https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_McWilliams

 Quote:
From 1950 to 1952, McWilliams primarily drew romance comics and crime comics for Lev Gleason Publications.[4] Then in 1952, he and writer Oskar Lebeck created the science-fiction comic strip "Twin Earths", which ran through 1963.[6] From 1966 to 1968, he drew the sea-adventure strip Davy Jones, a spinoff of Sam Leff's Curley Kayoe.[5][7]

McWilliams' and writer John Saunders' Dateline: Danger!, which ran from 1968 to 1974, introduced the first African-American lead character of a comic strip,[8] Danny Raven, co-star of this adventure series about two intelligence agents working undercover as reporters.[9]

Other comic-strip work includes the Star Trek and Buck Rogers strips.[5] He worked as an assistant on John Prentice's Rip Kirby in 1964 and 1965; on Don Sherwood's U.S. Marine strip Dan Flagg from 1965 to 1967; and on Leonard Starr's On Stage in 1969 and 1970.[7] McWilliams also illustrated for advertising.[5]

He drew no confirmed comic-book stories from 1952 through 1965, when he illustrated two tales in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror comics magazine Creepy. He went on to draw stories in the supernatural/mystery anthology comics Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and Twilight Zone, two TV-series spinoffs published by Western Publishing's Gold Key Comics, along with a smattering of other stories for that imprint — including some issues of the superhero series Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom — as well as for Warren and Tower Comics. Concentrating on Dateline: Danger!, he drew no comic books from 1968 to 1974. That year he did three supernatural stories for Red Circle Sorcery and Mad House, from Archie Comics' Red Circle Comics imprint, along with a handful of stories for Atlas/Seaboard Comics. He inked roughly a half-dozen Marvel Comics stories in 1975 and illustrated the first issue of DC Comics's Justice Inc. before returning to Gold Key, where he drew and lettered stories through 1982. His work there included issues of Flash Gordon and the TV-spinoff comic Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [and STAR TREK issues 38-61].

His last known comics work is penciling and inking two short stories published in the May 1984 issues of two comics in Archie's Archie Adventure Series imprint, Blue Ribbon Comics #8 and Steel Sterling #6.[4]



Al McWilliams is another o those guys whose work was credited in the 1970's, and largely uncredited before then, but whose work goes all the way back to the earliest Golden Age comics of the 1930's.
My guess is he tested his options at Marvel and DC in 1975, and then found working conditions more to his liking at Gold Key, where he worked until his retirement in 1982.

I wonder if Jack Kirby had any interaction with Al McWilliams.