Tribute to Al Williamson (pencils)

As mentioned elsewhere, my favorite of Al's work was his 13-year collaboration with Archie Goodwin on Secret Agent Corrigan. Over the course of their run, Al and Archie took Phil Corrigan on a bunch of exciting adventures, frequently alternating espionage stories with homages to various stories that had inspired them, including The Lost World, The Prisoner of Zenda, and even Flash Gordon.

In short, everything that Al loved was thrown into Secret Agent Corrigan.

Looking at the progression of the strip, Phil Corrigan started off looking very much like he did when Alex Raymond launched the strip, but as time passed, Phil, like Han Solo after him, developed more and more of a resemblance to Al. You can attribute this to Al using himself as a model, but not everyone who Al posed for ended up looking like him.

I think that Al was going on the adventure himself, like when we played as kids.

For this piece, I had originally planned an elaborate montage spotlighting a few of my favorite Secret Agent Corrigan adventures, but most of my Corrigan photocopies have been lost or are stored somewhere in my studio. Thankfully, the upcoming reprint series from IDW will eliminate my need to find those copies.

Here are the pencils to my Al Williamson Twart (the inks were posted today at ComicTwart).