The Al Williamson Sketchbook

Book excerpt: Al Williamson is a legendary fifty year veteran comic-book and adventure-strip artist. Williamson has glorified E.C.'s Weird Science, won awards for his Flash Gordon, and Marvel-ous inking, inspired a generation of imitators with his Creepy and Eerie magazine work, and has been universally recognized as the truly classic Star Wars comics artist. Williamson's sketches are the closest thing the artist has produced to traditional fine art. They are in many ways his purest work. The Al Williamson Sketchbook is the only major collection of these works. The book spans the artist's most intimate musings, revealing hundreds of unpublished works dating from his years of collaboration with Frazetta, Krenkel, Wood and Torres, through all the classic Williamson subjects: dinosaurs, alien landscapes, fantastic ruined cities, exotic women, Star Wars, and swashbuckling swordplay. J. David Spurlock is an illustrator, publisher, and historian of popular culture.