Alfonso "Al" Williamson^[1] (March 21, 1931^[2] – June 12, 2010)^[3][4] was an American cartoonist, comic book artist and illustrator specializing in adventure, Western and science-fiction/fantasy.

Born in New York City, he spent much of his early childhood in Bogotá, Colombia before moving back to the United States at the age of 12. In his youth, Williamson developed an interest in comic strips, particularly Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon. He took art classes at Burne Hogarth's Cartoonists and Illustrators School, there befriending future cartoonists Wally Wood and Roy Krenkel, who introduced him to the work of illustrators who had influenced adventure strips. Before long, he was working professionally in the comics industry. His most notable works include his science-fiction/heroic fantasy art for EC Comics in the 1950s, on titles including Weird Science and Weird Fantasy.

In the 1960s, he gained recognition for continuing Raymond's illustrative tradition with his work on the Flash Gordon comic-book series, and was a seminal contributor to the Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror comics magazines Creepy and Eerie. Williamson spent most of the 1970s working on his own credited strip, another Raymond creation, Secret Agent X-9. The following decade, he became known for his work adapting Star Wars films to comic books and newspaper strips. From the mid-1980s to 2003, he was primarily active as an inker, mainly on Marvel Comics superhero titles starring such characters as Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Spider-Girl.

Williamson is known for his collaborations with a group of artists including Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel, Angelo Torres, and George Woodbridge, which was affectionately known as the "Fleagle Gang". Williamson has been cited as a stylistic influence on a number of younger artists, and encouraged many, helping such newcomers as Berni Wrightson and Mike Kaluta break into the business. He has won several industry awards, and six career-retrospective books about him have been published since 1998. Living in Pennsylvania with his wife Corina, Williamson retired in his seventies.

Williamson was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2000.

Biography[link]

Early life and career[link]

Al Williamson was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York,^[1] one of two children of Sally and Alfonso Williamson, who was of Scottish descent and a Colombian citizen. The family relocated to Bogotá, Colombia, when Al was two years old.^[5] "My father was Colombian and my mother was American," Williamson said in 1997. "They met in the States, got married and went down there. I grew up down there so I learned both English and Spanish at the same time. It was comic books that taught me to read both languages."^[6] At age nine, Williamson took an interest in comic strips via the Mexican magazine Paquin, which featured American strips as well as Underwater Empire by Argentine cartoonist Carlos Clemen. Later, Williamson was attracted to Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon strip after his mother took him to see the Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe movie serial.^[7] While living in Bogotá he met future cartoonist Adolfo Buylla, who befriended him and gave him artistic advice.^[8] At age 12, in 1943, Williamson moved with his mother to San Francisco, California; they later moved to New York.^[5][9]

In the mid-1940s Williamson continued to pursue his interest in cartooning and began to take art classes with Tarzan cartoonist Burne Hogarth, and later at Hogarth's Cartoonists and Illustrators School. There he met future cartoonists Wally Wood and Roy Krenkel. According to Williamson, "Roy broadened my collecting horizons, he became my guide to all the great illustrators — the artists who directly influenced adventure cartoonists like [Alex] Raymond and [Hal] Foster. He showed me J.C. Coll, Franklin Booth, Joseph Franke, Dan Smith, Norman Lindsay, Fortunino Matania, and the great Blue Book illustrators like Herbert Morton Stoops and Frank Hoban."^[10] As he continued to learn about the cartooning field, he would visit the comic-book publisher Fiction House, meeting such artists as George Evans, Bob Lubbers, John Celardo, and Mort Meskin.^[11]

Williamson's first professional work may have been helping Hogarth pencil some Tarzan Sunday pages in 1948,^[12] although Williamson, who had initially believed so, reconsidered in a 1983 interview and recalled that his Tarzan work had come after his first two pieces of comic-book art: providing spot illustrations for the story "The Ugliest Horse in the World" in an unspecified issue of Eastern Color's seminal series Famous Funnies,^[13] and a two-page Boy Scouts story, his first comics narrative, in New Heroic Comics #51 (Nov. 1948).^[13][14][15] (Williamson is also identified as co-penciler, with Frank Frazetta, of a three-page crime story, "The Last Three Dimes", in Standard Comics' Wonder Comics #20 [Oct. 1948])^[15] Williamson explained that while Hogarth had offered him Tarzan work, Williamson "just couldn't do it. ... I couldn't get it into my little brain that he wanted me to do it exactly the way that he did it," and instead successfully recommended Celardo, artist of the Tarzan-like feature "Ka'a'nga" in Fiction House's Jungle Comics.^[13] As Williamson recalled:

...Hogarth got in touch with [Celardo], and the next thing you knew, he was penciling the Sunday page for him. He did it for quite some time and something must have happened ... but at that point I was going to the Hogarth school again in the evenings ... and he asked me again if I would like to give it a try, so I said OK. He gave me a page and he had already laid it out, so I just tightened it up. Then he gave me another page that I tightened up and he inked it. Then I said I'd like to try laying it out myself and asked if I could do that, and he said, 'Go ahead, Al,' and handed me the script. So I laid that page out on a sketchpad. He said fine and just made a couple of suggestions as to what I should do; then I just did it on the big Sunday page, and when I was through, he inked it and the other one I had done the same way, and that was it.^[16]

