Al Williamson, who has died aged 79, was one of America's consummate comic strip artists. Chiefly remembered for his work on Flash Gordon, Secret Agent Corrigan and Star Wars, he employed a photo-real style that made even the most fantastic landscapes and action convincing. Williamson was a master draughtsman with a sharp eye for layout and composition. His virile heroes and beautiful heroines graced comic strips for more than 50 years.
He was born in New York, the son of a merchant from Bogotá in Colombia and his American wife. He grew up in Bogotá and began reading American comics, becoming a fan of Flash Gordon when he was 10 after his mother took him to the cinema to see an episode of the serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.
The family later moved to New York, where he attended classes taught by the Tarzan artist Burne Hogarth. He then studied at the Cartoonists and Illustrators school (now the School of Visual Arts), where he met other young cartoonists including Roy Krenkel, who helped broaden his artistic horizons, although his main influences were Hogarth, Hal Foster and Alex Raymond.
Williamson's first professional work appeared in 1948. He briefly assisted Hogarth on Tarzan and worked on strips for comics companies such as Eastern Color, Standard, American Comics Group, and Avon and Fawcett, drawing primarily western and science-fiction stories. His work matured rapidly and, at the suggestion of Wally Wood and Joe Orlando (both alumni of the Cartoonists and Illustrators school), he began working for the EC Comics titles Weird Science and Weird Fantasy as well as horror and crime stories in Tales from the Crypt, Crime SuspenStories and The Vault of Horror. The youngest of EC's artists, he often worked with Krenkel, Frank Frazetta and Angelo Torres.
When EC folded (their horror comics were cited as being responsible for a rise in juvenile crime), Williamson worked for Charlton, Dell, Feature, Gilberton (inking in adaptations of HG Wells's The First Men in the Moon for Classics Illustrated) and Atlas (later Marvel Comics), drawing everything from war to western strips.
In 1961 he became John Prentice's assistant on the daily Rip Kirby strip. Later that decade he drew for James Warren's horror comics Creepy and Eerie, and Flash Gordon for King Comics. Williamson's contribution ran to six Flash stories over three issues and a one-off second feature starring Secret Agent X-9, both characters created by Alex Raymond in the 1930s. Williamson filled his alien landscapes with meticulously drawn, weirdly-shaped plants and creatures. Running at between 10 and 13 pages, the stories allowed no room for character development, but were the equal to Raymond's in style and panache.
Based on his work for the Flash Gordon comic, King Features offered Williamson work on the daily Secret Agent X-9 strip. When he first appeared in 1934, written by Dashiell Hammett, X-9 was an unnamed lone-wolf G-Man. He was given the name Phil Corrigan in the 1950s, but by the 1960s was showing signs of running out of steam. The arrival of Williamson and the writer Archie Goodwin in January 1967 revived the character. Renamed Secret Agent Corrigan, the strip had echoes of James Bond, and Corrigan found himself working in exotic locations and battling larger-than-life villains. Williamson remained on the strip for 13 years.
In 1980 he drew the comic strip adaptation of George Lucas's The Empire Strikes Back for Marvel Comics. He continued his association with Star Wars by drawing the widely syndicated daily strip, again working with Goodwin, from 1981 to 1984 and adapting The Return of the Jedi, A New Hope and The Phantom Menace for Dark Horse Comics. Other movie adaptations drawn by Williamson in this period included Flash Gordon: The Movie and Blade Runner. From 1984, Williamson concentrated on inking for DC Comics and Marvel, his work appearing in Superman, Daredevil, Cloak and Dagger, Wolverine, Punisher, Spider-Man, Star Trek Unlimited, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Spider-Girl. He briefly revived Flash Gordon for an entertaining two-issue Marvel Comics series in 1995. Williamson's final comic book work was a cover for J David Spurlock's Space Cowboy in 2001.
Half a dozen retrospectives of his work have appeared over the years, including Al Williamson's Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic (2009). He received the National Cartoonists Society award, won the Harvey award seven times for his work on Daredevil, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Spider-Man 2099, and won the Will Eisner award for best inker in 1991 and 1997. In 2000 he was inducted into the comic industry's hall of fame.
In his later years, Williamson suffered from Alzheimer's disease. His first wife, Arlene, died in 1977. He is survived by his second wife, Corina, his daughter Valerie and son Victor, and his sister, Liliana.