Wendy and Richard Pini, the couple behind the long series of ELFQUEST independent comics, are donating $ 500,000 to Columbia University to cross and conserve the growing collection of comics, graphic novels and related prose works.
“The money will go for purchases and directions for circulating and archival collections,” said Karen Green, curator for comic and cartoons within the rare book of Colombia and the manuscript library. “Run is a truly comprehensive term and umbrella, covering digitalization, storage, everything to ensure that things are safely accessible. There was a great ‘et cetera’ grant.
Wendy and Richard Pini of Elfquest
Next to a result of the donation of Pinis a decade ago of elfquest materials. Wendy Pini said in an interview that she has been drawing since she was 2 years old but grew up “in a family that didn’t appreciate my job.”
Most of its early efforts were poorly preserved as a result. Even her adult work, carefully accumulated by Richard over the years, remained tangible if something happened to their homes.
“We had all those things here (at home),” Richard Pini said. “It was insured, but if ‘it’s gone. You can’t get back.”
Thus, in 2012, in San Diego Comic -con, where Wendy was making one of her regular appearances, Green approached Pinis with a convincing question: “Would you think of allowing us to preserve your heritage?”
A year later, the couple had turned about 37 linear legs of the Elfquest -connected material boxes, including more than 2,000 of Wendy Pini’s hand -drawn -drawn stories, hand -painted from 1978 to around 1990.
“It may be difficult to understand – but maybe not – for my fingers to keep the memory of creating works of art worth fifty years as if everything happened yesterday,” Wendy Pini said. “To know that the art of Elfquest is – and the will be – preserved, looking as fresh and vivid as the day when the paint was dry, fills my heart with peace and a kind of quiet joy.
Other parts in Columbia’s PIN collection include its adaptation of the sword novel and Michael Moorcock’s rule stormscripts and novel of Elfquest’s journey to the end of griefHer adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s Red death maskAnd even materials related to the 1976 Wendy Cosplay costume of 1976.
It also includes other works of art, scripts, notes, production letters and “a ton” of fan post and art of fan art, an essential part of the close relationship of Pinis over the years with Elfquest Stans, a particularly vital engine of success of exclusivity in the years before the Internet.
“We’ve had an unusual relationship with readers over the years, different from most comic companies,” Wendy Pini said. “Fandom Elfquest is very vocal, very involved. It was important to save it. “
Green agreed: “Whenever we have an event, the attendees come to me and say” Elfquests took me through high school. ” Star Trek The Original Series. “
Pinis himself met, in a perfect story of the comic book meeting, when Richard based in Boston wrote Wendy based in California, after seeing her fan letter published in Silver Surfer #5. At that time, published fans’ letters included the writer’s full address. Richard Pini was one of the hundreds we wrote to Wendy.
When Green approached Pinis, the Archive of Columbia Comicses in Columbia at that point only had the letters of X-springs‘S Chris Claremont. Since he has added the newspapers of the MAD Magazine of Al Jaffee, New Yorker Papers of Charles Saxon, Dennis Ryan’s editorial cartoons and influenza publisher data, Sink Press, which led to access to the letters of Fly, S. Clay Wilson, Joseph Farris, Mark Gerber and Joseph Papin. The collection also includes the winning editorial cartoons of the Pulitzer Prize collected from the Columbia School of Journalism, and a small collection of other indie and good comics and other materials.
What that collection did not have was the resources for true preservation, protection and expansion, said Green and Pinis. This led to the $ 500,000 donation.
“… part of it is making sure that the thought back (the original elfquest donation) continues and continues, preserving it in a way we never thought,” Richard Pini said. “That was really important to us, and that is why I thought about it. Let us do this monstrous and know it is there for the ages.”
Bequest covers the work of storing and storing such tangible parts of the collection as a synthetic-argile sculpture of Petal Wing, a prominent elfquest character, given to Pinis by a Scottish artist in the 1980s. It was made associated with punctuality at its base, with worse hands and feet. The University Conservation Department is rebuilding and strengthening hands and feet and making a new, more secure attitude, Green said.
