Al Williamson

Infobox Comics creator


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birthdate = March 21 1931
location = New York City
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nationality = American
area = Penciller, Inker
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Al Williamson (born March 21 1931) is an American cartoonist, comic book artist and illustrator of partly Colombian descent best known for his science-fiction artwork at EC Comics in the 1950s, on Flash Gordon in the 1960s, and the Star Wars film adaptations and newspaper strip in the 1980s, continuing the illustrative tradition of Flash Gordon creator, Alex Raymond. Since the mid-1980s, he has also become noted as an inker, mainly on the Marvel Comics superhero titles on such characters as Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Spider-Girl.

Biography

Al Williamson was born in New York City but moved to Bogotá, Colombia at the age of two when his American mother married his Colombian father. He returned to New York with his mother when his parents divorced. [Schultz,M.(2004) "Al Williamson-Hidden Lands". Milwaukee: Dark Horse Books, 11-15]

In 1952, at the age of 21, Williamson began working for EC Comics. While at EC, Williamson frequently collaborated with fellow artists Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and Angelo Torres, a group which was known as the Fleagle Gang. Williamson primarily worked on EC's science fiction comics Weird Science, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science-Fantasy, but occasionally appeared in their horror and crime comics as well. Williamson worked at EC through 1956 until the cancellation of their Picto-Fiction magazines.

According to Jim Keefe's website, in 1960 he went to work as an assistant to John Prentice on the comic strip "Rip Kirby". Some work from that strip has been published as having been worked on by him from 1964. In the 1960s, he worked briefly on a "Flash Gordon" comic book which was published by King Features and remains a very collectible comic book.

In the 1960s he did sample pages for a proposed Sunday strip version of Modesty Blaise [cite web|url=http://www.io.com/~norwoodr/mb.html/|title=Modesty Blaise samples |accessdate=2006-08-19 |publisher=Rick Norwood]

Williamson briefly worked for Warren Publishing in 1964 and 1965 drawing for their comic magazines" Creepy", "Eerie" and" Blazing Combat". He would return to Warren in 1976 and again in 1979 to draw three additional stories.

In 1967, he took over the long-running "Secret Agent X-9" comic strip with writer Archie Goodwin, and remained on it until 1980. At the start of their tenure the name was changed to "Secret Agent Corrigan". When the Dino De Laurentiis' "Flash Gordon" movie came out, he did a 3-issue comic book adaptation before taking over the "Star Wars" comic strip from Russ Manning.

He has been very active as inker on several Marvel Comics titles, including "Spider-Man 2099", "Daredevil" and "Spider-Girl", as well as on Dark Horse's Star Wars movie adaptions. He won the 1966 National Cartoonists Society Award for Best Comic Book, the 1966 Alley Award for Best Pencil Work, the 1969 Alley Award for Best Pencil Work, and 1991 Eisner Award for Best Inker for his work on 1990-91 Epic Comics miniseries "Atomic Age" and other titles. He was also a formally named finalist for induction into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990, 1991, and 1992.

In 1995 Marvel released a two-part Flash Gordon miniseries written by Mark Schultz and drawn by Williamson. In 1999, he fulfilled his lifelong dream of working on the comic strip "Flash Gordon" when regular cartoonist Jim Keefe asked for his help on a page and gave him credit for his "art assist".

elected works

* "Al Williamsons Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic" - Flesk (2009) ISBN 1-93386-513-X
* "Al Williamson: Hidden Lands" - Thomas Yeates , Mark Schultz, Steve Ringgenberg, Al Williamson - Dark Horse (2004) ISBN 1-56971-816-4
* "Al Williamson Adventures" - Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones, Mark Schultz, Al Williamson Insight Studios Group (2003) ISBN 1-88931-717-9
* "Al Williamson Sketchbook" -Al Williamson, J. David (Ed) Spurlock (Editor) Vanguard Productions; (1998) ISBN-10: 1-88759-102-8
* "The Art of Al Williamson", James Van Hise - Blue Dolphin, 1983 - ISBN 0-943128-04-08
*Fantastic Four 2099 #1-5
*New Mutants vol. 1 #69, 71-73, 78-80, 82 (inker)

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.jimkeefe.com/studio/williamson/williamson.htm Jim Keefe's account of Williamson's Flash Gordon page.]
* [http://lambiek.net/artists/w/williamson_a.htm Lambiek comiclopedia entry]
* [http://users.rcn.com/aardy/comics/awards/] Comic Book Awards Almanac
* [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Al_Williamson Star Wars work]