A longtime showbiz journalist and fan's thoughts on comic books, movies and other cool stuff.

Tag: Al Williamson

Short Takes: Star Brand #7

Star Brand #7 (May 1987)

It was a longer wait than expected for Star Brand #7, as the series is demoted without notice to bimonthly publication. I say demoted because most of the other books Marvel demoted to bimonthly status at the time turned out to be on their final legs — see Dazzler, The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, and Star Wars. Roy Thomas steps in to script this issue over Shooter’s plot, and Art Nichols comes on as John Romita Jr.’s inker. Stuck in space, Ken finally notices one star brighter than the rest and realizes it’s the sun. Finding Earth, he goes to his apartment, makes a call, and finds out Deb is in the hospital. Barb finally completely kicks out Ken, who’s finding messages from the Old Man — not dead yet! — demanding back the Star Brand. Ken struggles to find him, eventually using Deb as bait. They have a big rematch and Ken appears to fry him for good — there’s a body this time. Everything settled, he goes back to Deb at the hospital for a happy ending? This was Shooter’s last issue — he’d soon be out as editor in chief at Marvel. Star Brand would enter a kind of creative limbo until issue #11, when John Byrne takes over as writer and artist and begins to completely dismantle everything Shooter built.

Short Takes: Star Brand #6

Star Brand #6 (March 1987)

Ken struggles to do better. His eye wanders at work, where he gets a shot at a sales job. He goes to meet Duck at Denny’s when the Old Man returns and joins them. He says he’s here to warn Ken and they’ll talk later. At home, Laurie acts out, and Barb tries to seduce Ken. Before he can join her in bed, the Old Man shows up with Duck, who’s now in love with him. Ken thinks he’s bamboozled her somehow. Ken doesn’t believe his ears when the Old Man tells him the Star Brand is a weapon, and Ken’s supposed to use it to decide a battle on the far side of the universe. Barb comes down and doesn’t take well to seeing Debbie. The Old Man releases Deb, who later calls and begs to speak to Ken. Barb tells her off and Ken goes to save her, getting in a big fight with the Old Man that goes into space and ends with Ken melting his face off. Once again, Ken’s lost — he can’t see Earth and so doesn’t know how to get home. Rick Bryant joins the creative team, inking some of the later fight pages. His line’s a bit stronger than Williamson’s, but it’s still a nice looking book. There have been no letters columns to date in this series, which is strange for this era at Marvel. There’s no way to see what other readers think of the book, or to announce any creative changes in the book — of which there soon will be many.

Short Takes: Star Brand #5

Star Brand #5 (Feb. 1987)

Here’s where Ken Connell tries to do better. It’s his birthday, and Debbie the Duck shows up at his door to surprise him birthday sex. Then she hides out in his car for two hours when his parents and pals (including Barb) throw a surprise birthday bash. Even Ken is getting creeped out by how the Duck lets him use her. He decides to observe the mystery woman and her accomplices, following them back to a student residence. He finds guns in their car, exposes them, and calls the police. He then flies to Libya and destroys a military base all on his own. This sequence is pretty cool — no dialog or captions for two pages, just Ken blowing stuff up. He then tries to make up with Barb, which goes well, and break up with Debbie, which does not. The Duck makes like she’ll kill herself if she can’t see Kenny, so he backs off a bit. He then goes to Barbs and plans to tell her about the Star Brand, but thinks twice after her daughter Laurie acts out again. Again, this reminds me of something that might have been tried — and maybe even work — as a superhero TV series in 1986. But as a comic, even the Romita Jr.-Williamson artwork can’t make this feel dramatic or interesting enough to really work.

Short Takes: Star Brand #4

Star Brand #4 (Jan. 1987)

John Romita Jr. and Al Williamson return as the art team, which at least gives this issue a nice look. Most of this one is about Ken being a jerk and how he deals with the fallout of being a jerk. Myron elicits a three-page recap of the story so far, then tells Ken the whole story sounds fake. Ken uses his powers to cut corners at work and continues to fool around with Duck — only this time Barb catches him and walks out. Ken mopes and mopes for a few pages until he encounters a strange trio of seemingly super-powered people who use their powers to steal food from a grocery and hide out in the wood. One of them beats up Ken real good, so he goes home to work out and start a journal in a vain attempt to do better.

