Open Media Review

ElfQuest Archive Being Made Available, Free, Online

I first read ElfQuest in college and immediately fell in love with the series, voraciously devouring back issues and following the current issues for a number of years. The art was distinctive and the writing mature and sophisticated. I even had the distinct pleasure of meeting one of the two creators of this wonderful independent work, Richard Pini, last year at a con where we chatted for a little bit about how he might allow fans access to the thirty years worth of material he had helped create.

I was mostly pleased to see this story on Boing Boing. The full archive is not online, yet, but will be made progressively available throughout the rest of the year.

The issues are in an online only format, which is a bit of a disappointment. The layouts are better than some I’ve seen and not that I would encourage it but the URL scheme looks predictable enough that a little bit of scripting might allow scraping. I do not see any explicit permissions, such as a Creative Commons license (which is why I would not recommend spidering the archive).

Still, getting access to such a wonderful work the bulk of which has been out of print for years is a big plus, in my mind. And if I managed to bump into Richard at another con, I look forward to continuing our discussion about more free schemes, like Creative Commons, and encouraging him to think about downloadable, open formats.

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