Inktober 2017: Poison Elves

Lusiphur Malache

When I was younger, there was a time that I spent a lot of time reading comics. While I went through some of the more conventional Marvel stuff (X-Men, X-Calibur, some Dr. Strange), when I got older and moved across the country I gave away or sold most of it. The stuff I held onto was mostly Sandman by Neil Gaiman (There will be later posts on this, trust me), and every old issue I had of Poison Elves.

If you're a comic book fan and you've still never heard of Poison Elves, I can't say that I'm surprised. I grew up in a little city called Bellingham, WA and the creator of Poison Elves was a local guy. An artist named Drew Hayes started the comics as an independent publisher, working in black and white to keep print costs down and telling the story of a violent young elf named Lusiphur Malache, living in a vaguely medieval fantasy world with a more extensive backstory than he ever quite got the chance to put down on paper, but hinted at with the material he did put out.

While he was a little bit older than me, Drew Hayes moved in some of the same social circles that I did in High School and college, and it remains one of the big regrets of my life that I never got to meet him and tell him what a formative influence he was on me. It seemed like at least half the people I knew did meet him, and he was a not infrequent guest at the parties at a place near the college we all jokingly dubbed Freak Manor. From his work, his very open letters that prefaced each issue, and what I heard from people who did meet him, it's clear he struggled with depression. His character was one who railed against an unjust and uncaring world, and often ended up holding the short end of the stick.

I moved away from Bellingham in late 2000, and one of the last things I did was send him a piece of fan art and a letter.

Drew Hayes died in 2007, of a heart attack.

The body of work he left behind is a little graphic, with an issue that's even straight up titled Sex & Violence, but the thread that runs through it all is that it's Funny. For a series that centers around an assassin, Poison Elves is heavy on the comedy, and that's a big part of what always kept me coming back.

It's a wry, cynical kind of humor sometimes, but every moment that things start to get too morose, the jokes start cracking again and swing the tone around. The purple marauder (on the far left cover there) is a misogynist so over the top that's he's a joke in the first place, and it's both funny and satisfying to see Lusiphur give him his due.

My own rendition of the purple Marauder

There's some raunchy jokes, and plenty of gore in black and white, so I'm not trying to misrepresent the comic as nothing but light-hearted fun. The female characters are all drawn in classic comic style, with big breasts and legs for days, but they also tend to be independent and able to take care of themselves, many of them unattached and not looking attachment. There's sex here, but it's treated as consensual and adult, and never one-sided. These are things I didn't really notice, when I was younger, but in retrospect they're aspects that I appreciate because not all comics treat women this way. There's flaws. but Poison Elves remains an old favorite and a heavy influence on my art and my own comic ideas. Thanks Drew.

Fleece and Talon