Short Takes: Star Brand #3

Star Brand #3 (Dec. 1986)

Alex Saviuk and Vince Colletta step in to draw this third issue, so this issue lacks the slick look of the previous issues. Ken Connell in particular looks less interesting and more convincing as the jerk he is. This issue, he lusts after Barb’s teenage babysitter, then goes on a date with Barb but ditches her before he gets laid to take care of a superhero problem. In the Being a Superhero is Hard Department, Ken goes to the moon and vaporizes a mountain on the dark side like no one is going to notice that. He also rips up a couple of Soviet fighters bombing Afghan troops before heading home to bang Debbie the Duck — again. He also notices a classified ad in the newspaper seeking a meeting with the “Flying Man.” Of course, he walks right into the trap — it’s a woman (hot, of course) who says her boyfriend will hurt her if she doesn’t get some info from him. He takes off, and returns after leaving Barb alone in bed to find her apparently beaten up — but it’s faked. The mystery woman and her pals trick him into using his powers to rip open a car door and deflect bullets. They also see his face. Feeling like a dimwit, he goes home to Debbie the Duck. The formula’s already wearing thin, with little of interest happening this issue to excite anyone to come back for another issue.

Short Takes: Star Brand #2

Star Brand #2 (Nov. 1986)

Jim Shooter’s concept for the New Universe as a realistic take on superheroes is on full display, exposing its strengths and its flaws. Ken Connell’s heroic journey shows he’s very powerful indeed, but not very smart. He doesn’t need to breathe in space and can survive a nuclear blast, but he needs help to find his way home to Pittsburgh. He also continues to be a creep to both Barb and Debbie the Duck, and runs into an ex-girlfriend who chastises him for fleeing any sort of responsibility. John Romita Jr. and Al Williamson make this all look slick and realistic to the point of being boring. But all this sets up Ken to try to do better by helping get a little boy out of a well — he’s upstaged when Spitfire and the Troubleshooters get the boy out first — and rescuing hostages held on a cruise ship by “Moslem terrorists.” Ken does little to help the hostages, who are rescued by presumably American commandoes, but he does slam the ticking nuke into the ocean floor and somehow muffle the blast without it hurting him or his suit and with no lingering radiation. This is the hardest pill to swallow in this issue — it’s really easy to believe Ken’s a jerk.

Short Takes: Star Brand #1

Star Brand #1 (Oct. 1986)

Marvel’s New Universe kicks off with this extremely subdued comic about a regular guy in Pittsburgh who rides motorcycles, works in an auto body shop, and is suddenly given the “greatest weapon in the universe.” John Romita Jr. came to this title off of X-Men and gives a kind of quiet dignity to a story that would have worked better in 1986 as a TV series. Al Williamson’s inks are lovely — no surprise there. Ken Connell is a very un-Marvel like character, which is a good thing. He’s also dull and a bit of a creep — he dates a successful woman named Barbie while also dating another woman who appears to have some kind of learning disorder — which is less good. Writer Jim Shooter leaves the big picture for all this overly vague, giving readers few reasons to come back for #2 unless they really want to know if Ken will commit to Barbie.

Al Williamson, 1931-2010

Word has been spreading  today that one of the all-time great comics artists, Al Williamson, has died at the age of 79.

