Richard Pini was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1950. An avid reader from the age of 3, he discovered comic books, science fiction, and fantasy, and was soon devouring anything and everything he could read in those genres. In grade school he gained a reputation, in English and writing classes, for turning out wild and speculative tales - often based on the B-movies he watched on his parents' black and white TV.

In high school, he demonstrated a decided leaning toward science, and astronomy in particular. A graduate of M.I.T., he parlayed his degree in astrophysics into a career as a lecturer, photographer, scriptwriter, and special effects technician for the Boston Hayden Planetarium. He later became director (and sole employee) of a high school planetarium, and doubled as the school's only astronomy teacher. By then he and Wendy, his wife, had already begun their foray into independent comics, when she suggested to him that they might try their own hand at publishing an idea she'd had for a while. So in 1977, he and Wendy formed their own company, Warp Graphics (an acronym from Wendy and Richard Pini), for the purpose of launching a small press comic book called Elfquest.

While Elfquest was still in its early stages, he became a systems programmer for IBM. While the job was a very well-paying and secure one, Elfquest was beginning to demonstrate the success in the burgeoning comics direct market that would ultimately require full-time management, as well as his already part-time creative contributions. Even though Elfquest was conceived as a fantasy saga, both Wendy and Richard realized that grounding it within plausible real-world parameters could lend it a much more realistic feeling; it became Richard's job to provide that scientific underpinning.

In 1981, Richard made the decision to leave IBM and devote his full time to the co-plotting, editing, publishing, and marketing of the Elfquest comics and graphic novels. By the mid-1980s, Elfquest had grown as a property to include novelizations, prose anthologies, figurines and games; solely through the direct market, the comic was outselling some of Marvel and DC's own superhero titles. As Elfquest continued to grow, Richard realized that it might support more than a single bimonthly title, and began seeking other creative minds to join the Warp "family." Known as one of the comics industry’s toughest editors, Richard lent a guiding hand to over a dozen writers and artists who, during the 1990s and early 2000s, contributed to the Elfquest universe. At its peak in the late 1990s, Warp Graphics offered from 8-10 monthly titles, all within the Elfquest line.

In 1994, he became involved with the creation of the first web site dedicated to a single comic book title or company, www.elfquest.com. (Previously, comics publishers used gateways such as AOL to showcase their titles.) Just as he had self-learned the art and science of publishing from the ground up, so he also taught himself the various coding languages and techniques to add webmaster to his job description. In 2008, he began a year-long project to deliver every Elfquest comic book story - nearly 7000 pages - digitally online to readers for free, an unheard of gesture then as now. Today, he still helps in the creation and development of new Elfquest stories, while overseeing the various licenses and projects in what has grown into a full-fledged franchise.