Chad Burdette
Yesterday the comics industry was shaken with the announcement that writer/artist John Cassaday had passed away at the age of 52 after being admitted to the hospital ICU last week at Mount Sinai West Hospital in New York.
Cassaday a multiple Eisner Award-winning artist was best known for his work on Planetary, Astonishing X-Men, Star Wars, and Captain America among his other creative projects. Held in high regard by his professional colleagues and fans, Cassaday was considered one of the top artists in the comics industry.
Born December 14, 1971, in Fort Worth, Texas, he was a self-taught artist who went to film school and served as a television news director in Texas for five years, before moving to New York. While he worked on his art portfolio, he worked construction, spending his free time working on his portfolio which he took to Comic-Con International in San Diego in 1997.
Cassaday’s art style has been described as sleek, streamlined, and refined yet powerful, making for all-around captivating and memorable works.
Fellow creator Mark Waid posted on his Facebook the following about Cassaday:
“As his publisher for a brief time at Humanoids, I had the great and now melancholy pleasure of watching magnificent pages, his best ever, come in slowly on his dream project, an unannounced creator-owned multimedia series that will now be his unfinished symphony.”
and
“John was pleasant, he was polite and well-mannered, and when he showed me his portfolio, I also knew he was tremendously talented for a newcomer. The next morning, I was having breakfast with writer Jeff Mariotte, who mentioned he was looking for an illustrator for his next series, Desperados. Boy, did he say that to the right guy, because I had just the artist in mind.”
Among his industry honors, Cassaday won the 2005 and 2006 Eisner Awards for Best Penciller/Inker, and the 2006 Eisner for Best Ongoing Series Astonishing X-Men.
Comic Watch wishes to pass our sympathies and thoughts along to family and friends during the time of this loss.
