Elfsar Comics & Toys Blog

1931 -2010

Al Williamson, comic book artist and illustrator extraordinaire, died Saturday.  He was 79.  Williamson began his career at the fabled EC Comics in the late 40s and early 50s.  In the 1960’s he won the 1966 National Cartoonists Society Award for Best Comic Book for his work on Flash Gordon and in 1967 helped assemble the first major book collection of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comic strip which was published by Nostalgia Press.

In the 1970s Williamson drew the comic strip Secret Agent Corrigan and in the 1980s he illustrated the adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back and the Star Wars comic strip.  He also worked as an inker on an assortment of Marvel Comics titles including Daredevil and Spidergirl.

The following statement was released by the family of Al Williamson.

Al Williamson, who for over fifty years drew for both comic books and comic strips, died June 12, 2010, at age 79.  In recent years he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.  He is survived by his wife of thirty-two years, Cori, his daughter Valerie and his son Victor.

Williamson was born in New York City in 1931, but spent his first thirteen years primarily in Bogotá, Colombia.  In 1941, his mother took him to see the science fantasy movie serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, an experience which, combined with his love for comics storytelling, set his career course at an early age.

Williamson, who first and foremost considered himself a cartoonist, excelled at illustrative science fiction, adventure and western stories, pulling inspiration from both classic comic strips and motion pictures.  He is highly regarded both popularly and critically for his excellent draftsmanship and dynamic storytelling.  Most notably, Williamson was extraordinarily accomplished at rendering the human figure in motion.  His classically proportioned characters twist and leap with a startlingly vivid illusion of movement in part evolved from his study of motion picture action choreography.

Williamson began his professional career in 1948 and achieved popular recognition in the early 1950s as the youngest and one of the most talented contributors to the legendary EC line of comics.  Beyond EC, Williamson drew superior work for many comic publishers, including American Comics Group, Atlas/Marvel, Charlton, Classics Illustrated, Dark Horse, Dell, Harvey, King, Prize, Toby and Warren.  From 1967 until 1980 he produced the art for the King Features Syndicate’s daily Secret Agent CorriganStar Wars newspaper strip. newspaper strip, and from 1981 to 1984 drew the daily and Sunday

Beginning in the 1980s Williamson reintroduced himself to a new generation of comics readers as an inker for DC and then Marvel Comics, enjoying memorable stints finishing the work of other artists on Superman, Daredevil and Spidergirl.

The single comics character, however, with whom Williamson is most identified would be Flash Gordon.  The science fiction adventurer, created in 1932 by Alex Raymond for King Features, engaged the lifelong imagination of Williamson.  He produced a much beloved series of stories for King Comics’ Flash GordonFlash Gordon motion picture.  In the 1990s, he produced a Flash Gordon mini-series for Marvel Comics and later contributing to the original Sunday strip.  In addition to the stories, he produced countless other Flash Gordon images for uses in advertising, merchandising and the fan press. comic book in the 1960s.  He returned to the character in 1980, drawing a comics adaptation of the contemporary

He gradually retired from the professional ranks in the early years of the new century as one of comics’ most admired and influential creators.  Over his career he received numerous professional awards, including multiple Harvey and Eisner Awards and the National Cartoonists Society’s 1967 Award for Best Comic Book Cartoonist.

Beyond his remarkable accomplishments as an artist—the works mentioned above represent only a sampling—Williamson deserves recognition as a veteran who often opened professional doors for many others starting their careers.  An impressive number of comics contributors owe at least part of their success to Williamson’s willingness to recommend and promote new artists and writers to his editorial contacts.

Williamson was also an avid collector of comics and illustration art, valuing the beauty of original drawings produced for comic books and strips long before the physical art created by commercial artists was popularly appreciated.  He will be fondly remembered by those you knew him for his generosity, his indefatigable sense of humor and his great enthusiasm in sharing his love of comics, illustration, movies and music.

Al Williamson took inspiration from a legion of cartoonists, illustrators and motion pictures from the first half of the twentieth century and created works of timeless appeal—and then he passed that inspiration on to new generations of comics creators.

The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, a donation in Al’s memory be made to either:

The Joe Kubert School
37 Myrtle Avenue
Dover, NJ 07801
Attn: Al Williamson Scholarship Fund

or

Yesteryears Day Program
2801 Wayne Street
Endwell, NY 13760

I am sitting here in my usual spot behind the till (obviously my computer is still set up) soaking up what will be my last day here in the store.  It is a weird feeling being able to walk through spaces that were usually blocked by display cases or walls of trade paperbacks but oddly not as weird as seeing all the walls blank white. 

As I look around and see that scattered paper, cardboard, dust and debris I reflect on what many customers have been quoted saying upon their last visit to the shop “An end of an era” one after the other would say.  A statement I would have to agree.  But one customer took it a bit further as I had heard rumours and rumblings of one who wrote and performed a reading at the “Comic Strip Cabaret” held at the Rio Theatre this last weekend.  He kindly sent me what he wrote this morning and after reading it, I was blown away.

So without further ado here is a poem by Duncan Shields:

I remember it like it was thirty two years, 9 months, 25 days, eight hours, thirty-two minutes and 3,4,5 seconds ago. I was seven years old.

