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Wendy & Richard Pini
Wendy
50 years ago, Wendy Pini was born Wendy Fletcher in
San Francisco. Growing up on an isolated ranch in Gilroy, California,
Wendy's imagination was fueled by all forms of fantasy and mythology.
At an early age she began spinning her own tales of elves, monkey-gods,
aliens and sorcerers. While her artistic talents were influenced
by of turn-of-the-century illustrators, film and TV animation, her
storytelling abilities evolved from a love of Shakespeare, Japanese
history and legend, modern fantasy and the epic poetry of the Ramayana.
Largely self-educated Wendy began exhibiting her artwork
in fanzines and at science fiction conventions in the mid 1960s,
garnering awards and recognition. In 1972 she married Richard Pini
and in 1974 she began her professional career as an illustrator
for science fiction magazines such as "Galaxy," "Galileo,"and
"Worlds of If."
In 1977, a deeply personal project called ELFQUEST
was born. As the first continuing fantasy/adventure graphic novel
series in America to be co-created, written and illustrated by a
woman, ELFQUEST became a phenomenon in the comics industry. Appealing
to comics and sci-fi/fantasy fans alike, it attracted a unique and
unprecedented audience, an equal mix of male and female readers.
Over three million copies of the collected graphic novel volumes
have been sold to date.
For Wendy, ELFQUEST has been an ongoing labor of love
for over two decades. With husband/editor/facilitator Richard, she
has scripted, drawn and painted many ELFQUEST graphic novels, co-written
and illustrated prose novelizations, produced calendars, portfolios
and art prints and provided cover art for the ELFQUEST related anthology
series "Blood of Ten Chiefs."
In the late 1980s Wendy wrote and illustrated two
critically praised graphic novels based on the cult hit TV series
"Beauty and the Beast." In addition, she supplied the
text and illustrations for "Law and Chaos," an art book
inspired by the writings of Michael Moorcock. Wendy has also done
work for Marvel Comics, First Comics, Comico, "Frazetta Fantasy
Illustrated" magazine, and DC Comics.
In the mid 1990s Wendy co-wrote the screenplay, with
her partners Marv Wolfman and Craig Miller, for a full-length animated
feature based on ELFQUEST volumes 1-4. She has also created pre-production
art and character model charts. The movie, is co-produced by Wolfmill
Entertainment.
Most recently, Wendy provided the control art and
worked closely with the sculptors on the first three series of Evil
Genius Toys' line of action figures based on classic ELFQUEST comics.
Following her bliss, she continues, with the ever-present support
of Richard and assistants, to produce new ELFQUEST stories and art,
from graphic novels to coloring books to fine art prints.
Someday, Wendy will finish her part in the telling
of the ELFQUEST saga. What then? Certainly there will be ever deeper
devotion to her spiritual studies, to which she has dedicated her
life; plus, possibly, a stint as a motivational speaker. Her fantasy?
Spending an entire year in some lovely retreat completing a single
painting that has no deadline attached to it.
Richard
It's been a while since I wrote one of these, and
I must be careful not to descend too far into rant mode, a pitfall
of the frequent writing of editorials. I used to have a perfectly
serviceable biography that I would send around to folks who asked
for such, part of which read: "In 1981, he stopped working
for IBM and started devoting full time to Warp Graphics." However,
at some point, due to someone else's editorial negligence, I discovered
that "In 1981, he stopped working for IBM." Period. A
later omission put me deeper on welfare: "In 1981, he stopped
working." It's fear, pure and simple, that motivates this new
attempt to limn my life; I don't want to find out what else happened
(or didn't happen) to me in 1981.
There comes a point in the repeated crafting of biographies
when one forgets what one has said before a hundred times and what
one has never revealed. Therefore, I present a smorgasbord and the
reader may pick and choose at leisure.
Yes, I am a damn Yankee, born in Connecticut, educated
(allegedly in the collegiate sense) in Boston and Cambridge, and
living in New York (but, I hasten to add, not in the City - never
in the City). Poughkeepsie is upstate. It's nice. There are trees.
There are not many taxicabs. There used to be not many cell phones,
but even Poughkeepsie must come into the 20th century at some point.
I was born in 1950, in New Haven, Connecticut, which
made me half a century old in 2000, which was not the first year
of the new millennium. I used to think that "half a century"
was a long, long time to live. Now that I've arrived, I realize
that it's only the start. I've spent nearly half of that span working
on Elfquest (more on that in a bit). I've spent over half that span
knowing, loving and conspiring with life-partner Wendy. There is
much yet to come.
My educational background is in astronomy (a love
of heavenly bodies and all that, I'm sure you've heard it before)
which has prepared me ideally for careers in planetarium entertainment,
teaching high school, programming big computers for IBM and, presently,
publishing comic books and graphic novels. You've perhaps heard
of "Elfquest". It is a sprawling fastasy adventure series
told in various forms and formats and it has occupied my mind, hands
and wallet for the last twenty-plus years; its grip does not seem
to be weakening. They say that the average career lasts for five
years; I'm doing my part to screw up the average. In the span of
over two decades I've done nearly everything possible for someone
in this line of work to do: write, edit, publish, market, manage,
succeed, fail, and administrate. I enjoy most of that; I do not
however like being a paper-pusher. Now that Elfquest has gotten
its second wind as an animated film and licensed merchandise property,
I suspect that everything prior to now is merely preamble, and that
the gods are going to turn the volume up to 11 any day.
I enjoy language in all its creative uses; puns, limericks,
double entendres, these are a few of my favorite things. There are
not many subjects that can or will embarrass me in conversation,
on a panel discussion at a convention, or in editorial exposure.
Over the years, some people may have discovered what one of them
might be; I don't recall. If it happens again, we'll see.
One of my favorite sayings has been, "Everything's
negotiable." In the course of business, it works well. In the
course of learning about and from life, that phrase is tied for
first place with, "Everything's learnable." As vast and
mysterious as is the external universe, uncovering what goes on
inside the head, heart and soul is the truest quest of all.
Text copyright © Warp Graphics
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