Al Williamson

Alfonso Williamson was born on March 21, 1931, in New York City, and spent a formative stretch of his childhood in Bogotá, Colombia before returning to the United States at age twelve. That early wandering seemed to feed an imagination already captivated by adventure — particularly Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon comic strip, which would shape his aesthetic for decades.

Back in New York, Williamson studied at Burne Hogarth's Cartoonists and Illustrators School, where he struck up friendships with Wally Wood and Roy Krenkel. Krenkel proved especially important, opening Williamson's eyes to the great illustrators behind adventure-strip draftsmanship. He moved into professional work quickly, and by the 1950s was producing science-fiction and heroic-fantasy art for EC Comics titles such as Weird Science and Weird Fantasy — work that remains among his most celebrated.

The 1960s brought him full circle to his childhood inspiration when he took over the Flash Gordon comic-book series, honoring Raymond's illustrative tradition while making it his own. He also contributed substantially to Warren Publishing's black-and-white magazines Creepy and Eerie, and spent much of the 1970s on Secret Agent X-9, another Raymond creation. The following decade he adapted Star Wars films for both comic books and newspaper strips. From the mid-1980s onward he worked primarily as an inker on Marvel titles including Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Spider-Girl.

A generous mentor to younger talents such as Bernie Wrightson and Michael Kaluta, Williamson collaborated extensively with Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel, Angelo Torres, and George Woodbridge — a circle fondly called the "Fleagle Gang." He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2000 and retired in his seventies to Pennsylvania, where he lived with his wife Corina. He died on June 12, 2010.