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Al Williamson

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Al Williamson (March 21, 1931 - ) is an American cartoonist, comic book artist and illustrator of partly Colombian descent. He was born in New York City, New York, United States but grew up in Bogota, Colombia, returning to New York in his teens.

In 1952, at the age of 21, Williamson began working for EC Comics which became the publisher of Mad Magazine.

For a while he worked in a studio with Frank Frazetta, Roy G. Krenkel, and others which was responsible for a lot of the fantasy illustration coming out of New York City. 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.[1]

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, Williamson 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".

He is currently ill.

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