During this period Williamson met his main stylistic influence, Raymond: "I had just turned 18. I had been in the business about six months or so. He gave me about two hours."^[17]

1950s[link]

From 1949 to 1951, Williamson worked on science-fiction and Western stories for publishers such as American Comics Group (AGC), Avon Publications, Fawcett Comics, Standard Comics, and, possibly, Toby Press.^[15] He began collaborating with Frank Frazetta, who often inked his work; and with Roy Krenkel, who often did backgrounds.^[18] Examples of his work from that period include "Chief Victorio's Last Stand", in Avon's Chief Victorio's Apache Massacre (no number, no month, 1951); "Death in Deep Space", in Magazine Enterprises' Jet #4 (no month, 1951); and "Skull of the Sorcerer", in ACG's Forbidden Worlds #3 (Dec. 1951), inked by Wally Wood^[15][19]

In 1952, upon the suggestion of artists Wally Wood and Joe Orlando,^[20] Williamson began working for EC Comics, an influential comic book company with a reputation for quality artists.^[21] While at EC, Williamson frequently collaborated with fellow artists Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and Angelo Torres, a group which, along with Nick Meglin and George Woodbridge, became affectionately known as the "Fleagle Gang", named after a notorious criminal gang.^[22] Williamson primarily worked on EC's science fiction comics Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and Weird Science-Fantasy, illustrating both original stories, primarily by writer Al Feldstein, and adaptations of stories by authors such as Ray Bradbury^[23] and Harlan Ellison,^[24] but his work occasionally appeared in EC's horror and crime comics as well.

Williamson worked at EC through 1956 until the cancellation of most of the company's line. Williamson's EC art has been lauded for its illustrative flamboyance, evident in such stories as "I, Rocket", in Weird Fantasy #20 (Aug. 1953), co-penciled and co-inked with Frank Frazetta; and "50 Girls 50", in Weird Science #20 (Aug. 1953), co-inked by Williamson and Frazetta.^[15][25] His final published EC story was the 10-page "A Question of Time", in Shock Illustrated #2 (Feb. 1956) with partial inking by Torres, who put his initials on last page.^[15]

From 1955 to 1957, Williamson produced over 400 pages of three- to five-page stories for Atlas Comics, the 1950s forerunner of Marvel Comics, working in various genres but primarily Westerns. He continued to collaborate with Torres and Krenkel, as well as with Gray Morrow, George Woodbridge and Ralph Mayo.^[26] With Mayo, one of the first editors to give Williamson work, at Standard Comics, Williamson collaborated on the jungle girl series Jann of the Jungle #16–17 (April & June 1957). Following Mayo's death, Williamson drew stories solo for the planned #18, but the series was abruptly canceled before that issue could be published.^[27] His "prolific though somewhat uneven two-year stint at Atlas",^[28] where he first drew war comics, yielded superlative art in such stories as "The City That Time Forgot", in Marvel Tales #144 (March 1956); "Menace from the Stars", in Mystery Tales #44 (Aug. 1956); "The Unknown Ones", in Astonishing #57 (Jan. 1957); "Dreadnaught", in Navy Tales #2 (March 1957); and "Helpless", in Battle #55 (Nov. 1957).^[15][28][29] While "something appeared to be missing from a lot of his Atlas work: enthusiasm," Williamson's Atlas Westerns, at least, "form a strongly consistent body of work, characterized by minimal to nonexistent action, a preponderance of closeups and reaction shots, and well-defined figures set against sparse backgrounds."^[28]

From 1958 to 1959 Williamson worked for Harvey Comics collaborating with former EC artists Reed Crandall, Torres and Krenkel and inking the pencils of Jack Kirby (for Race to the Moon #2–3 and Blast-Off #1). On inking Kirby, Williamson relates: "I remember going up to Harvey and getting work there. They said, 'We haven't got any work for you, but we have some stories here that Jack penciled. Do you want to ink them?' I'd never really inked anybody else before, but I said, 'Sure,' because I looked at the stuff, and thought, I can follow this, it's all there. I inked it and they liked it, and they gave me three or four stories to do."^[30] It was at Harvey Comics that writer Archie Goodwin, upon Williamson's recommendation, landed his first comic-book writing job.^[31] Goodwin would collaborate with Williamson on several projects over the next few decades.

Additionally, Williamson drew stories for Classics Illustrated (in collaboration with Crandall and Woodbridge); Westerns for Dell Comics (including Gunsmoke #8–12) and Charlton Comics (including two complete issues of the Cheyenne Kid, (#10–11) with Angelo Torres that were reputedly^{[citation needed]} drawn in a single overnight session each); and science-fiction stories for ACG (including "The Vortex", in Forbidden Worlds #69 (1958).^[26] He also worked with former EC artist John Severin on the "American Eagle" feature in Prize Comics Western #109 and 113 (1955).