I grew up in Nelson. It was a wedding in the Valley, a friend of my parents. I remember that the day was beautiful, the cake was way too sugary for my earth-mother palette raised on carob and licorice root.

I had been in school for two years. The carefree days of 0-5 were far behind me and the harshness of real life assaulted me daily in the form of other kid’s lunches made with white bread and bologna and the torture of the playground. I understood that sometimes boys chase the girls and sometimes girls chase the boys. Six months earlier, I had broken my wrist chasing a girl. You’d think I would have learned my lesson.

For now, I should have been enjoying the unending summer of childhood but even then, under a beautiful sun on acres of perfect lawn at a 1976 hippie wedding, I was bummed out, dreading school, and feeling the weight of the world.

“Hey, do you like comics?” said a voice. It was the groom.

Now that he was getting married, he felt it was time to put away childish things. He said that he’d given my father his collection of comics to give to me. It was the passing of the torch. It was a generational relay race of the imagination. That’s how the first three boxes of my other life got started.

A year later, Star Wars came out.

And all was well with the universe. I may still have escaped the clutches of what I was to become if it wasn’t for the summer of 1982.

May – Conan the Barbarian and the Road Warrior.

June – Poltergeist, Star Trek 2 The Wrath of Khan, E.T, The Thing and Blade Runner

July – Tron

And let’s not forget that in December, the Dark Crystal came out to finish off a year the likes of which has never been seen before or since.

I am not the only one whose head was split open by
that year.

I think wistfully back to my first computer. A Radio Shack TRS 80 with a tape drive. I wrote programs in BASIC. I remember it the same way that I remember my grandmother’s foot-pedal driven sewing machine.

I think back to my first couple of Dungeon and Dragons games. I remember after Gary Gygax’s death last year, people realized that they wouldn’t even have a circle of friends if it weren’t for role-playing games. I know married couples that never would have met if it wasn’t for D and D.

And now here we are. The richest man on the planet makes computer operating systems and looks like an extra from Revenge of the Nerds. They say that one in 8 marriages today are between people that met on the internet.

There are over 75 movies in production right now based on comic books and video games.

We are no longer a sub culture. We are dominating. I’m glad I lived long enough to see it.

I have trouble lifting heavy objects because of all my back issues. I hit the nail on the head with the hammer of Thor. Every butter knife, to me, is missing a Silver Surfer. Gwen Stacy taught me about loss. And I’m Galactose intolerant.

Box 100, that was me. It had the binary ring of destiny to it. Every two or three weeks, I’d go in and clean it out.

In comics, more often that not, the good guys prevail. Like in Superman. In real life, with Elfsar shutting down, I feel like the bad guys have won. Like in Wanted.

I want Hulk fists wrapped in TWO Infinity Gauntlets to smash the tidal wave of commerce that takes away the small businesses but all I can do is stare at my Bruce Banner hands and feel helpless.
Less like Iron Man, more like the tin man.
Less like Batman, more like the scarecrow
Less like Kraven the Hunter, more like the cowardly lion
Less like Superman being given strength by the yellow sun and more like Dorothy lost on the yellow brick road, both of them far from Kansas.
I feel the loss of Elfsar.
I feel like I’m fighting Dark Phoenix, Galactus, Thanos and Darkseid. I feel like Commisionner Gordon’s daughter with her broken back after she was shot by the Joker. I feel like the impurity in Green Lantern’s ring. I feel like Lexcorp owns Yaletown.

If I was Wolverine, I’d give them all the middle claw.

Comics are a central building block of who I am. And who am I? I am a geek. A geek is both a noun and a verb. As Shakespeare said,

To geek, or not to geek: that is the question:
Whether ’tis wiser in this life to purchase
The toys and comics and models and robots,
and to program a mound of video games,
And by creating play them? To geek: escape;
This life; and by ‘to geek’ to say we dodge
The small talk and the thousand boring days
That “normal’s” heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To geek, to nerd;
To nerd: perchance to love: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that nerdy state few lovers come
When we have shuffled off this ‘normal’ coil,
That gives us pause: there’s the problem
That makes treacherous the nerdy life;
For who would bear the fit and weave of fashion,
The majority’s heart, society’s affection,
The camouflage of sheep, the brain’s decay,
Homogenized opinion and the thoughts
That reality television does erode
When he himself might his quietus make
With a 2d6? who would fill those gyms,
To grunt and sweat under fluorescent lights,
But that the dread of never having love,
The undiscover’d country from whose legs
No traveler returns, de-nerds the will
And makes us want to bear comformity
For outer beauty that we know not of.
Thus magazines make cowards of us all;
And thus the nerdy hue of resolution
Is sicklied over with a borg cast of thought,
And enterprises of great crew and captain
With this fear have their warp cores turned awry,
And lose their name of action. – Hark you now!
You geek Ophelias! Nerds, in thy Deloreans
Are all my friends remember’d.

For more from Elfsar’s file saver customer #100… go visit: www.365tomorrows.com

I would like to publically Thank Duncan for sending me this literary treat.  As well I need to Thank all the customers who out of the kindness of their hearts helped both Sareina and I with the immense task of closing the shop, boxing things up loading the trucks and traveling to what will be the new headquarters for www.elfsar.com. 

There will be more news coming from Elfsar soon… (including the long awaited FCBD photos). 

-Big Elf