UDPATE: It's live! Read the first page.

It's my great pleasure to welcome Wendy and Richard Pini to Boing Boing, where they'll be publishing the next chapter of their long-running fantasy epic Elfquest—online-first for the first time!

You may also know Wendy from her anime-style retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of The Red Death — which even got her in trouble with Facebook over cartoon boobs.

The first page of Elfquest: The Final Quest's prologue will appear here at Boing Boing on Monday. In the meantime, catch up with the story so far (all 6000 pages of it!), free of charge, at the series' official homepage.

After the jump, I've pasted in part of an item I once wrote (for the late, lamented Ectoplasmosis (Update: reborn on tumblr!)) about why this comic series is so awesome. Then follows our press release.

• With Dave Sim's Cerebus The Aardvark, it was among the first self-published comics to make it big, booting down the door for new talent the nation over. Its success as a graphic novel in mainstream bookstores helped infect the American mainstream with a European-esque appreciation for comics. Women read this! Women! • Wendy Pini's art is a melting pot of comics, manga and classical illustration. And she's been at it since before most people had even heard of manga. • The feral, omnisexual, hallucinogen-guzzling protagonists aren't Tolkien-derived clichés, but a freakish medley of european lore, native american myth and hippy free love. And yet it isn't at all "edgy". • No superheroes, magic wands or other arbitrary magics. It's consistently plotted to tight rules of engagement and expertly crafted by the same wife-and-husband team thats been doing little else since 1977. • It's a neat blend of high fantasy and science fiction: the "elves" are aliens who wanted to impress us by appearing as angels, but got stuck in a genetic disguise by their slaves' violent rebellion. • All the fashions in it are either from the 1970s or the 1930s: everyone is either a pimp in furs and leather or something sculpted by Erté. • Winnowill is the best arch-villainess since Cthulhu. • 6,000 pages of full-color classic indy brilliance free of charge. Precedent set. • Issue #17's Elf Orgy. Great name for a punk band.