Williamson's work during this decade was his most prolific in terms of comic book work and has garnered considerable praise for its high quality.^[32] He has been noted for his perfectionism and love for the medium.^[33] Despite its high reputation, it has been remarked that his artwork of this period can at times be uneven and uninspired.^[34] Williamson was single during this period and was said to have a bohemian and undisciplined lifestyle.^[35]

1960s[link]

In 1960, with little work to be found in the comic book field due to a downturn in the industry, he went to work as an assistant to John Prentice on the Alex Raymond-created comic strip Rip Kirby for a three-year period.^[26] According to Williamson: "The reason that I was called in to help him out was that John had decided to go to Mexico and Mac [Al McWilliams], John's prior assistant, didn't want to go... The deal was: would I be willing to go to Mexico?... and I said 'Si!'..."^[36] It proved to be a solid learning period for Williamson, as he credits Prentice with teaching him many fundamental illustration methods.^[37] According to Prentice: "...he was terrific. He's the best guy I ever had by far."^[38] During that time, Williamson also assisted John Cullen Murphy on the Big Ben Bolt boxing strip and Don Sherwood on the strip Dan Flagg.^[39] He also produced some sample pages for a proposed Sunday strip version of Modesty Blaise.^[40]

He returned to comics in 1965 doing one story each in Gold Key Comics' Ripley's Believe It or Not #1 (June 1965), The Twilight Zone #12 (Aug. 1965), and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #11 (Sept. 1965), and helped launch Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazines Creepy and Eerie with several stories in early issue, while also contributing to Warren's war comics magazine Blazing Combat. He was instrumental in recruiting other former EC Comics artists as Frazetta, Krenkel, Torres, Crandall, and Evans, as well as artist Gray Morrow and writer-editor Archie Goodwin.^[41]

In 1966, he drew the first issue (Sept. 1966) of a new Flash Gordon comic book series, published by King Features. Williamson's work received positive reader response, and returned to draw issues #4–5 (March & May 1967), as well as the cover of #3 (Jan. 1967). Williamson received a National Cartoonist Society Best Comic Book art award for his work on that title.^[42] In 1967, on the strength of a backup feature he had done in the Flash Gordon book, he took over another Alex Raymond creation, the long-running Secret Agent X-9 comic strip, collaborating with writer Goodwin. At the start of their tenure, the title was changed to Secret Agent Corrigan.^[43]

Williamson also helped assemble the first major book on Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, published by Nostalgia Press in 1967, and wrote the introduction.^[44] In 1969, Wally Wood's alternative-press comic book witzend #1 published Williamson's "Savage World", a 1956 story originally drawn for a Buster Crabbe comic book that had been cancelled. With significant contributions by Frazetta, Krenkel, and Torres, the story is a prime sample of the "Fleagle Gang" style and has since been reprinted by Marvel Comics (in the black-and-white comics magazine Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #1, January 1975), Pacific Comics and Kitchen Sink Press.^[45] Wood would later write the script for a three-page story drawn by Williamson, "The Tube", in another alternative-press comic, publisher Flo Steinberg's Big Apple Comix (1975).

By the end of the decade, Williamson was beginning to encourage younger artists whom he would meet at comic book conventions, helping Bernie Wrightson to break into the business.^[46]

1970s[link]

Williamson worked on Secret Agent Corrigan through the 1970s until he left the strip in 1980. The first Corrigan anthology was published in France in 1975, Le FBI joue et gagne, reprinting Williamson's first episode on the feature.^[47] He returned to Warren Publishing in 1976 and again in 1979 to draw three additional stories in Creepy (s 83, 86, 112). These were published in France in the collection Al Williamson: A la fin de l'envoi in 1981.^[48]

He drew a few more stories for Gold Key Comics, in Grimm's Ghost Stories #5 & 8 (Aug. 1972, March 1973), and The Twilight Zone #51 (Aug. 1973), as well two mystery stories for DC Comics, in The Witching Hour #14 (May 1971), with inker Carlos Garzon, and House of Mystery #185 (April 1970), with Mike Kaluta, another artist whom he helped break into the field, assisting him.^[49] He also drew various Flash Gordon illustrations.^[50] In the burgeoning fan movement, Williamson became an early subject of comics historians with the publication of Jim Vadebonceour's Al Williamson: His Works in 1971^[51] and the "Al Williamson Collector" by James Van Hise, featured in the fanzine Rocket's Blast Comicollector in the early 1970s.^[52] Samples of his sketches alsoappear in various fanzines of the period.^[53] Marvel Comics began regularly reprinting Williamson's 1950 Atlas Comics Western stories, starting with The Ringo Kid #1 (Jan. 1970) and Kid Colt, Outlaw #147 (June 1970), further introducing Williamson's early work to a latter-day generation.

