Cover: Wendy Pini

ElfQuest #13

Jun 1982 · WaRP Graphics · 1.50 USD

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“The Secret of the Wolfriders”

About this Issue

ElfQuest #13 sits at the dramatic heart of the 'Blue Mountain' arc, the point at which Wendy and Richard Pini pivot their saga from a quest story into something far more philosophically ambitious. The issue delivers the Recognition of Tyldak and Dewshine — an involuntary, biologically compelled bonding between a Wolfrider and a flesh-shaped Glider — which the series uses to interrogate free will, identity, and the ethics of bodily transformation. It also introduces readers to the full ancestral lineage of the Wolfriders through a vision sequence that names and visualises every chief from Timmain and Timmorn Yellow-Eyes through to Bearclaw, making it the single issue that grounds the tribe's present in ten thousand years of layered history. Winnowill, already established as the series' primary antagonist, exploits the Recognition moment to steal Dewshine's soul name — a violation with repercussions across multiple subsequent story arcs — cementing her as one of independent comics' most psychologically complex villains of the early 1980s.

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writer, artist, inker, letterer Wendy Pini · writer Richard Pini · cover Wendy Pini

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History

ElfQuest #13 was published in February 1982 by WaRP Graphics, the company Wendy and Richard Pini founded in 1977 and named as an acronym of their own names. The issue carries the story title 'What Is the Way?' and was plotted by both Pinis, scripted by Wendy Pini, and fully drawn and covered by Wendy Pini, continuing the collaborative production model the pair maintained across the entire 20-issue original run. The series was self-distributed at the magazine-format size throughout this period, an unusual publishing posture for an independent fantasy comic in 1982 that gave the Pinis full creative and commercial autonomy.

Trivia · 8 facts

Published February 1982 by WaRP Graphics; story titled 'What Is the Way?'; 44 pages; cover art by Wendy Pini.
Plotted by Wendy Pini and Richard Pini; scripted and fully illustrated by Wendy Pini.
Central story event: the involuntary Recognition of Tyldak (a Glider reshaped into a winged, bird-like form by Winnowill) and Dewshine (a Wolfrider), which would eventually produce their son Windkin.
Winnowill is present at the moment of Recognition and overhears Tyldak speak Dewshine's soul name aloud, giving her a psychic hold over Dewshine that the series exploits through multiple subsequent story arcs.
The issue presents an extended vision or sending sequence introducing the full ancestral lineage of the Wolfriders, including Timmain, Timmorn Yellow-Eyes, Two-Spear, Rahnee the She-Wolf, Prey-Pacer, Freefoot, Goodtree, Huntress Skyfire, Man-Tricker, and Bearclaw — the most comprehensive rendering of Wolfrider history up to this point in the series.
The Wolfriders' debate over whether to remain with the Gliders of Blue Mountain is a key plot thread, dramatising the tension between the wolf-blooded tribe's instinct for freedom and the Gliders' ancient, isolated stasis.
The issue includes a back-cover illustration of the Wolfpack by Wendy Pini and three in-issue cartoons about the Pinis, reflecting the direct creator-fan relationship WaRP cultivated throughout the original run.
The original WaRP magazine issue was later reprinted as part of a Dutch-language series by Arboris (c. 1987) and subsequently in colour by Marvel's Epic Comics imprint, which repackaged the original quest material in the mid-to-late 1980s.