Friday, March 21st, is the 77th birthday of one of my favorite people: Al Williamson. This is a print of Al’s that I hand colored with dyes, colored pencil and collage in 1979 as a sample to show Western Publishing. Our hope was to get them to spring for hand painted color on Al’s adaption of the FLASH GORDON movie. But Western ultimately decided to go with regular comic book coloring.

Al’s legions of fans will be excited to hear about Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon, A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic, a complete collection of Al’s FLASH GORDON work, much of it shot from the original art. It’s coming from Flesk Publications in late 2008 with text by Mark Schultz and an introduction by Sergio Aragones.