1980s[link]

After leaving the Secret Agent Corrigan daily strip, he illustrated The Empire Strikes Back for Marvel's Star Wars movie adaptations (with Carlos Garzon), as well as the 50th issue of the monthly Star Wars comic. Williamson was Lucasfilms' first choice as illustrator for the Star Wars newspaper comic strip, a project Williamson had been offered years earlier but had declined to take on at the time. He was offered the Empire Strikes Back adaptation upon Lucasfilm's specific request, as George Lucas had an appreciation of Williamson's EC Comics and Flash Gordon work.^[54] Writer Archie Goodwin cited "the comfort of knowing that I would be working with Al Williamson, an old friend that I've worked with over the years. He was absolutely the best Star Wars artist you could ever want to have. That makes it easier because you feel that whatever you do as a writer, you have an artist that will make it look great. He's also an artist that Lucasfilm kind of begged and pleaded for and always wanted to have do Star Wars material. There was that comfort factor in it as well."^[55]

A comic book adaptation of the Dino De Laurentiis' film, Flash Gordon, written by Bruce Jones and illustrated by Al Williamson, was released by Western Publishing in both hardcover and softcover formats to coincide with the film's release. A photograph of actor Sam J. Jones, who played Flash Gordon, was pasted into the original cover art. It was serialized in three issues of Whitman's Flash Gordon comic book, #31-33, March–May, 1981. Alden McWilliams inked the backgrounds for the last 25 pages. According to Williamson, "It was the hardest job I ever had to do in my life."^[56] He then began drawing the Star Wars comic strip following Alfredo Alcala's tenure, with Goodwin writing. He drew the daily and Sunday feature until 1983, when the strip was canceled. Williamson's daily strips on this series were completely reprinted in Russ Cochran's three-volume slipcase edition in 1991.^[57]

Returning to comic books full-time for the first time since 1959, Williamson began work for Pacific Comics, collaborating with writer Bruce Jones for the Alien Worlds title (#1, 4, 8), and "Cliff Hanger", a six-issue adventure-strip backup feature in the Somerset Holmes miniseries. For Marvel, he illustrated the Blade Runner and Return of the Jedi movie adaptations. The two Archie Goodwin stories he illustrated for Epic Illustrated ("Relic" in issue #27, 1984; and "Out of Phase", in #34, 1986) have been considered to be some of his finest work.^[58] He drew a short story for Time Spirits #4 and the full issue of Star Wars #98. For DC Comics, he penciled and inked an eight-page story by Elliot S. Maggin for Superman #400 (Oct. 1984) and he inked Rick Veitch on the classic, oft reprinted Alan Moore Superman/Swamp Thing story "The Jungle Line" in DC Comics Presents #85 (Sept. 1985).

In the mid 1980s, Williamson made a successful transition to becoming strictly an inker, beginning with DC Comics (inking Curt Swan on Superman #408–416) and moving to Marvel where he inked such pencillers such as John Romita Jr., Gene Colan, John Buscema, Rick Leonardi, Pat Oliffe, Mike Mignola, Lee Weeks, and many others. John Romita, Sr., Marvel's art director during that time, considered Williamson to be "one of the best pencillers in the world but he really can't make a living at penciling because he wants to do these beautifully pencilled pages with ample time to do them. That's why Al is inking now ... and adding a greater dimension to the penciller he's working with."^[59] He won nine industry awards for Best Inker between 1988 and 1997.

1990s[link]

Williamson provided the covers and additional artwork for Dark Horse Comics' 20-issue Classic Star Wars (Aug. 1992 – June 1994), which reprinted of his Star Wars daily strips. He later inked the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and A New Hope film adaptations for the company. Through 2003, he was active as inker on several Marvel Comics titles, including Daredevil (#248–300), Spider-Man 2099 (#1–25), and Spider-Girl (#1–61), and such non-superhero projects as the four-issue Marvel/Epic Comics miniseries Atomic Age (Nov. 1990 - Feb. 1991), by writer Frank Lovece and penciler Mike Okamoto, for which Williamson won a 1991 Eisner Award for Best Inker.

In 1995, Marvel released a two-part Flash Gordon miniseries written by Mark Schultz and drawn by Williamson, which was his last major work doing both pencils and inks. Also with Schultz, he illustrated the short story "One Last Job" for Dark Horse Presents #120 in 1997. In 1999, he drew the Flash Gordon character a final time when regular cartoonist Jim Keefe asked for his help on a Flash Gordon Sunday page.^[60]

Later life and career[link]

Since 1998, there have been six career retrospective books published (see "Further Reading" section). Williamson cooperated with their production, with the exception of the books from Pure Imagination. He was interviewed for the 2003 Frank Frazetta documentary Painting with Fire, along with fellow surviving "Fleagle Gang" members Angelo Torres and Nick Meglin.^[61] In 2009, a Williamson illustrated Sub-Mariner story written by Schultz and dedicated to Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett was published.^[62] The story itself was originally drawn ten years previously.^[63] Williamson also illustrated a "Xenozoic Tales" story written by Schultz that remains unpublished.^[64]

Living in Pennsylvania with his wife Corina,^[65] Williamson retired in his seventies^[66] and died on June 12, 2010, in upstate New York.^[1] Some premature reports, based on unsubstantiated Twitter claims, erroneously gave June 13, 2010.^[67][68]

Legacy[link]

