Wendy and Richard Pini - Early Life

Early Life

Wendy Fletcher was born in San Francisco in 1951, and from an early age demonstrated the talents later to come to fruition as a professional illustrator, and eventually as the creator of Elfquest.

Wendy's youthful interest in fantasy was inspired in part by such luminaries as Shakespeare and Kipling. She took artistic inspiration from Victorian illustrators such as Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, designers such as Walt Disney, Doug Wildey and Erte, as well as comic book greats such as Jack Kirby and Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka.

Richard Pini was born in 1950, in New Haven, Connecticut. After an exemplary academic performance at school, he was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for an astrophysics degree. Always fan of science fiction, at college he found new diversion in comic books.

Wendy Fletcher and Richard Pini met when Pini read a letter of Fletcher's that had been published in issue #5 of the Silver Surfer comic book. A correspondence began, spanning a period of four years. The two eventually married in 1972, and Wendy embarked upon a career as an illustrator for sci-fi magazines. A degree in astronomy from MIT led Richard to a position at Boston's Hayden Planetarium as lecturer, photographer, script writer and special effects technician. Later, he taught high school astronomy, then worked for IBM until Elfquest became a full-time occupation.