!), what is the best way to read through the entire story?

Elfquest has been published in several different series, some of them running concurrently, telling simultaneous stories, but with crossovers, which makes it hard to put one ahead of the other. There is also no guarantee that any given issue does not take place before the previous one, with the series like Hidden Years and the other flashbacks. And when they switched to anthology-publishing, I get the impression that chronology varied even more, though I haven’t read these myself yet, so I’m not sure (and this makes planning a reading order even harder, of course.)

How, then, to read it in an order which minimizes spoilers for future issues, but retains a certain chronology? I’ve pondered, studied timelines and mapped it out, and put together this list. Since I don’t know exactly the contents of all the series (and boy, is there a balancing act to reading time lines and avoiding spoilers as best you can!) so it might not be quite right, which is why I’m putting it up here to hopefully get comments from people more knowledgeable than I.

The first three series are easy enough, they’re a story alone, and only after these did the publications split into concurrent runs, so the list begins:

• All of the original Elfquest.
• All of Siege at Blue Mountain.
• All of Kings of the Broken Wheel.

After this is where it gets tricky. Here’s what I have so far:

• Hidden Years #1-3.
• New Blood #11 and #12.
• Hidden Years #8, then #5-7, #9 and #4.
• All of Kahvi.
• Hidden Years #9.5-22
• New Blood #14-35.
• All of Shards.
• Hidden Years #23-29.
• All of Blood of Ten Chiefs.
• All of Two-Spear.

Two-Spear in particular, I am unsure of, it is possible it should come before Kahvi, in which case Blood of Ten Chiefs should probably follow it as well, to maintain the thematic link. If that is the case, both of them should go before Hidden Years entirely, along with the Wolfrider!-stories.

Which brings me to the next segment, where it really gets messy, since we’re now in the anthology years.

• The Wolfrider!-stories found in Volume 2 #19, #21, #23, #25, #27, #29, #31 and #33.
• The Dreamtime-stories found in Volume 2 #4-7, #9-13, #15, #16 and #18.
• The Wild Hunt-stories found in Metamorphosis* and in Volume 2 #1-7, #10-12, #14, #15, #18, #20-30, #32 and #33.
• The Fire-Eye-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1-7, #9-14, #16, #17 an #19-22.
• The Wavedancers issue, as well as the Wavedancers-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1, #2, #5, #21, #23, #24, #27, #28, #30 and #31.
• The Rogue’s Curse stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #1, #3, #8-10, #12, #13, #15-17, #20, #22, #24-26 and #28-30.
• All of The Rebels.
• All of Jink.
• The FutureQuest-stories found in Metamorphosis and in Volume 2 #10, #11, #13-15, #17, #19, #20 and #22.

And then finally all the Worldpool “what if?”-stories:

• New Blood #1-10.
• The Worldpool-stories in Volume 2 #2-4, #9-27 and #31.

And that’s the list. If anybody has comments, please share them! Now I need dinner.

^{* I have not been able to determine whether Metamorphosis and Volume 2 #1 is the same thing, or if Metamorphosis was a special. If you know, please tell me!}

I’ve twittered about this, but I feel it’s worth a post of its own as well: Warp Graphics is making the entire run of ElfQuest available for free on the web. As a long-time ElfQuest fan, this is the kind of news that makes me go “squeee!” My collection has significant holes in it, so I’m really looking forward to seing what I’ve missed.

I suppose this is another interesting development in the business of webcomics, what with another established publisher moving its stuff online, interesting to some, anyway. It’s also clearly a marketing strategy to drum up interest for future publications. It’s already working. After reading what is up there now, I ran through my whole collection again over Easter, and today I went out and bought “the Discovery”, so good thinking, Warp, I guess.

In July, I wrote:

I somehow suspect that I’ll be more tempted to blog once school starts again and I have other things to do.

And, man, I wasn’t tempted at all! It seems that it is only when the holidays draw near an end, and the prospect of going back to classes and ridiculously large lists of curriculum rears its ugly, ugly head, that the bug bites me. But meh, I’ve made no promises, so I make no apologies.

Since I can’t seem to muster the will to write full length blog posts very often, I think I’ll try compensating with lots of tiny ones. Enter Twitter. Putting these tweets in the main post area would be a sure way to offend my own sensibilities, so I’ve gotten myself one of these fancy-pants plugins, and you should now be seeing a neat little list in the sidebar to the right.

With a bit of luck, this is so easy that I’ll get addicted to spewing text again, and eventually end up with stuff that won’t fit in a tweet, resulting in more proper posts. Tricking myself like this is a delicate process,though, so don’t mess it up by telling me what I’m up to!

Obdormio says:
“such matters” are all about image quality

Good Sir! – wistfully flying – “My fish is a hooker. Fan-tastic.” says:
and the image quality of my existing pig-image is still better than your nonexisting pig-image

Good Sir! – wistfully flying – “My fish is a hooker. Fan-tastic.” says:
much like 1>0 even though it’s clearly inferior to all other numbers

Obdormio says:
my exisiting pig image is why you even have a pig image!

Good Sir! – wistfully flying – “My fish is a hooker. Fan-tastic.” says:
finder’s keepers, Abooboo.