Williamson has been a stylistic influence on a number of younger artists such as Tom Yeates,^[69] Mark Schultz,^[70] Frank Cho,^[71] Steve Epting,^[72] Tony Harris,^[73] Jim Keefe,^[74] Dan Parsons,^[75] Dave Gibbons^[76] and Paul Renaud.^[77]

Awards[link]

• 1966 National Cartoonists Society Award for Best Comic Book
• 1966 Alley Award for Best Pencil Work
• 1969 Alley Award for Best Pencil Work
• 1969 Nova Award for excellence in illustrative art.^[78]

Harvey Award

• 1988 Al Williamson, for Daredevil, Marvel Comics
• 1989 Al Williamson, for Daredevil, Marvel Comics
• 1990 Al Williamson, for Daredevil, Marvel Comics
• 1991 Al Williamson, for Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Marvel Comics imprint Epic Comics
• 1993 Al Williamson, for Spider-Man 2099, Marvel Comics
• 1994 Al Williamson, for Spider-Man 2099, Marvel Comics
• 1995 Al Williamson, for Spider-Man 2099, Marvel Comics

Eisner Award

• 1989 Nominee, Best Art Team, for Daredevil, Marvel Comics, with penciler John Romita Jr.
• 1991 Winner, Best Inker, for Atomic Age, Marvel Comics imprint Epic Comics
• 1996 Nominee, Best Penciller/Inker for Flash Gordon Marvel Comics imprint Marvel Select
• 1997 Winner, Best Inker, for The Amazing Spider-Man and Untold Tales of Spider-Man #17–18, Marvel Comics
• 1998 Nominee, Hall of Fame
• 1999 Nominee, Hall of Fame
• 2000 Inductee, Hall of Fame (Voter's choice)

Jack Kirby Hall of Fame

• Formally named finalist for induction in 1990, 1991, and 1992.^[79]

Footnotes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Ellison, Harlan, Bruce Jones, Mark Schultz, Archie Goodwin, Mark Wheatley, Al Williamson. Al Williamson Adventures (Insight Studios Group, 2003) ISBN 1-889317-17-9
• Schultz, Mark. Al Williamson's Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic (Flesk, 2009) ISBN 1-933865-13-X
• Spurlock, J. David (editor). The Al Williamson Sketchbook (Vanguard Productions, 1998) ISBN 1-887591-02-8
• Theakston, Greg. Al Williamson - Forbidden Worlds (Pure Imagination, 2009) ISBN 1-56685-081-9
• Theakston, Greg. The Al Williamson Reader, Vol. 1 (Pure Imagination, 2008) ISBN 1-56685-037-1
• Yeates, Thomas, Mark Schultz, Steve Ringgenberg, Al Williamson. Al Williamson: Hidden Lands (Dark Horse Books, 2004) ISBN 1-56971-816-4

External links[link]

• Al Williamson at Lambiek Comiclopedia
• Al Williamson at the Who's Who of American Comic Book Artists
• Cuthbert, Ray "The Quest for Al Williamson's Flash Gordon #1", Comicartville Library, 2002
• Mendez, Prof. A. E.. "The Rules of Attraction: The Look of Love: The Rise and Fall of the Photo-Realistic Newspaper Strip, 1946-1970 - The Man Who Would Be King: Al Williamson and Secret Agent X-9". Archived from the original on July 20, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070720184920/http://profmendez.tripod.com/html/corrigan2a.htm.  Additionally, Web.Archive.org The Rules of Attraction; Web.Archive.org "The Look of Love".
• Hitchcock, John. "Archie & Al", TVParty.com, n.d.
• "Al Williamson: It Started With Flash Gordon" (interview), Diamond Galleries Scoop (n.d.)
• Al Williamson at the Star Wars wiki
• Al Williamson (inker) at the Marvel Comics wiki

Dave Stevens
Dave Stevens at Inkpot Awards in 1982
Born	(1955-07-29)July 29, 1955 Lynwood, California
Died	March 11, 2008(2008-03-11) (aged 52) Turlock, California
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Penciller, Inker, Illustrator
Awards	Russ Manning Award Inkpot Award Kirby Award

Dave Stevens (July 29, 1955 – March 11, 2008) was an American illustrator and comics artist. He is most famous for creating The Rocketeer comic book and film character, and for his pin-up style "glamour art" illustrations, especially of model Bettie Page. He was the first to win Comic-Con International's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award in 1982, and received both an Inkpot Award and the Kirby Award for Best Graphic Album in 1986.

Early life and career[link]

Stevens was born July 29, 1955, in Lynwood, California, but grew up in Portland, Oregon. His family relocated to San Diego, where he attended San Diego City College for two years,^[1] and attended the then-new annual San Diego Comic-Con (now Comic-Con International).

