Al Williamson

Alfonso Al Williamson ( born March 21, 1931 in New York City, New York, † June 12, 2010 in Upstate New York, New York) was an American comic book artist.

Life

Shortly after Williamson's birth his family moved with him to Bogota, Colombia, and only returned to New York when he was 13 years old. In New York, he first attended Burne Hogarth's Cartoonists and Illustrators School and then enter the Pratt Institute. His first published comic Williamson at the age of 17 years. After he had drawn several years under different pseudonyms for different comic publishers, he became in 1952 the youngest artist for the Comic Publishing EC After setting his books sales in 1955 Williamson again worked for various publishers, as a ghost artist for Burne Hogarth and Dan Barry and as an assistant to John Prentice at the strip Rip Kirby. In the years 1966 and 1967 he drew the comic created by Alex Raymond Flash Gordon before 1967 by Bob Lubbers in the Secret Agent Corrigan renamed daily strip Secret Agent X-9 took over, which he held until the year 1980. From the 1990s, Williamson drew increasingly comic adaptations of movies.

Williamson was married twice; his first wife Arlene died in 1977, his second wife, Cori, was married to for 32 years, survived him. Besides his widow he left behind a daughter and a son. He was honored in 1966 by the National Cartoonists Society. Andreas C. Knigge described Williamson as one of the " most brilliant American artist ."