I only met Al a couple of times, but I'll tell you how important he was to me: back in 1968 as I was completing my Silver Age Marvel collection, I was trying to decide "what to collect next?" - a common question for comic fans. Realize that at the time, EC had only been gone for 13 years and Atlas about 7 (now consider what was happening 7 and 13 years ago - i.e. 1997 or 2003). The price of ECs was going up, but I had most of the "good" ones already.
It was just about then that I found my first Al Williamson Atlas story and was simply blown away with the notion that he EVEN worked for somebody after EC. Remember, this is pre Price Guide. Information on these kinds of things was hoarded and shared only with like-minded and close collecting friends.
It was that Williamson story that prompted me to focus my attention on Atlas. To find those gems, I had to buy EVERY issue to find out if he had drawn anything in it. I did, and began to record the information that eventually led to the article The Dark Ages: 1955-1960 in Promethean Enterprises #2 in 1970 and to the first published index devoted to the works of one artist, Al Williamson: His Work in 1971. Despite the several errors, I'm still proud of that effort and Al was very gracious when pointing out those errors in 1972 when I met him at the New York Comic Con.
Watch for the first of three books from Flesk Publications devoted to Al's unpublished sketches. It's very sad that Al won't be here to revel in seeing those marvelous works finally seeing print after five or six decades. I didn't know him all that well, but I'll lay claim to being one of his most ardent fans.
Peace, Jim (|:{>