His first professional comic work was inking Russ Manning's pencils for the Tarzan newspaper comic strip and two European Tarzan graphic novels in 1975; he later assisted Manning on the Star Wars newspaper strip.^[2]

He began doing occasional comic book work, including providing illustrations for fanzines (inking drawings by comic book veteran Jack Kirby among them), as well as creating the Aurora feature for Japan's Sanrio Publishing.^[3]

Starting in 1977 he drew storyboards for Hanna-Barbara's animated TV shows, including Super Friends and The Godzilla Power Hour, where he worked with comics and animation veteran, Doug Wildey.^[1] For the rest of the decade, he continued to work in animation and film, joining the art studio of illustrators William Stout and Richard Hescox in Los Angeles, working on projects such as storyboards for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark and pop singer Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.^[2]

The Rocketeer[link]

The Rocketeer was an adventure story set in a pulp fiction-styled 1930s (with allusions to heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow emphasizing the pulp tradition), about a down-on-his-luck pilot named Cliff Secord who finds a mysterious rocket pack. Despite its erratic publishing history, Rocketeer proved to be one of the first successful features to emerge from the burgeoning independent comics movement. Influenced by Golden Age artists Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Reed Crandall, Maurice Whitman, Frank Frazetta and Wally Wood,^[4] Stevens was widely recognized, along with artists such as Steve Rude and Jaime Hernandez, as one of the finest comic book artists of his generation.^[5]

The first comic book featuring Stevens' signature Rocketeer character was released in 1982. Those first stories appeared as a second feature in issues #2 and #3 of Mike Grell's Pacific Comics' Starslayer series. For its next two installments, Steven's feature moved to the anthology comic title Pacific Presents #1 and #2. The fourth chapter ended in a cliffhanger that was later concluded in a lone Rocketeer comic released by Eclipse Comics.^[5] The character was then continued in the Rocketeer Adventure Magazine, with two issues being published in 1988 and then 1989 by Comico Comics; a third and final issue was published six years later in 1995 by Dark Horse Comics. Stevens' extensive background research and meticulous approach to his illustrations contributed to the long delays between Rocketeer issues.^[1] The first completed story line was then collected into a graphic novel by Eclipse Comics, in both trade paperback and hardcover formats, and simply titled The Rocketeer (ISBN 1-56060-088-8); the second story line was collected into a glossy trade paperback graphic novel by Dark Horse called The Rocketeer: Cliff's New York Adventure (ISBN 1-56971-092-9).

IDW Publishing announced a hardcover edition collecting the entire series for the first time, due originally in October 2009. Dave Steven's The Rocketeer, The Complete Adventures would contain all-new coloring by Laura Martin who was chosen by Dave Stevens before his untimely death.^[6] The book finally appeared in December of that year in two separate states: A trade hardcover edition with full color dust jacket and a second, more lavish, deluxe hardcover edition (ISBN 978-1-60010-537-1) of 3000 copies. The deluxe edition sold out almost immediately upon publication, and IDW announced a second printing.

In 2011 IDW launched an all-new Rocketeer comic book series, illustrated by various artists, called Rocketeer Adventures; the series features four quarterly issues per year (the second series of four began appearing in May of 2012). The four 2011 issues were then collected by IDW and published in hardcover as a graphic novel. All four issues in each series offers additional variant covers in shorter-run editions, some of them reprinting Stevens original Rocketeer cover art in both full color and just black and white.

Stevens began developing a Rocketeer film proposal in 1985 and sold the rights to the Walt Disney Company, which produced the 1991 film The Rocketeer. The film was directed by Joe Johnston, and starred Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin and Timothy Dalton. Stevens co-wrote the screenplay and was a hands-on co-producer of the film.^[5] It received a mixture of highly positive and lukewarm reviews and disappointing domestic ticket sales, insuring no immediate sequels would follow. Dave Stevens always felt that a majority of the problem was that the studio's movie poster and promotional graphics were over-stylized, vague, and didn't convey to people what the film was all about.^{[citation needed]}

Later life[link]

Following The Rocketeer, Stevens worked primarily as an illustrator, doing a variety of ink and painted illustrations for book and comic book covers, posters, prints, portfolios, and private commissions, including a number of covers for Comico's Jonny Quest title and a series of eight covers for various Eclipse titles, which were also published in the form of large posters.^{[citation needed]} Much of his illustrations were in the "good girl art" genre. He also returned to art school to study painting.

Following several years of struggling with uncommon hairy cell leukemia, which caused a gradual reduction in his artistic output, Stevens died on March 11, 2008 in Turlock, California.^{[7][8][9][10]}

Personal life[link]

Artist Laura Molina, with whom Stevens had a romantic relationship in the late 1970s,^[11] used him as the subject of her controversial Naked Dave series of paintings.^[12]

In 1980 Stevens married longtime girlfriend Charlene Brinkman, later known as horror film scream queen Brinke Stevens; their marriage ended in divorce just six months later, but she later modeled for her ex-husband.^[13]

Two characters that show up in the Rocketeer stories were based on personal acquaintances of Stevens: the "Peevy" character on cartoonist Doug Wildey and the sleazy "Marco of Hollywood" character on real life glamor and porn photographer Ken Marcus.^[2]

Stevens was a longtime admirer of 1950s glamor and pin-up model Bettie Page; he modeled the look of the Rocketeer's girlfriend after her and featured her image in other illustrations too, which helped contribute to the renewed public interest in Page and her modeling career. After discovering that the retired Page was still alive and lived near by, Stevens became friends with her, providing both personal assistance and helping to arrange financial compensation to her from various publishers for the use of her image and reprints of her many glamor and pin-up photos.^[3]

Death and legacy[link]

At the time of his death, Stevens was working on a career retrospective collection of his work to be titled Brush with Passion – The Life and Art of Dave Stevens from Spectrum Publishing.^[14] That book was finally published by Underwood Books in 2008.