I never met him, so I’ll let others fill in the details of his life and career, but I love his art and he remains one of my favorite artists of all time.
Like most fans of my generation, I first saw his work on Marvel’s adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back and was completely and totally blown away. I loved Marvel’s Star Wars series, which was the first series I really collected as both a young reader and later as a collector. And even though I loved the series when it was drawn with incredible energy and dynamism by Carmine Infantino, I always wished deep down that there was an artist out there who could also make the comic look more like the movie.
And that artist was Al Williamson, who was working with co-penciler Carlos Garzon and writer Archie Goodwin on adapting Empire. It was gorgeous stuff, conveying the romance, the humor and the adventure while still capturing the special appeal and look of an actor like Harrison Ford. I loved it and was more than a bit disappointed when Williamson didn’t stick around as artist after Empire.
But he wasn’t gone completely. I didn’t have access at the time to the Star Wars comic strips that Williamson was doing with Goodwin because my newspaper didn’t carry it. But I definitely looked forward to Williamson’s return with Star Wars #50, which came out about a year after the Empire movie and was another landmark for the series.
I soon drifted away from comics and came back about four years later, thrilled to find one of the first issues of Star Wars I picked up when I started reading comics again was a “lost” Goodwin-Williamson job in issue #98. Jumping back in, I found that he, Garzon and Goodwin also had adapted Return of the Jedi in a four-issue series, as well as another classic Harrison Ford role in Blade Runner.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Williamson was a prominent inker at Marvel in particular, giving a lot of my favorite comics from Wolverine to Daredevil a distinctive, professional polish.
His Star Wars work was rediscovered along with the entire Star Wars phenomenon in the early 1990s. Dark Horse republished not just his Empire and Jedi work, but also turned the newspaper strips into color comics for which Williamson contributed the occasional new page and covers.
I also finally got a chance to see Williamson draw one of his favorite characters when Marvel published in 1995 a two-issue Flash Gordon series drawn by Williamson and written by Mark Schultz.
The 1990s also finally gave me a chance to read some of the work Williamson had done early in his career thanks to Gemstone Publishing’s reprinting of the EC Comics line in a new line of color comics and annuals. There I got to see at last the stuff Williamson had done early on, and it was as classically beautiful as I could have hoped. I particularly liked his adaptation of the classic Ray Bradbury short story “The Sound of Thunder,” in Weird Science-Fantasy.
I never got to meet or speak with Williamson, so I have no idea beyond others’ recollections what he was like as a person. There’s still lots of Williamson art to enjoy, with IDW adding this summer Secret Agent Corrigan to its Library of American Comics series of reprints.
Looking through samples of his work today, I can’t help but be struck by the detail and care that he obviously put into creating both fantastic worlds and also believable characters. I wish more of today’s comics artists could capture even a fraction of Williamson’s ability to make his characters look like they’re real flesh-and-blood humans, or convey a character’s attitude so clearly with a natural pose.
I’m sorry to hear he’s gone. But I know that even if I should someday stop reading comics completely, I will always never forget the beauty of his artwork and the impact it had on me as a both a young comics reader and as an adult admirer of art.
I’ll finish with a small sampling of Al Williamson images I pulled from my collection and scanned today. If you’ve never seen it, I envy you and encourage you to seek out his work. It’s worth it.
 Splash page for “Upheaval” from Weird Science-Fantasy #24 (EC Comics, 1954), as reprinted in Weird Science-Fantasy #2, (Gemstone Publishing, Feb. 1993)

 Splash page to Bradbury’s “Sound of Thunder,” from Weird Science-Fantasy #25 (EC Comics, Sept. 1954), reprinted in Weird Science-Fantasy #3 (Gemstone Publishing, May 1993)

Splash page for “Food for Thought,” from Incredible Science Fiction #32 (EC Comics, Dec. 1955) reprinted in Incredible Science-Fiction #10 (Gemstone Publishing, Feb. 1995) 

A 1970 strip from Secret Agent Corrigan taken from Library of American Comics #1, IDW’s Free Comic Book Day release in 2010.

 Interior Empire page showing a bit more of this scene than the final movie did, also from Marvel Super Special #16 (Marvel, 1980).

Interior page from Star Wars #50 (Marvel, Aug. 1981).

Page from the adaptation of Blade Runner appearing in Marvel Super Special #22 (Marvel, Sept. 1982).

 Key scene from Return of the Jedi, as seen in Marvel Super Special #27 (Marvel, 1983).

Splash page from Classic Star Wars: The Vandelhelm Mission (Dark Horse, March 1995). This one-shot featured a re-colored reprint of Star Wars #98 (Marvel, Aug. 1985).

 Page from Flash Gordon #2 (Marvel, July 1995).

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