Following a discussion online on the work of Al Williamson I had a look at the work the former EC artist did for the Timely/Atlas group under editors (and often writer in this case*) Stan Lee. I was shocked to see at Atlastales.com that Williamson did over 130 stories for them. Some have been collected a couple of years ago (I believe that the current book from Flesk is a reprint of that). But that is even less than a fraction from what is out there. Perfectly suited for this blog then. I am dowloading all of them from various sources and will start showing them once a week on saturday. In the order of their job numbers**.
**Job numbers were the numbers attributed to each story for bookkeeping purposes, at the moment a story was assigned to an artist. From that moment on, the payment and handling of the story could be tracked inhouse. It is not always the order in which they were printed, differences may accur.
*As Timely/Atlas connaisseur found out: although Stan Lee edited the whole Timely/Atals line from 1945 onwards (sometimes using other sub-editors for different genres, such as Don Rico for war or Al Jaffee for his own romance books), he oversaw them all. That means he had his hand in everything, but not that he wrote everything as some people used to suggest. In fact Stan Lee signed (almost) everything he wrote and he wrote everything he signed (at least in the forties and fifties). My own research into Stan's writing style confirms that.
And now... on with the show! The first job AL Williamson did for Stan Lee was G-469 and it was published in Two-Gun Kid #25 in September 1955. The main art (three stories) was done by C. F. (Chuck) Miller. It is a transitional story, with Williamson on the cusp of the style that would become his won for the next few years.
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