Life, lately, has devolved into getting up in the middle of the day, going to work, coming home, and then not moving for several hours until I fall asleep. Writing it out, that seems far from healthy, but I find it satisfies my innate laziness.

Since my last post (in MAY? Good grief! Loki is right to complain!) I don’t feel like I have really done much worth talking about. School’s obviously been out for the summer (and is actually soon to start up again, but let’s gloss over that little tidbit), and I’m back at my parent’s house, not being very useful. Despite swearing that I would never touch a lawn mower again, I am once more mowing graveyards. The equipment and lack of communication with management is just as bad as last year, and just to make it all perfect, I seem to have developed allergies to grass. Definitely not applying for this job next year.

I am also making a bit of money by cleaning the doctor’s and dentist’s offices on weekdays. Basically I have the job of the Janitor from Scrubs. (Well, except for all the fixing and handyman duties, I just clean, so it’s not really like that job at all, but any analogy that compares me with Neil Flynn is worth including.)

I spent a week in Fredrikstad, on the Oase festival, but a writeup of that wouldn’t be very interesting. There are only so many ways to say “sang and prayed a lot” before it gets boring.

I have bought a new computer, one running this fancy-pants Vista stuff. Help Desk speaks truth, and they’ve sucked all the fun out of Solitaire and Minesweeper (I liked them because they were simple, now they’re a chore!), but other than that, all is well. Mainly because it can run URU!

I’ve been aching to play Uru again for some time now, and now I finally can! I never want to leave my room ever again! And yet I keep having to anyway! Curses! Exclamation points!

This is the main reason for my slack updating, to be honest. Uru Live is very definitely pretty much at the top of my list of Most Awesome Games Ever, narrowly beaten by Riven, possibly sharing second place with The Longest Journey. Explanations can’t do it justice, go get one of the free visitor’s accounts and have a look around it for yourself. It helps to have played the rest of the Myst games, but it isn’t necessary. Or even better, get a paid account, so you can actually see the game, not just the visitor approved areas. August is right around the corner, sign up on the first. It’s 99 cents for the first month, so that gives you plenty of time to get hooked decide if you like it or not.

Another thing I’ve been doing a little bit of is reading, so I’ll do a quick little mini-review-list:

Swamp Thing – I bought all the volumes containing Alan Moore’s run (and when he left it ended! LALALALA THERE IS NO MORE AFTER THAT!). This was very good, I can definitely see why it became so popular. I’ve read them twice since buying them, and will probably end up reading them again before going back to school.

Hellblazer – I bought Original Sins and Dangerous Habits, which the lie-list at the store said were the two containing the earliest stories. Wikipedia tells me there are two volumes in between, though, so I guess I know where next month’s comic budget is going. Original Sins was ok, but nothing spectacular, but I really loved Dangerous Habits, which seems to be where the movie pilfered all it’s best bits. I really didn’t need to get hooked on an expense like this now, but I’m much to weak to resist, so I guess I’ll be buying new shelves soon.

The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas under Red Skies – Oh man! I bought Lies some time ago, on sale, and it’s just been sitting in my shelf ever since waiting for me to find the time to read it. Luckily for me, that time arrived at the same time as the sequel, so I didn’t have to grind my teeth and wring my hands waiting for more. At least not until I finished Seas. These books were good. These books were very good. Who doesn’t love con men and capers? And pirates? And it’s in a good fantasy setting to boot. Locke Lamora is hereby officially one of my favorite fictional characters.

Renegade’s Magic – the end of Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son trilogy, and what an end! Seriously, the end took be completely by surprise, especially considering her other work. Like all her books, this was a fantastic story, well worth the read.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – I’m not even going to bother. Either you’ve read it, or you intend to read it, or you hate it without having read it, or you just don’t care. I thought it was good, and I’ll leave it at that.

I think that’s it. I make no guarantees for continued activity, not with Uru installed, but I somehow suspect that I’ll be more tempted to blog once school starts again and I have other things to do.

I just wish it to be known that I in no way have part in the horrific lie that is the word “progress” in the sentence beneath this page’s header, and I do indeed take grave umbrage from the use of the word.

Thank you for your attention.

_{Oh, and since I’m posting here anyway, if someone doesn’t get their rear end in gear soon, you can all look forward to (or possibly dread) a randomly fake post describing Obdormio’s recent stay at Camp Christianity in view of his return home a few days past. Toodles!}

Remember this? Well, it’s time to wish him luck again! (He’s gonna need it, too. The man hasn’t studied for a fig’s worth in the past week!)

Good luck, old sock!

The third issue of Cheshire Crossing is out. Rejoice, rejoice!

This issue isn’t quite as fast-paced and completely bad-ass as the last one, but it is still very, very good. It has some answers to nagging questions, lots and lots of clever references to the source materials, extremely good villains, and plenty of Weir’s fantastic humour. I know I’ll be reading it at least three more times today, and I’ll probably reread the other two issues as well.

Like I did last time, I’ll reread it now, and write down my thoughts as I go along, with little to no structure or planning. This will probably include many spoilers, so make sure you read the issue yourself first.

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