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Alden Spurr McWilliams generally credited as Al McWilliams and A. McWilliams (February 2, 1916 - March 19, 1993),〔(Alden S. Mcwilliams ) at the Social Security Death Index. Retrieved on 2014-04-12. (Archived ) from the original on April 12, 2014.〕 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== 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).〔(Al McWilliams ) at the Grand Comics Database.〕 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''.〔 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.〔 Either having stockpiled stories prior or finding time during his service, he both wrote and drew the Quality Comics war-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.〔 He was discharged in 1945, and upon returning to the US in 1946〔 began drawing the detective feature "Steve Wood" in Quality's ''National Comics''.〔 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,〔 and did interior art and covers, variously, for such pulps as the Westerns ''All Western Magazine'', ''Exciting Western'', ''Rodeo Romances'', ''Texas Rangers'' and ''Zane Grey's Western Magazine'', the science-fiction ''Planet Stories'', the sports-oriented ''Fight Stories'', and the aviation-adventure ''Wings''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Al McWilliams」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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