An Elementals FAQ

A: It’s doubtful. I’d even say it will never happen, which is how doubtful I am. The film for all of the elementals comic books has been lost. In fact, it was thrown out, in a bizarre series of intentional blunders, by the man who took over control of the series. I suppose yes, one could conceivably shoot from the comic books, but that wouldn’t look good, and besides, the man who has the rights to do that never will, because he can’t seem to get anything done.

A: Once again, it’s doubtful. If it’s ever done it won’t be done by the man who ostensibly owns the property, because he’s inept. He’s begun commissioning new Elementals stories many times, but the projects always fall apart because he has this nasty habit of not paying his artists, his writers, his printing bills, and his bills in general. Someone else may simply decide to publish their own Elementals comics, and dare that so-called property owner to sue them. This is a real possibility for two reasons. First, that so-called owner guy has done everything possible to lose the Elementals rights into the public domain. That happens from time to time when one doesn’t protect his copyrights and trademarks. Among too many failures to count, he’s allowed characters called Vortex, Morningstar, Monolith, Fathom, and Ratman (among others) to be used, without doing a thing to protect his rights. He lost the trademark to the Elementals name. And so on. The second thing is, even if he did threaten to sue someone, it’s unlikely he’d actually follow through, because he isn’t a follow through sort of fellow. In any case though, I’ve moved on from the Elementals long ago, so if someone does do more Elementals comic books, it won’t likely be me.

A: I won’t absolutely say no, because ‘never’ is one of those words that tempt the gods. But if it ever did happen it would be ridiculously expensive, and something the perspective publisher would have to to wait a long time to see.

A: It’s a long story, and most of it is private. A very short version is, I agreed to sell the property to Comico (the publisher at the time) as a parting deal, when I decided to stop working for/with Comico. This was because of too, too many bad publishing decisions on their part, which they’d never warned us about. “Us” being those artists/writers/creators who actually do the work, before they made those bad decisions. Little did I know (because they were committing a ruse, a scam, a flim-flam) that the new partner brought in to help lift Comico from bad debts and bad decisions, was actually, secretly, the only partner. He was buying out all the others (for pennies on the dollar, or so I heard). That’s how he ended up owning Elementals by himself.

A: Yes and no. He reappears from time to time, like a bad penny, to make wild offers to me on how rich he can make me if I’d come to work for him, in his next publishing venture (there’s always a new next venture). The offers are all nonsense. Mostly he makes these offers through unsolicited emails (which I ignore). Someday, just to irk him, I might publish those emails.

A: Yes. The Elementals debuted in 1983, in the back of Justice Machine Annual # 1. It was established in that story they lived in and operated out of Seattle, Washington. The next (and arguably more popular) superhero set in Seattle was DC Comic’s Green Arrow, in 1987, as penned by Mike Grell.