Genres Humour, Parody | ||
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Similar Instant Piano, Beasts of Burden, Milk & Cheese, Dark Horse Presents, The Dark Horse Book of | ||
Eltingville (also referred to as The Eltingville Club) is the name given to a series of comics created by Evan Dorkin. The series ran in his comic books Dork and House of Fun before it received a two-issue run through Dark Horse Comics in 2014. Eltingville was adapted into a pilot for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block in 2002, but was not picked up for an official series. The series has won three Eisner Awards, beginning with the 1995 story Bring Me the Head of Boba Fett. Of the series' title, Dorkin chose to name the series Eltingville after Eltingville, Staten Island, where he worked off and on in a comic book store for six years.
Contents
Synopsis
The Eltingville comics surround a group of four teen boys (Bill, Pete, Josh, and Jerry) in Eltingville, Staten Island that are interested in various different elements of geek culture, with each character showing a specific interest in one area. Dorkin has described the characters as "four older teenagers who are fans, and they’re possibly some of the worst fans who have ever lived." The series places the characters in various scenarios that Dorkin utilizes to parody common stereotypes and situations that he or others have come across in comic book and geek fandom.
Characters
Awards
Publishing history
The first Eltingville story was an untitled strip that ran in the first issue of Instant Piano in 1994. Dorkin initially intended for the strip to be a one-shot, but chose to continue writing Eltingville themed stories due to reader response and his own enjoyment of the comic. Following stories were published through various different publications such as Dork, House of Fun, and Dark Horse Presents. Eltingville was published in the United Kingdom in Deadline as well as in Spain, where strips ran in the Spanish language magazine El Vibora and a collection of the strips were published in 2007 as El Club Eltingville De Comics, Ciencia-Ficcion, Fantasia, Terror y Juegos de Rol.
- Untitled first strip (Instant Piano #1, Dark Horse Comics, 1994 - Reprinted in Dork #6)
- Bring Me The Head of Boba Fett (Instant Piano #3, Dark Horse Comics, 1995 - Reprinted in Dork #6)
- Bread and Suck-Asses (Dork #3, SLG Publishing, 1995)
- The Marathon Men (Dork #4, SLG Publishing, 1997)
- Captain's Log, Stardate 5/5/98 (Dork #6, SLG Publishing, 1998)
- Unstable Molecules (Wizard #99, 1999 - Reprinted in Dork #8, 2000)
- The Intervention (Dork #9, SLG Publishing, 2001)
- As Seen On TV (Dork #10, SLG Publishing, 2002)
- They're Dead, They're All Messed Up (Dark Horse Presents Volume 2, #12, 2012 - Reprinted in House of Fun #1, Dark Horse Comics, 2013)
- This Fan, This Monster (Dark Horse Comics, 2014 - also known as The Eltingville Club #1)
- Lo, There Shall Be an Epilogue (Dark Horse Comics, 2015 - also known as The Eltingville Club #2)
Collections
Development
Dorkin came up with the idea for Eltingville after witnessing comic book publisher and author Dan Vado receive abuse while he was working with DC Comics. Vado at the time was writing "Justice League America" and had killed off the popular character "Ice" in the comic series, which caused various fans to send him death threats and hate mail. He published the first strip in Instant Piano in 1994 and ended up writing follow up stories in the Eltingville world over a period of 20 years. The Eltingville characters are an exaggerated portrayal of several people that Dorkin knows and also draws on Dorkin's own likes and experiences as a fan, retailer, and professional. They are meant to portray the fanbase that does not "change or evolve" to embrace changes in geek culture such as the "increasing acceptance and swell of fandom", as they see their fandom as making up their entire identity and being.
Dorkin has received both praise and backlash from readers over his description of comic book readers and the geek fandom. Of Eltingville's humor, he has stated that "The humor is supposed to hit close to home, Eltingville's a joke but it's supposed to be an uncomfortable one, it's not about cuddly, cute, awkward fans, it's always been about the unsocial, self-absorbed, arrogant little tyrants that make fandom a less fun place, the idiots who make death threats to creators and rape threats against women writing about sexism in the video game industry, who flip out about the casting of an actor playing a fictional character, who argue the most ridiculous points of trivia as if they honestly matter in the scheme of things, who put fantasy above reality and don't know how to behave like credible human beings and go bonkers if they're called on that behavior. Most fan aren't like that, but in all aspects of life the trolls are the loudest and the proudest and they really junk the joint up."
Welcome to Eltingville
In October 2001 work completed on an animated adaptation of the Eltingville stories, entitled Welcome to Eltingville. The pilot episode aired in 2002 as part of Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim and adapted the story Bring Me the Head of Boba Fett. Critical response for the pilot episode was positive, but the pilot was not picked up for a full series. Dorkin has stated that if he could have done the pilot over again, that he would have delegated more work and that he would have chosen a different story to animate for the episode, as it would have shown a wider perspective for the series and characters.