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By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
To some people, The Big Bang Theory was a great show for nerds, but others recognize it as a show that was about nerds, and often, turned their fandom and passion for nerd culture into a punchline. That’s significantly different from what comic artist and author Evan Dorkin did with Eltingville or The Eltingville Club, which appeared sporadically in different comic collections. Instead of laughing at nerds, it was steeped in nerd culture with jokes for nerds. In 2002, an animated pilot of the first story, “Bring Me The Head Of Boba Fett” aired on Cartoon Network and it sadly, wasn’t picked up for a series, yet we had over a decade of The Big Bang Theory.
Welcome To Eltingville Never Made It Past The Pilot
I remember where I was when I first saw Welcome to Eltingville. It was four years later, in 2006, as Cartoon Network had taken to running the pilot during Adult Swim. My roommates and I were playing the Warlord CCG when the fantasy cartoon on the television started sounding a lot like our Dungeons and Dragon sessions. We stopped, and were enthralled as the opening scene shifted from a fantasy cartoon to an actual basement, with nerds arguing over the semantics of Dungeons and Dragons. If that hasn’t happened to you at least once, you haven’t done table-top roleplaying.
From there, the episode shifted to a straight adaptation of “Bring Me the Head of Boba Fett,” complete with the sight gag of the only comic store in town being in the worst part of town, because that’s how it was in the 90s. Bill and Josh, two members of the club, notice an unopened Kenner Star Wars Boba Fett figure and immediately, they both want it. The solution? A trivia contest about the nerdiest, most esoteric facets of fandom. Somehow, Evan Dorkin managed to perfectly capture the toxic side of fandom, including gatekeeping, way back in 1995. It’s become worse since then, but there’s something fascinating to those inside the nerd bubble at seeing it play out.
A Series Ahead Of Its Time
Welcome to Eltingville was ahead of its time. In 2002, getting this lost in the weeds of nerd fandom was unheard of outside of fanzine’s and early webcomics. As Dorkin explained years later: “We still hear from folks asking why the pilot never became a series. We don’t know what to tell them, exactly. We never got an official explanation from the network as to why Eltingville didn’t make the grade. We all just knew it wasn’t happening and moved on, and that was the end of the Eltingville Club on television.”
Keep in mind that five years later, Warner Bros. had their most successful sitcom in history with The Big Bang Theoryand yet, no answers as to why the animated Welcome to Eltingville remains a fascinating piece of lost media. Were it to be released today, Welcome to Eltingville would be an immediate hit. Nerd culture has permeated the rest of the culture, especially with the rise of Marvel, so who wouldn’t like a series laughing about it from the inside?
The complete Elginville comics can be found in Evan Dorkin’s new collection, Nerd Inferno: The Essential Evan Dorkinwhich includes Milk & Cheeseand Dork.
