Alden McWilliams (2 February 1916 – 19 March 1993; age 77) was an illustrator on numerous Star Trek comics published by Western Publishing's Whitman Publishing, under the Gold Key Comics banner.
Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, McWilliams attended the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. He started his career as an artist in various pulp magazines before entering the comics industry in 1935. He wrote and illustrated a number of science fiction titles, including "Captain Frank Hawk", "Space Cadets", and "Flash Gordon".
When the second world war began, he illustrated a number of war stories before entering the army at the end of 1942. He was discharged in 1945, at which time he re-entered the comics industry, working on stories in the crime and war genres.
Over the next twenty years, he worked on a science fiction daily strip called "Twin Earths", a sea adventure daily called "Davy Jones", and then "Dateline: Danger!", a spy story that had the first African-American lead character of a comic strip (Danny Raven). Toward the end of his career he worked on the "Buck Rogers" newspaper strip and "Star Trek" comic book for Gold Key Comics. In the mid-1970s, he moved into advertising, but never stopped illustrating comic books until his death.
McWilliams died on 19 March 1993 from respiratory failure at a hospital in Stamford, Connecticut.
Artist credits[]
- Gold Key TOS
- #38: "One of Our Captains Is Missing!"
- #40: "Furlough to Fury"
- #41: "The Evictors"
- #42: "World Against Time"
- #43: "World Beneath the Waves"
- #44: "Prince Traitor"
- #46: "Mr. Oracle"
- #47: "This Tree Bears Bitter Fruit"
- #48: "Murder Boards the Enterprise"
- #49: "A Warp in Space"
- #50: "The Planet of No Life"
- #51: "Destination Annihilation"
- #52: "And a Child Shall Lead Them"
- #53: "What Fools These Mortals Be"
- #54: "Sport of Knaves"
- #55: "A World Against Itself"
- #56: "No Time Like the Past"
- #57: "Spore of the Devil"
- #58: "Brain-Damaged Planet"
- #59: "To Err Is Vulcan"
- #60: "The Empire Man"
- #61: "Operation Con Game"