I've got the TV show LOST on the brain lately (even more than I usually do) because, in addition to the string of excellent new episodes, I've been proofing an essay I wrote for Getting Lost, an anthology out later this summer from BenBella Books edited by Orson Scott Card. USA Today mentioned the anthology in a feature on Lost recently:

With speculation comes disagreement, which may be half the fun. Orson Scott Card, author of the best-selling Ender's Game science-fiction series, says a collective-consciousness theme would turn whatever solid ground viewers can count on into quicksand. "One thing we're counting on is that the back stories are true," says Card, who is editing an upcoming book of essays, Getting Lost: Survival, Baggage and Starting Over in J.J. Abrams' Lost, due in August.

Lost may be teasing viewers at times, too. Producers say it isn't purgatory, but the name Gary Troup is an anagram for that transitional realm, Porter says.

Lost's many literary and philosophical allusions don't provide specific explanations, but they offer a cornucopia of considerations. Characters bear the names of famed philosophers Locke and Rousseau. The novel Watership Down is about rabbits that must flee their warren, and tesseracts, or time ripples, are found in A Wrinkle in Time, two of the many books read on the island.

An Ambrose Bierce story on Lost's reading list, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, toys with the snow-globe theory, telling the story of a man who thinks he has escaped hanging only to find it occurred in his own mind just before he is hanged. But Lavery points to Bierce's The Damned Thing, which is about an invisible monster.

Other essayists cite philosopher Francis Bacon and mathematician Ren? Descartes in their musings. "I think Lost, more than anything else on TV to date, provides a forum for philosophical and critical discussion," says Amy Bauer, an assistant professor of music at the University of California-Irvine who moderates a peer-reviewed online journal, The Society for the Study of Lost (www.loststudies.com).

I'm the fellow who goes on about Descartes therein, but lately I've been thinking about elves. Coby, the young kobold in Elf-Help, was raised by humans following the vague circumstances of his discovery in a "bone yard" (see episode 19); in some mythologies, elves are known to switch human babies for their own (this is where the term "changeling" comes from).

It occurs to me that the Others from Lost bear some resemblance to elves. First of all, they were on the island long before our castaways (an elder race, as it were), and second, they are very interested in stealing babies. And kids. And they don't so much switch them (at least so far) as just take them. But still.

So anyway, could Coby be an Other? Only time will tell!

The main thing about elves is not that they are evil per se, but simply that they are other. During the course of most fantasy stories elves are approached and understood -- sometimes they even become our allies. It will be interesting to see over these last few episodes of Lost leading up to the season finale if the others become any less... other.

related posts: Lost = TV, Lost in 'Lost'

A spotlight courtesy of Jen Contino's excellent "Intro to Webcomics" feature.

No new episode of Elf-Help this week, as we take a break between chapters to catch up. Make sure to check back next Wednesday for the launch of the third and final chapter and the debut of new colorist Giuseppe Pica (here's a taste of what he's been doing on another project of mine called The Matriarch).

Elf-Help takes place in a world called the Pure Lands, along the Wizard Coast (as subtly revealed in episode 4); two day's journey from Trelland is the river Prescience, which traverses the continent, touching nearly every major metropolis before disappearing into the Anarchy, which lies beyond the Dragon's Teeth Mountains. At the mouth of this place of mystery, protecting the rest of the continent from the myriad dangers of the Anarchy, is Jengao, City of Towers, home to master thief Jack Nimble and his assassin partner, Phillip? (alias: the Platypus).

Jack and Phillip? are the stars of The Dead God's Trilogy, a story cycle currently in progress at the e-zine Flashing Swords. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about the wider world of which Elf-Help is a part, click here to read "The Dead God's Destiny" --

Avasa looked at the bracelet. It was a nice piece, but obviously not worth the risks they had taken to get it. ?Then what?s in this for you?? she asked, voice rising in a way Jack found adorable.

Jack shrugged. ?The usual. Eternal life, world domination. In that order.?

-- and here to read "The Dead God's Puppet-Show":

?What did you have in mind?? Phillip? asked cautiously. ?For this caper specifically?? He put a rum ball to his lips and began sucking on it.

?We?re going after the cult of Monkey Testicles,? Jack said. Phillip? stopped sucking, moved the ball away from his mouth, and stared at it.

The third installment, "The Dead God's Punishment," should be up early next week.

Thanks for reading!

Elf-Help was the first comic I ever had drawn by a professional artist. Luckily for me, Elf-Help artist Martin Morazzo is thoughtful, ultra-talented, and even a mind-reader of sorts. Here's page one of the script I sent him, and what he came up with:

Page One
1/ Splash, with credits and title: ?Elf-Help.?

Looking down on a low cliff overlooking a harbour. A Viking-style longboat is in the water. A very long pole juts from just before the ship?s bow, topped by a carved monster (the ship?s ?watchman?).

Three kids lounge on the cliff but we are too far away to make out definitive details. There is quite a bit of dialogue here, but we have most of the page to play with.

Mar: You ever seen elf boobs, Coby?

Coby: Uhh?

Gerd: You haven?t either, Mar.
Mar: How would you know, Gerd?
Gerd: I?d never let you see me naked.
Mar: Well that?s good, since you?re like, twelve --
Gerd: I?m fourteen -- same as you and Coby!
Mar: But how old are you in dog years?

Inset Panel (bottom right): Move in closer on the kids, who are lying near the edge of the cliff (Gerd, Coby, then Mar). We see that Coby is a kobold (dog-boy) and Mar is chubby with light hair.

Coby: What does that matter?
Mar: I assume it?s Gerd?s counting method of choice since she?s always being such a bi --

Despite the clunkiness of the script (what was I thinking with the "long pole" on the ship?), Martin drew the page almost exactly the way I had envisioned it in my head -- better, in fact, since he simplified some of the more awkward bits (like the long pole).

It was quite a thrill to see that first page -- we were so in synch, it was like he had read my mind. Looking back, I suppose some of the similarity between the page as I envisioned it, and the page as Martin drew it, are the natural results of both of us understanding how a comic page is read, and how to guide the reader's eye. (Like prose, western comics are read from left to right, and from top to bottom, with particular importance given to the bottom right hand corner).

My hope on this first page was to draw the reader into the story -- literally. The eye moves across the title, then onto the ship entering the harbor. Is it a friendly ship from the village? Strangers bringing news? Amazon Kobold Marauders? -- the idea is to introduce a little mystery and tension. Martin seemed to grasp this intuitively, and the ship he designed is absolutely perfect for the purposes of our story (so good, in fact, that the image of the ship in the harbor will become very important in future chapters).

The way the ship enters the page from the top right (which I didn't specify in the script, but which Martin sensed should be the case) leads the eye down the pier (a nice addition on Martin's part), right to the dialogue balloons, which then (hopefully) pull you to the bottom right corner, where we meet our main characters. As an insentive to turn the page (Elf-Help was originally intended as a 16-page b&w print comic), I built in a cliffhanger where it seems like Mar is going to call Gerd a bad name.

As much as Martin did with the layout, the real magic is in what he brings to the characters themselves (more on that later).

Click here to see page one in its final form.