William Willingham was born in
Fort Belvoir, Virginia. During his father's military career the family also lived in Alaska, California, and finally three years in Germany. Willingham got his start from the late 1970s to early 1980s as a staff artist for
TSR, Inc., where he illustrated a number of their
role-playing game products. He was the cover artist for the
AD&D Player Character Record Sheets,
Against the Giants,
Secret of Bone Hill, the
Gamma World book
Legion of Gold, and provided the back cover for
In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords. He was an interior artist on
White Plume Mountain,
Slave Pits of the Undercity,
Ghost Tower of Inverness,
Secret of the Slavers Stockade,
Secret of Bone Hill,
Palace of the Silver Princess,
Isle of Dread,
The Mansion of Mad Professor Ludlow,
Food Fight,
In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords, the original
Fiend Folio,
Descent into the Depths of the Earth,
Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords,
Against the Giants,
Queen of the Spiders,
Realms of Horror, and the second and third editions of the
Top Secret role-playing game. He also wrote and illustrated a couple of 1982 adventures for the game
Villains & Vigilantes for
Fantasy Games Unlimited,
Death Duel with the Destroyers and
The Island of Doctor Apocalypse. Willingham also produced the alien race design artwork for the original
Master of Orion video game. He first gained attention for his 1980s comic book series
Elementals published by
Comico, which he both wrote and illustrated; this series featured the Destroyers characters from his
Villains & Vigilantes adventures as guest-stars. He also produced the
pornographic series
Ironwood for
Eros Comix. In the late 1990s, Willingham produced the 13-issue
Pantheon for
Lone Star Press and wrote a pair of short novels about the modern adventures of the hero
Beowulf, and a fantasy novel
Down the Mysterly River published by the
Austin, Texas writer's collective,
Clockwork Storybook, of which Willingham was a founding member. In the early 2000s, he began writing for
DC Comics, including the
limited series Proposition Player, a pair of limited series about the Greek
witch Thessaly from
The Sandman, and the series
Fables. In 2003,
Fables won the Will Eisner Comic Industry awards for best serialized story and best new series. He describes himself as "rabidly pro-Israel" and says that
Fables "was intended from the beginning" as a metaphor for the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, although he argues that
Fables is not "a political tract. It never will be, but at the same time, it's not going to shy away from the fact that there are characters who have real moral and ethical centers, and we're not going to apologize for it." Willingham worked on the
Robin series from 2004 to 2006, and established
Shadowpact, a title spun off his
Day of Vengeance limited series. He also wrote
Jack of Fables, an ongoing spin-off of his Fables series, co-written by
Lilah Sturges. At the 2007
Comic Con International, he announced that he would be writing
Salvation Run, a mini-series about supervillains who are banished to an inhospitable prison planet. He handed over the writing to Sturges after two issues because of illness. He worked on
DCU: Decisions, a four-issue mini-series that deals with
Green Arrow's endorsement of a political candidate. Again with Sturges, he began writing the Vertigo series
House of Mystery, and DC's
Justice Society of America with issue #29. In 2009, Willingham agreed to write for
Angel by
IDW Publishing, initiated a new storyline titled "Immortality for Dummies". In late 2010 (with cover dates January–April 2011), Willingham wrote the four-issue mini-series
Warriors Three for
Marvel Comics, illustrated by Neil Edwards. At 2013
New York Comic Con it was announced that Willingham would be writing a seven-part mini series for
Dynamite Entertainment (with art by
Sergio Fernandez Davila). The series is
Legenderry: A Steampunk Adventure and includes some of Dynamite's licensed and public domain characters in a
steampunk setting. The series was released in January 2014, and a collected edition was published in January 2015. In September 2023, Willingham put his
Fables series into the
public domain after a dispute with DC Comics over publishing and media rights for
Fables. DC has since responded that
Fables is wholly owned by them and the company will take appropriate action to protect its intellectual property. ==Works==