Alden Spurr McWilliams[1] generally credited as Al McWilliams and A. McWilliams (February 2, 1916 – March 19, 1993),[2] was an American comics artist who co-created the first African-American lead character of a comic strip. He won the National Cartoonists Society's 1978 award for Comic Book: Story.
Early life and career
McWillams was born in New York City, the son of chauffeur John and piano teacher Florence L. McWilliams. His sister Faith was born in 1921. By 1929, the family, of Irish ancestry, had moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, where John McWilliams became a radio-company chemist's laboratory assistant. Al McWilliams graduated from Greenwich High School in 1934, and that September began attending the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, which later became the Parsons School for Design.[1]
Circa 1935, he worked as an art assistant on Lyman Young's newspaper comic stripTim Tyler's Luck.[3] In 1938, he began illustrating for such pulp magazines as Clues Detective Stories and Flying Aces, where for three years he wrote and drew biographies of famed flyers in a single-page comic strip, They Had What It Takes.[1]
He entered comic books as the fledgling medium began, with his earliest confirmed credit the four-page feature "Capt. Frank Hawks — Air Ace" in Dell Comics' Crackajack Funnies #7 (cover-dated Dec. 1938).[4] Other early credits, all for Dell, include the feature "Crime Busters" a.k.a. "The Crime Busters with Al Brady", in The Funnies; "Speed Bolton: Air Ace" and "Stratosphere Jim” a.k.a. "Stratosphere Jim and his Flying Fortress" in Crackajack Funnies; and the radio-show spinoff "Gang Busters" in Popular Comics and Four Color.[4]
He enlisted in the U.S. Army on October 1, 1942, fighting in such World War II battles as D-Day, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star and France's Croix de Guerre.[1] Either having stockpiled stories prior or finding time during his service, he both wrote and drew the Quality Comicswar-comics features "Spitfire" in Crack Comics and "Atlantic Patrol", "Pacific Patrol", and "Secret War News" in Military Comics, as well as simply drawing other features.[4] He was discharged in 1945,[5] and upon returning to the US in 1946[1] began drawing the detective feature "Steve Wood" in Quality's National Comics.[4] Through the remainder of the decade, he also drew comics for companies including D.S. Publishing, Novelty Press, Hillman Periodicals, and Star Publications, with at least one romance comics story for Archie Comics,[4] and did interior art and covers, variously, for such pulps as the WesternsAll Western Magazine, Exciting Western, Rodeo Romances, Texas Rangers and Zane Grey's Western Magazine, the science-fictionPlanet Stories, the sports-oriented Fight Stories, and the aviation-adventure Wings.[1]
Original black-and-white art, signed "A. McWilliams" and inscribed "Al McWilliams", for the Dateline: Danger! color comic strip of Sunday, March 16, 1969. The series' co-star, Danny Raven, was the first African-American lead character of a comic strip.
McWilliams and writer John Saunders' Dateline: Danger!, which ran from 1968 to 1974, introduced the first African-American lead character of a comic strip,[8] Danny Raven, co-star of this adventure series about two intelligence agents working undercover as reporters.[9]
McWilliams magnificently illustrated the first graphic novel version of Dracula, based very closely on Bram Stoker's book, for Russ Jones Productions. It was published initially as an Ace Books paperback in 1966, and most recently has had a deluxe larger-size reprinting as a Vanguard Productions hardcover in 2021.
Concentrating on Dateline: Danger!, he drew no comic books from 1968 to 1974. That year he did three supernatural stories for Red Circle Sorcery and Mad House, from Archie Comics' Red Circle Comics imprint, along with a handful of stories for Atlas/Seaboard Comics. He inked roughly a half-dozen Marvel Comics stories in 1975 and illustrated the first issue of DC Comics's Justice Inc. before returning to Gold Key, where he drew and lettered stories through 1982. His work there included issues of Flash Gordon and the TV-spinoff comic Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
His last known comics work is penciling and inking two short stories published in the May 1984 issues of two comics in Archie's Archie Adventure Series imprint, Blue Ribbon Comics #8 and Steel Sterling #6.[4]
Personal life
McWilliams married Ruth Jensen in 1946, and the couple moved to Darien, Connecticut, where they raised sons Chris Jensen McWilliams and Alden Richards McWilliams.[1] The couple, who also had a home in Eastham, Massachusetts, was married 46 years at the time of McWilliams' death from respiratory failure at a hospital in Stamford, Connecticut.[8]
^Leiffer, Paul; Ware, Hames. "Comic Strip Credits, S-Z". "Who's Who of American Comic Strip Producers" at The Comic Strip Project. Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2014-04-12.
^ abLeiffer, Paul; Ware, Hames. "McWilliams, Al". "Who's Who of American Comic Strip Producers" at The Comic Strip Project. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved 2014-04-12.