John Severin on the "American Eagle" feature in Prize Comics Western #109 and 113 (1955). Williamson's work during this decade was his most prolific in terms of comic book work and has garnered considerable praise for its high quality. He has been noted for his perfectionism and love for the medium. Despite its high reputation, S.C. Ringgenberg felt that Williamson's artwork from this period could at times be uneven and uninspired. Williamson was single during this period and, according to The Art of Al Williamson, had a bohemian and undisciplined lifestyle. 1960s In 1960, with little work to be found in the comic book field due to a downturn in the industry, he went to work as an assistant to John Prentice on the Alex Raymond-created comic strip Rip Kirby for a three-year period. According to Williamson: "The reason that I was called in to help him out was that John had decided to go to Mexico and Mac [Al McWilliams], John's prior assistant, didn't want to go... The deal was: would I be willing to go to Mexico?... and I said 'Si!'..." It proved to be a solid learning period for Williamson, as he credits Prentice with teaching him many fundamental illustration methods. According to Prentice: "...he was terrific. He's the best guy I ever had by far." During that time, Williamson assisted John Cullen Murphy on the Big Ben Bolt boxing strip and Don Sherwood on the strip Dan Flagg. He produced some sample pages for a proposed Sunday strip version of Modesty Blaise. He returned to comics in 1965 doing one story each in Gold Key Comics' Ripley's Believe It or Not! #1 (June 1965), The Twilight Zone #12 (Aug. 1965), and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #11 (Sept. 1965), and helped launch Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazines Creepy and Eerie with several stories in early issues, while contributing to Warren's war comics magazine Blazing Combat. He was instrumental in recruiting other former EC Comics artists as Frazetta, Krenkel, Torres, Crandall, and Evans, as well as artist Gray Morrow and writer-editor Archie Goodwin. In 1966, he drew the first issue (Sept. 1966) of a new Flash Gordon comic book series, published by King Features. Williamson's work received positive reader response, and returned to draw issues #4–5 (March and May 1967), as well as the cover of #3 (Jan. 1967). Williamson received a National Cartoonist Society Best Comic