Al McWilliams
| Al McWilliams | |
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| Born | Alden Spurr McWilliams February 2, 1916 New York City |
| Died | March 19, 1993 (aged 77) |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Penciller, Inker, Letterer |
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Notable works
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Danny Raven in Dateline: Danger!: First African-American lead character of a comic strip |
| Awards | National Cartoonists Society's 1978 award for Comic Book: Story |
Alden Spurr McWilliams generally credited as Al McWilliams and A. McWilliams (February 2, 1916 – March 19, 1993), 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.
Al 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 Parsons The New School for Design.
Circa 1935, he worked as an art assistant on Lyman Young's newspaper comic strip Tim Tyler's Luck. 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.
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). 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.
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