So what can you say about Snarquest? It's an old comic and you can see that while Elmore's artistic style hasn't changed radically, it has evolved through his many years of practice and patience. In other words, if you like Elmore's art style, especially his black and white material, you'll love the visuals here.
The story itself is pretty simple, broken up into three page strips that are usually self contained as he combines elements from science fiction, fantasy, and humor to tell his story of a young Snarf who sets out to become elder of his village. And how does one become elder? Why, by being an adventurer of course! Bringing back the best tales and treasures.
Snarf isn't human but a zeetvah, think Jar-Jar Binks but actually funny and useful most of the time as opposed to not-funny and useless. The world is filled with oddities that just seem right in this setting. How about his little knight friend, Aveeare, a robot from another plane/time who joins Snarf because Snarf convinces him of his power by using a simple bag of holding? How about the Dark Shade Death Leech, a starfish looking creature a little bigger than a human head that uses a wish to communicate with everything? Only problem is that because those creatures can now talk to him, he can't find it in his heart to kill them so we get a vegetarian leech.
The bad thing is I could go on and on about the many different crazy characters here. How about the dragon that thinks it's a duck? How about the musician B.B. With his odd 'rock & roll' stylings in a medieval world? About the only character that one would consider normal are the women of the setting, the spellcaster Ethean and the warrior woman Telerie Windyarm.
The story has a few major arcs and many minor quests that sprint up. Because this is the fully collected edition, it brings together not only the first part of Snarf's quest, to become village elder, which he succeeds at, but also moves into the other major story arc where Snarf leaves his whole world behind and seeks out enough treasure to fund his small zeetvah village into a leader in education, civilization and modernism.
The only complaint I have against the material here is that it's arranged as it was printed so the wolf story, which takes place five years after Snarf is king placing it after their other adventure, where they return after, yes, five years.
At 224 pages, the book works out to a little more than ten cents per page which is a damn good bargain.
In some ways, Snarfquest is like an anime. It's got its humorous moments, it's serious moments, and a great artstyle to capture the story. If you're looking for some quality entertainment that has endured for twenty years now (boy do I feel old writing that since i used to read Snarf when it was in Dragon magazine), then Snarfquest is for you.
