Wendy Pini's Masque Of The Red Death 1

Wendy Pini's Masque Of The Red Death

by Wendy Pini

In a decadent, perfect future, Anton Prosper uses his vast fortune and scientific genius to seek the ultimate power of life over death. But when the beautiful prodigy Steffan Kabala enters Prosper's life, he unlocks a tempestuous passion that may send the entire planet hurtling into a bloody maelstrom of destruction.

Wendy Pini, the renowned creator of "ElfQuest," has transformed the classic Edgar Allan Poe story into a tour-de-force of visual storytelling that is hypnotic, hallucinatory, and deeply erotic.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, LGBT, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2008

About the author

Wendy Pini is one-half of a husband and wife team with Richard Pini that created, most notably, the Elfquest series.

Wendy was born in California and adopted into the Fletcher Family in Santa Clara County. Early on, she developed as an artist and was the illustrator of her high school year book. She submitted samples of her artwork to Marvel Comics at 17 that were rejected.

Pini attended Pitzer College and received her B.A. in the Arts and joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society.

In 1972, she married Richard Pini and began illustrating science fiction magazines, including Galaxy, Galileo, and Worlds of If. In 1977, Richard and Wendy established a publishing company called Warp Graphics to publish their first Elfquest comic. Elfquest was self-published for 25 years and in 2003, licensed to DC Comics. The comic series has won several awards, including the Ed Aprill Award for Best Independent Comic, two Alley Awards, the Fantasy Festival Comic Book Awards for Best Alternative Comic, and the Golden Pen Award.

Wendy has illustrated other works, including Jonny Quest in 1986, Law and Chaos in 1987, and in 1989, two graphic novels of Beauty and the Beast. Recently in 2007, she completed a graphic novel entitled The Masque of Red Death.

Wendy has received several awards over the last four decades, including the San Diego Comic Convention Inkpot Award, the New York State Jaycees Distinguished Service Award, the Balrog Award for Best Artist, and was inducted into the Friends of Lulu Women Cartoonists Hall of Fame in 2002.

Wendy and her husband currently reside in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Reviews

[Audry]

Definitely the most daring thing we published at Go! Comi. Wendy Pini pitched the idea to us at Comic-Con and I said to her, "This has to be both a book and a web comic." So I sat down to design a flash-based web comic displayer that would do it justice and allow Wendy to play around with little bits of animation here and there. The results were pretty amazing, and the story can be read for free at masque-of-the-red-death.com. We published the first, full-color volume of what is intended to be a two-volume series before passing the rights back to Wendy, who knows exactly what to do with them. ;-) This book was a hard sell in bookstores because it is sexually graphic (not for the kiddles!!!), but it has thrived online, where it finds more and more die-hard fans every day.

[Robert]

The story was strange but in all fairness I now need to read Edgar Allen Poe's Version to see what Wendy Pini was working with. I don't have a phobia against Gay themed stories but in this age of political correctness and so much feeling forced on people in order to help them think the way others think they should think, I find that my tolerance for it seems to be dropping, it has become such a turnoff for me, but I did continue to read the volume because of my love of the Elf Quest books, The story was ok, but as I said, I now want to read Edgar Allen Poe's version and see how it comes together. This was a Good Read but please, Adult consider it a hard R rating.

[Dayna]

Not a fan of graphic novels but I chose this because I needed an easy and quick science fiction for a reading challenge. Liked the art. Now I just got to find the second Volume and I'll be happy because I can't not finish this.

[TT]

Am a longtime fan of Wendy Pini, love her work. I had some of her original books before they began converting their stuff to manga form/size. Great artwork as always!

[Jami]

It probably goes without saying that I'm a huge ElfQuest fan, so that's the reason I picked this one up. I love Pini's style, I love Edgar Allen Poe, and there was even I time when I indulged in a bit of yaoi, so one would think I'd enjoy Masque of the Red Death, but I came away with an overall "meh." Not terrible by any stretch, but it's not fantastic, either. I wanted to like it, but there's something about the way these elements are put together that just didn't grab me the way I was hoping. As always, I enjoyed it because I'm a fan of Pini's artwork, so it was worth the read just to add more of her exquisitely drawn characters to my shelf. But then again, even with the artwork, I have to admit that the overly Photoshopped drawings feel a little too digital.

[Anna]

Totally trippy. The art was a little more digitally modified that I was used to after Elfquest, but it was nice to see Pini dipping in to new territory after such a long time. I don't know where this story is going, but it seems like a clever reimagining of Poe's vision. I'll be waiting for the next installment.

[Melissa]

This was not as good as I had hoped. I am a big elfquest fan (thats why I picked this up) and the art was different. Not sure about the quality of all of the drawings.

I wasn't majority into it. I didn't find most of the characters particularly relatable or very well developed.

It was pretty to look at in places though.

[Jutta]

um, i've always loved wendy's art, but it's odd to see it applied to humans. i kept expecting the elves to show up.

[Derek Royal]

Perhaps one of the most ambitious Poe comics adaptations out there, at least in one doesn't intend to remain "true" to the original.