▲ John Cassaday’s cover for the first issue of Star Wars the Marvel and 2015.Photo Archive
Martin Arceo S
The newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, September 11, 2024, p. 8
In a sad, macabre coincidence, American cartoonist John Cassaday, illustrator of comics based on the Star Wars film saga, died last Monday, the same day that actor James Earl Jones, who gave voice to the villain Darth Vader, passed away.
Cassaday, born on December 14, 1971 in Fort Worth, Texas, died in a New York hospital from an illness not specified by his family, who had admitted him to the hospital the previous week. One of his first published works was Desperadoes (1997), a series that combines the cowboy genre with horror and fantasy.
Three-time winner of the Eisner Award, the most important award for comics in the United States, for illustrating in 2005 and 2006 Astonishing X-Men, Planetary y I Am Legion: The Dancing Faunhad one of his most memorable hits with Star Warswhose first issue sold one million copies in 2015.
His drawings appeared in the two largest comic book publishers in the United States. For the DC Comics label he made Teen Titans, Flash, Gen13 y Superman/Batman; for Marvel he illustrated Captain America, basis for the appearance in the films of the character created by screenwriter Stan Lee and cartoonist Jack Kirby.
He also did the conceptual art for the film. Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009), directed an episode of the show Dollhouse (2009), and acted in the horror film House on the Hill (Jeffery Frentzen, 2012).
Screenwriter Mark Waid (Marvel and DC) was a personal friend of Cassaday, and who led him to make Desperadoes with writer Jeff Mariotte, claimed on Facebook that the cartoonist was the most talented, most sought-after comic book illustrator of his generation.
Waid said: “I say this without a doubt and with little fear of being contradicted, Cassaday was one of the finest illustrators and graphic storytellers ever to work in the comics medium.
My friend John will be talked about and remembered by an entire industry for ages to come, and rightly so. May he rest in peace.
