Story Title: ElfQuest: WaveDancers
Series Title: Search for the True Crown
Issue No: 2
Story and Script: Julie Ditrich and Bruce Love
Pencils: Jozef Szekeres
Inks: Jozef Szekeres
Colours: Jozef Szekeres
Letters: Lorena Mapa
Cover: Jozef Szekeres
Editor: Richard Pini
Genre: Fantasy
Synopsis: As the Crowning Festival continues, Barmek and Sleia press deeper into the world beyond the sea in search of answers. Guided by a mysterious intuition he calls the “Calling”, Barmek becomes increasingly convinced that the returned Crown is not who she claims to be—even as his mother, the blind midwife who once protected the child Raenafel, insists otherwise. Along the way, the young WaveDancers face unexpected challenges, discovering that life on land can be just as dangerous as the secrets they seek to uncover.

The Story Behind the Story: In the early 1990s, Warp Graphics invited creators from around the world to submit speculative stories set within the beloved ElfQuest universe. Together, Bruce Love, Jozef Szekeres and I responded with an ambitious proposal that explored an entirely new tribe of ocean-dwelling elves. Inspired by our lifelong fascination with mermaids, we imagined a hidden world where some elves possessed tails, others walked on land, and ancient mysteries waited beneath the ocean’s surface. Alongside the formidable Winnowill, we introduced twenty-two original characters and mapped out not just one story, but a vision for four interconnected series.

Working to a remarkably tight deadline, we completed the entire proposal in just two weeks before sending it across the Pacific. The response exceeded every expectation. Warp Graphics embraced the concept and invited us to develop it into an official ElfQuest spin-off. WaveDancers was born.

Published across six issues, ElfQuest: WaveDancers found readers around the world, particularly in the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and Norway. It was a rare opportunity to contribute to a world we had long admired while leaving our own imaginative imprint upon it.

More than three decades later, WaveDancers still holds a special place in my heart—not simply because of where it took us, but because it reminds me that some creative journeys begin with the courage to ask, “What if?”