His work has had a significant influence on comic book and fantasy illustrators,^[5] among them Adam Hughes.^[15]

Quotes[link]

"Dave had more artistic integrity than anyone I've ever known. He always marched to his own drummer whether it benefited him financially or not. He turned down many lucrative job offers — including a monthly pin-up assignment for Playboy offered by Hugh Hefner as a replacement for their regular Alberto Vargas feature — when they didn't jibe with his own highly personal vision of what he should be doing. As a businessman, Dave often drove his close friends nuts. We'd watch in astonishment at the riches passing him by." – William Stout^[2]

"Dave was truly one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life... and was certainly among the most gifted. Our first encounter was at Jack Kirby's house around 1971 when he came to visit and show Jack some of his work. As I said, Kirby was very encouraging and he urged Dave not to try and draw like anyone else but to follow his own passions. This was advice Dave took to heart, which probably explains why he took so long with every drawing. They were rarely just jobs to Dave. Most of the time, what emerged from his drawing board or easel was a deeply personal effort. He was truly in love with every beautiful woman he drew, at least insofar as the paper versions were concerned." – Mark Evanier^[1]

"Well, I do expect a lot of myself. I'm a harsh critic because I know what I'm capable of. I have hit those occasional peaks amongst the valleys, but the peaks are so few-things like genuine flashes of virtuoso brush inking, like I've never executed before or since-I can count on one hand the number of jobs where I've been able to hit that mark. The same with penciling. Sometimes it just flows, but more often than not, it's pure physical and spiritual torment just to get something decent on paper. I often get very discouraged with the whole creative process." – Dave Stevens^[3]

Selected works[link]

• The Rocketeer, Eclipse books (1990). ISBN 1-56060-088-8
• Just Teasing, Ursus Imprints (1991). ISBN 0-942681-12-6
• The Rocketeer: Cliff's New York Adventure, Dark Horse (1997). ISBN 1-56971-092-9
• Vamps and Vixens: The Seductive Art of Dave Stevens, Verotik (1998). ISBN 1-885730-10-1
• Dave Stevens: Selected Sketches and Studies, (Vols. 1–4), Bulldog Studios. No ISBN
• Brush with Passion: The Art and Life of Dave Stevens, Underwood Books (2008). ISBN 1-59929-010-3
• Dave Steven's The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures, IDW Publishing (2010).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site
• Resume at Internet Movie Database
• Biography from Comicsreporter.com
• Miscellaneous artwork gallery
• Dave Stevens Bettie Page Gallery
• Dave Stevens at Find a Grave

Interviews[link]

• 1987 Comics Journal interview
• 1988 Interview with Dave Stevens
• 1990 WFMY news segment
• 2001 Interview with Dave Stevens

Obituaries[link]

• Obituary by William Stout
• Obituary by Mark Evanier
• LA Times obituary
• New York Times obituary
• Reminiscences from Jim Steranko
• Reminiscences from David Scroggy
• Obituary from Spectrum Publishing
• Personal reminiscences by Rich Dannys

Al Feldstein
Al Feldstein by Michael Netzer
Born	(1925-10-24) October 24, 1925 (age 86) Brooklyn, New York
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Writer, Artist, Editor
Notable works	Cover designs for EC Comics. Editor of Mad magazine, 1956-1985.
Awards	Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, 2003. Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award, 2011. Honorary Doctorate of Arts degree by Rocky Mountain College, Billings, Montana, 1999. Top 100 of Arts for the Parks by the National Park Academy of the Arts, 1984 and 1999.
Official website

Albert B. Feldstein (born October 24, 1925) is an American writer, editor, and artist, best known for his work at EC Comics and, from 1956 to 1985, as the editor of the satirical magazine Mad. Since retiring from Mad, Feldstein has concentrated on American paintings of Western wildlife.^[1][2]

Biography[link]

Early life and career[link]

Al Feldstein was born 24 October 1925,^[3] in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Flatbush on East 31st Street between Avenue L and Avenue M. He attended P.S. 191, and when he was eight years old, he won a third-place medal in the annual John Wanamaker art competition. After winning an award in the 1939 New York World's Fair poster contest, he decided on a career in the art field and studied at the High School of Music and Art in upper Manhattan. When he was 15 years old, he was hired by Jerry Iger to work in the Eisner & Iger shop, an art service for the comic book industry. At Eisner & Iger, he earned three dollars a week running errands, inking balloon lines, ruling panel borders and erasing pages. When he began inking backgrounds, his salary jumped to five dollars a week.^[2]

