Monday, June 14, 2010

Al Williamson, R. I. P.

R.I.P. Al Williamson, legendary galactic artist: "The illustrator who made his bones illustrating classic titles like Creepy and Eerie before continuing Alex Raymond's genre-defining work on Flash Gordon and bringing Star Wars to comics has died at 79, leaving a vibrant legacy."

6 comments:

Ed Gorman said...

Truly a giant and one of my five favorite comic book illustrators. An inspiration to artists and writers alike.

Scott Cupp said...

Frazetta and Williamson in just a couple of months! The world is mush the worse for their loss.

Anders E said...

I'm mostly familiar with his work with the Secret Agent X-9 comic strip. Even as the scripts became increasingly silly, it was still worth reading for Williamson's incredible artwork.

Tom Roberts said...

I knew Al intimately and worked with him. A gentleman, and huge talent.

When I was in the studio with Al, our conversations did not necessarily linger on art, but on old movies and Westerns. Al loved to share his enthusiasm about old movies. And in doing show, give credit to a lot of the behind the scenes people: bring awareness that that many old movies were made exciting by stuntmen such as Dave Sharpe and Jock Mahoney, or stunt choreography by Yakima Canutt. Their contributions sometimes added more to a film than whatever star was on the marquee.

In the studio were three-ring binders housing some of Al's extensive collection of black and white movie stills. To open a binder was doom because it would cost us 45 minutes or an hour in gabbing about this film or that when we should have been drawing.

Al also had a great love of jazz music and Artie Shaw. Music was always on softly while we worked.

We will not see Al's like again.

Tom Roberts

mybillcrider said...

Great comment, Tom. Thanks for posting it.

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