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

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 Bernie Wrightson and Michael Kaluta enter the profession.

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.

"[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 World's Ugliest Horse"[13] in Eastern Color's seminal series Famous Funnies #166 (May 1948),[14] and a two-page Boy Scouts story, his first comics narrative, in New Heroic Comics #51 (Nov.

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.

[19] 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.

[16][26] 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 the last page.

[16] In the fall of 1956, writer Larry Ivie introduced Williamson to future comics writers-editor Archie Goodwin, with whom he would become friends and, later, a frequent collaborator.

Following Mayo's death, Williamson drew stories solo for the planned #18, but the series was abruptly canceled before that issue could be published.

[16][30][31] 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.

"[30] 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).

Williamson received a National Cartoonist Society Best Comic Book art award for his work on that title.

[44] 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.

[46] Williamson helped assemble the first major book on Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, published by Nostalgia Press in 1967, and wrote the introduction.

[48] 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).

The first Corrigan anthology was published in France in 1975, Le FBI joue et gagne, reprinting Williamson's first episode on the feature.

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.

"[61] He then began drawing the Star Wars comic strip in February 1981[62] following Alfredo Alcala's tenure, with Goodwin writing.

[16] Following the expiration of his contract on the Star Wars newspaper strip, Williamson found that the weight of doing both pencil and inks suddenly became stressful to him, drastically reducing his output.

[33] As a response to this, in the mid-1980s Williamson made a successful transition to becoming strictly an inker, beginning at DC Comics inking Curt Swan on Superman #408–410 and #412–416.

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, one of the works for which Williamson won a 1991 Eisner Award for Best Inker.

"[71] In a 1988 interview Williamson indeed stated that "I'm just tracing [Romita's] pencils" and claimed that the only changes he made were occasionally leaving out an unnecessary background if he was in a rush.

[33] 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.

He was interviewed for the 2003 Frank Frazetta documentary Painting with Fire, along with fellow surviving "Fleagle Gang" members Angelo Torres and Nick Meglin.

[79][80] Williamson has been a stylistic influence on a number of younger artists such as Tom Yeates,[81] Mark Schultz,[82] Frank Cho,[83] Steve Epting,[84] Tony Harris,[85] Jim Keefe,[86] Dan Parsons,[87] Dave Gibbons,[88] and Paul Renaud.