With his graduation, he received a scholarship to the Art Students League. He began a rigorous schedule of studying at Brooklyn College during the day, followed by night classes at the Art Students League. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the Air Force in July, 1943, as an aviation cadet and began his basic training in Blytheville, Arkansas. His cadet class was held in reserve, and he was assigned to Special Services, creating signs and service club murals, decorating planes and flight jackets, drawing comic strips for field newspapers and painting squadron insignias for orderly rooms.^[2]

After his discharge, Feldstein freelanced art for comic books, including Fox Comics. Feldstein recalled that Bob Farrell, whom he considered a "wheeler-dealer" driving a convertible Cadillac, introduced him to Victor Fox in return for a commission from all payments Fox made to him. Feldstein rewrote Farrell's scripts for Fox and produced the art for the stories. He described Fox as the "typical exploiting comic book publisher of his day, grinding out shameless imitations of successful titles and trends" and mistreating his writers and artists.^[4][5]

Feldstein wrote, drew and packaged the complete Junior and Sunny books for Fox, and adapted the original radio scripts and produced the art for Corliss Archer. Warned by his letterer Jim Wroten to be cautious about payments from Victor Fox, who'd "gotten himself into financial trouble", Feldstein approached Bill Gaines, who'd just taken over as EC Comics publisher following his father's death in a speedboat crash. Feldstein's initial EC assignment was drawing a teenage book, the beginning of a long working relationship with Gaines.^[4][5]

EC Comics[link]

Arriving at EC in 1948, Feldstein began as an artist, but he soon combined art with writing, eventually editing most of the EC titles. Although he originally wrote and illustrated approximately one story per comic, in addition to doing many covers, Feldstein finally focused on editing and writing, reserving his artwork primarily for covers. From late 1950 through 1953, he edited and wrote stories for seven EC titles.

As EC's editor, Feldstein created a literate line, balancing his genre tales with potent graphic stories probing the underbelly of American life. In creating stories around such topics as racial prejudice, rape, domestic violence, police brutality, drug addiction and child abuse, he succeeded in addressing problems and issues which the 1950s radio, motion picture and television industries were too timid to dramatize.^[2][6]

While developing a stable of contributing writers that included Robert Bernstein, Otto Binder, Daniel Keyes, Jack Oleck and Carl Wessler, he published the first work of Harlan Ellison. EC employed the comics industry's finest artists and published promotional copy to make readers aware of their staff. Feldstein encouraged the EC illustrators to maintain their personal art styles, and this emphasis on individuality gave the EC line a unique appearance. Distinctive front cover designs framing those recognizable art styles made Feldstein's titles easy to spot on crowded newsstands.^[1]

Those comic books, known as EC's New Trend group, included Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, Shock SuspenStories, Crime SuspenStories, Panic and Piracy. After the New Trend titles folded in 1955, Feldstein edited EC's short-lived New Direction line, followed by EC's Picto-Fiction magazines.^[1]

[edit] Mad

After industry and government pressures forced Gaines to shut down most of his EC titles, Feldstein was briefly separated from the company. But when Harvey Kurtzman left Mad in 1956, Gaines turned to his former editor. Feldstein spent the next 29 years at the helm of what became one of the nation's leading and most influential magazines. Circulation multiplied more than eight times during Feldstein's tenure, peaking at 2,850,000 in 1974, although it declined to three quarters of that figure by the end of his time as editor.^[1][2]

Many new cartoonists and writers surfaced during the early years of Feldstein's editorship. This process leveled off in the 1960s as the magazine came to rely on a steady group of contributors. Feldstein's first issue as editor (#29) was also the first issue to display the twisted work of cartoonist Don Martin. A few months later, he hired Mort Drucker, who quickly established himself as their premier caricaturist on movie satires with Angelo Torres drawing the TV parodies. By 1961, with the introduction of Antonio Prohías and Dave Berg, he had fully established the format that kept the magazine a commercial success for decades.^[1]

Painting[link]

After he retired from Mad in 1984, Feldstein began painting again after his son, Mark Feldstein, gave him his first oil paint set since pre-Mad. He left Connecticut and relocated in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he spent three years painting the Teton Range and its wildlife.^[2]

Awards[link]

Two of his paintings from that period placed in the Top 100 of Arts for the Parks, a competition created in 1986 by the National Park Academy of the Arts.^[7]

Feldstein moved in 1992 to Paradise Valley, Montana, near Livingston, finding new approaches to depict the Western way of life in his acrylic paintings. In 1999, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts degree by Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, and that year again ranked in the Top 100 of the Arts for the Parks' Competition. He is represented by numerous Northwest galleries, and he continues to create his Western, wildlife and landscape paintings at his 270 acre (1.1 km²) ranch south of Livingston and north of Yellowstone National Park.^[7]

In 2000, he was invited to give the Commencement Address to the new century's first graduating class at Rocky Mountain College.^[7]

He was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2003.

In 2011, he received the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Horror Writers Association.^[8]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Dr. Gangrene: Interview with Al Feldstein (April 3, 2009)
• Who's Who of American Comic Books: 1928-1999
• Horror Writers Association: Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award
• Mark Feldstein
• "How I Was Stalked by George Carlin" by Mark Feldstein