Art For Art’s Sake #302: The ‘Star Wars’ Art Of Al Williamson

Welcome to another Art For Art’s Sake – it’s Saturday, let’s take a look at just some of that gorgeous comic art all over the Internet…

Later, we’ll be taking an extended look at some of Al Williamson‘s incredibly beautiful Star Wars artwork. You know, just like this…

But first this…

Moebius – Jimi Hendrix

The Fifth Element by Jean-Claude Mézières

Mike McMahon… gorgeous Dredd…

And just as wonderful… Ron Smith

Katsuhiro Otomo

Paul Chadwick‘s Concrete

Joe Kubert

Declan Shalvey

Superman by Julian Totino Tedesco

Bruce Timm – Polaris

Otto Schmidt – Black Canary

Superman – Mike and Laura Allred

Paulina Ganucheau

Nicola Scott

Wonder Woman 199 Cover by Jeffrey Jones

Bret Blevins

Daredevil portfolio piece by John Romita Jr

Batman: Man-Bat cover – John Bolton

The New Gods (2024) – variant cover by Evan Cagle

Howard Chaykin – American Flagg #1

Tim Odland – ‘The New Guy In Town’ print

And we’ll end now with just a little of Al Williamson‘s Star Wars art…

Al Williamson (1931-2010), began his comic work early, barely into his twenties, in the ’50s at EC Comics on their Weird Science and Weird Fantasy titles, followed by work at Warren Publishing, and drew what so many would say is the definitive Flash Gordon comic book for King Comics. In the late 1960s, Williamson and Archie Goodwin combined for the first time on a 13-year run on Alex Raymond‘s Secret Agent X-9 syndicated comic strip.

But Williamson may well be best known for the work on Star Wars he did through the years. He was actually George Lucas’s first choice for the Star Wars newspaper strip (more on that in a moment), but we actually saw his art (and gorgeous art it was) first on the comic adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back for Marvel Comics. Oh, young me adored that artwork so much in my Star Wars fanboy days.

Williamson and Goodwin did take over the Star Wars comic strip after Russ Manning died in the early 1980s, also making the comic adaptation of Return of the Jedi for Marvel. Through the ’90s, Williamson found work at Marvel as an inker on many different titles, which was really a terrible waste of the man’s artistic talents.

Now, going back to that very first Star Wars comic strip – I hadn’t realised until I was doing a deep dive for Williamson Star Wars images that the Russ Manning strip wasn’t the first choice for the strip. Here I have to thank Sean Kleefeld for this info and artwork…

“But there were actually a dozen Star Wars comic strips done before Manning started on the ones that were ultimately published. George Lucas himself had previously asked for (and got!) classic sci-fi comic strip artist Al Williamson to adapt the first movie as a comic strip! Williams put together twelve gorgeous strips that cover the first 15-20 minutes of the movie. It moves along briskly, but clearly uses the movie for both visual and dialogue references. (Although it does depart from that for the sake of moving the story along.) Williamson ultimately wasn’t able to work on the strip, which is when Manning was brought in.”

IDW published an artists edition of Williamson’s Star Wars artwork in 2016 – see more of that here – with the entire Empire Strikes Back film adaptation (Originally published in Star Wars #39 – 44), the complete Star Wars #98, a Han Solo adventure, and selected pages from Return of the Jedi, other Star Wars pages, and pin-ups by Williamson.