But Beques, which nearly doubles the sources of financing the work of storing the comic archive, will also go beyond elfquest materials. Green shocked some digitalization and already storage projects in the pit to be funded with Bequests.
“We just want history to live,” Richard Pini said. “Colombia will last longer than this house (in the New York upstate where they live) maybe, and longer than us. So how to make sure Colombia has what you need we can offer? I just want works its artistic to live forever. ”
Elfquests itself occupies an unusual position within the comic foundation, partly because Pinis maintained control of their independent franchise through financial discounts and ups, eventually making enough money making it able to contribute $ 500,000 donations in one Academic Institution to preserve their work and that of other artists.
The many ELFQUEST series are both published directly through the company of Pinis itself, Warp, and distributed by industry giants, including Marvel, DC and now, Comics Horse Horse. And Wendy Pini was not the only artist standing behind the series over the years, with contributions from some dozen other artists.
The work of these artists is not part of Colombia’s collection because Richard Pini says very proudly, “about the works of art made by other wonderful people, our contract, this is a model for how it should be done, Marvel and DC Didn “to do for decades. Anyone who did art for us again took their works of art. “
This provision was particularly important given the harsh economy of creating comic books. For many artists, their original work of art is one of their most valuable assets, as shown annually with the fiery interest of fans for artists and their on-screen goods in tens of cabins in San Diego Comic-Con and gatherings of other such.
For its part, Elfquest was an early descendant of a particular type of comic book tale, infinitely malleable, a creativity engine that Wendy Pinni used to explore a wide range of social issues captured within the challenges with which Face small groups of Elf-like creatures looking for a more permanent and secure home.
Wendy Pini calls the elfquest “a high fantasy fiction scientific root”.
Building the world after comics is quite complex, and not quickly described. Richard’s background as a MIT -trained astrophysicist came available when Wendy was understanding, for example, the real -world physics implications of elfquest placement on a two -moon land. But elf -like creatures in the heart of the story deal with issues of identity and survival among killer people. In this regard, it feels a little like a story of the exodus.
“It was never about good boys against bad boys,” Richard Pini said. “It was about knowledge and ignorance. If you know something you are not afraid of it. (Elfquest world) grew up as Kudzu and became truly rich and diverse. “
The series may have emerged from the “Yeasty” ferment of the 1970s antichulture, but has now been given a serious place in the history of comic and pop culture.
“Elfquest is the longest series of comic fantasy of Indie in America, tremendously spread from Western and Eastern, spiritual and secular sources,” writes the managing editor of Boing Beschizza Magazine at the entrance Elfquest full volume. 1
Also, Beschizza also writes, “a story about wild demons, riding the wolf that corrupt the Green land of God, doing things that your parents would never imagine just looking at the cover” and “Attempt and” desperate of an inexperienced leader to save his people, his his tribe, his family “and” a tale for the little cutest elf living in the woods “And” the renaissance of Utopian fantasy, antidote to make a lot of Tolkien “.
You get the idea. Elfquest contains crowds.
Elfquest stories have had many lives, including some collections of short stories and five romance, a role -playing, a onboard game and much more. Even now, the classic lines of storytelling are being reprinted in various forms (Bundle Humble recently sold a paid collection-what are you loved by early volumes for charity, for example) and Pinis speak with excitement Spinoff stories that solve the bows of some secondary characters, such as Cutter’s Siekick Skywise.
Hollywood has options option eLFQUEST for screen fit so often, starting in 1972 with Edward Pressman (Conan Barbari), that pinis are quite tired of such things0, though they admit “money is nice.”
They remain hope for the last attempt to create an adaptation on screen, saying the team after first Oscar winner Spider Animated movie “Put together a team. And they ask a question that makes it clear that they know what they are talking about. We’re getting tired of in the middle of this now. “
Pinis are not the only ones who worry about late career artists trying to protect their offspring. The Gordon Parks Foundation recently launched an inheritance initiative that adopts works by underestimated elderly artists to ensure that their work is. It is a large shift from the typical concentration, including from the Parks Foundation in the past, in the work of up-and-chomers.