RIP John Cassaday

Comic artist John Cassaday, known for his work on Planetary, Astonishing X-Men, and I Am Legion, died on September 9 at the age of 52.

Cassaday was born on December 14, 1971, in Fort Worth, Texas. A self-taught artist, he went to film school and was a television news director in Texas for almost five years, then moved to New York in 1997 and took a construction job so he could spend his evenings working on his portfolio. He brought his portfolio to Comic-Con International in San Diego that year, and after that began getting calls from editors.

His early work included penciling the story “Justin” in the 1994 Boneyard Press title Bill the Bull: One Shot, One Bourbon, One Beer #1 and “Juju Eyes” in Caliber Comics’ Negative Burn #28, published in 1995. In a tribute on Facebook, Mark Waid recalls that Cassaday showed him his portfolio at the Big Apple Comic Con around 1996. “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,” Waid wrote. “The next morning, I was having breakfast with writer Jeff Mariotte, who mentioned he was looking for an illustrator for his next series, Desperadoes. Boy, did he say that to the right guy, because I had just the artist in mind.” The “weird west” series was Cassaday’s first ongoing series. Shortly after that, he and writer Warren Ellis co-created the Wildstorm series Planetary, which ran from 1998 to 2009.

Cassaday’s Marvel work included Captain America (2002) #1-6, Astonishing X-Men (2004) #1-24, Star Wars (2015) #1-6, and Uncanny Avengers (2012) #1-4. He collaborated with French writer Fabien Nury on the supernatural World War II graphic novel I Am Legion, published in English by Humanoids. (The book was optioned in 2011 (see “‘I Am Legion’ Optioned”) but the film was apparently never produced.) In his Facebook post, Waid noted that Cassaday was working on an unannounced project: “[A]s 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.”

In addition to ongoing work, Cassaday was a prolific cover artist and often contributed to anthologies. In 2018, he became Chief Creative Officer at Humanoids (see “Humanoids Hires John Cassidy”). Dynamite published a collection of his work, The Dynamite Art of John Cassaday, in 2021 (see “Preview: ‘The Dynamite Art of John Cassaday’ TP”).

Cassaday won the 2005 and 2006 Eisner Awards for Best Penciller/Inker, and Astonishing X-Men won the 2006 Eisner for Best Ongoing Series.

In addition to his comics work, Cassaday was a concept artist for the film adaptation of Watchmen and directed an episode of Dollhouse, which was created by his Astonishing X-Men collaborator Joss Whedon.