Al Williamson Flash Gordon sketch

Long Story- Skip to the art if your not interested:

In 2000, I asked Pat Olliffe, who was being inked by Al Williamson at the time, to introduce me to Mr. Williamson. He said Al was one of the nicest people you could ever meet and to just go up to him myself, so I did. I brought my inking samples with me to ask him for some tips. So I'm standing there in line and then it's my turn, and I freeze. There's my hero, and I have to talk to him! So, I say hello, introduce myself, and ask him to look at my inks. He said "No, I don't look at other people's inks, cause you may be better then me." I froze again and replied that I am not good at all, and things went downhill from there. I wound up walking away with my tail between my legs, and without him seeing my work.

Skip ahead to the 2002 con (I skipped 2001 for resons I would get into if this were not already a really long explaination). I spent 4 months putting together a book for Mr. Williamson. I wrote, drew, lettered, and printed 2 copies of the book- one for me, and one for my hero. I brought it to him, determined that he have something of mine! I handed it to him and said something along the lines of "Your my hero and I just wanted you to have a copy of my book, and if you ever get a chance to read it, I would love to know what you think". As I was saying my li'l prepared speech, he flipped through the book and said "Hey, this is not bad!"

According to my hero, I'm not bad!

We got to chat a bit and he was kind enough to do this sketch for me, which I treasure more then anything.

Pat was right, he was the nicest person I could hope to meet, and since then I have gotten to write Cori (his wife) a couple times, and she also could not be nicer!