After 40 years, Elfquest wrapped up with Cutter and his allies achieving their final quest. What that was, I have no idea, I stopped reading the comics way back in high school when issues showed up at irregular intervals and I think the title was in a magazine format. I do recall Marvel picked up reprinting the earlier stuff via their creator-owned publisher Epic and maybe Dark Horse did too. Despite the the story and art, I personally grew tired of Wendy Pini’s style along with overdosing on elves in general by the time I was 16, Elfquest is an amazing success story. Back when Wendy and Richard Pini started this comic in 1978, there’s no public accessible Internet, direct sales for comics is in its infancy so newsstands remained the main distribution system, fan conventions were uncommon and a woman artist-writer was rarer than a unicorn. Hell, the guy who had all the issues when I was attending Strake Jesuit, it was a mystery how he got them. Fortunately time and luck were on their side as the times changed thanks to Star Wars, Star Trek conventions and the rise of D&D. On the latter, the main characters were featured in a Dragon column that approximated D&D stats/classes from novels, comics or movies if DMs wanted to incorporated them in their campaign. With the saga ending, you can probably get a complete omnibus edition at your local comic book store in 2019.
The bigger farewell for me was Bongo Comics and their anchor title The Simpsons ending after 25 years. I should’ve seen the writing on the wall when the Bart Simpson and Futurama comics ended in 2017. Not really sure what the details on Bongo hanging it up but they were a somewhat daring publisher because they were exclusively Matt Groening titles. There were the adventures of the alien named Roswell, the therapy sessions of a superhero group and my personal favorite, a comic which let Sergio Aragonés do whatever he wanted. Sergio’s Funnies was awesome, especially when he illustrated stories about his life, they should make a movie about him. Maybe it was part of the deal to sell Fox’s TV/Film properties to the equally evil Mouse, either way, I doubt the Simpsons will be absent for long. Their show is in its 30th season with a second movie planned and the property still makes money hand over fist no matter how much critics whine, “the show started sucking after (insert season number here)!”
Meanwhile, Marvel’s inaugural comic that launched a whole universe and billion-dollar franchise returned after its cancellation a couple years ago, The Fantastic Four. Rumor has it, Disney ordered this to get Fox to relinquish their rights to make more crappy movies. I don’t know, I doubt comic books sales have much effect on the general public going to a film, especially if it has been craptacular three times in a row. The whole team wasn’t eliminated, the Thing (Ben) and Human Torch (Johnny) continued to exist in the Marvel Universe, just Mr. Fantastic (Reed), Invisible Woman (Sue) and their two kids were missing or assumed dead at the conclusion of the most recent Secret Wars. I’m glad they’re all back. Marvel without the Fantastic Four would be equal to DC ending Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The book is the foundation of so much and introduced numerous characters, namely the big movie breakout hero Black Panther. I’ve been picking it up since it’s a now at a good jumping on point. The latest issue brought a tear to my eye with its dedication pages to Stan Lee, the co-creator of these guys. Oh, and Ben finally married Alicia in a quiet ceremony with only a slight interruption from Dr. Doom and Galactus. Suck it racists and anti-semites, The Thing is Jewish.