The world of comic books has been shocked and saddened by the untimely passing of artist John Cassaday, at the age of 52. No cause of death has been revealed. A truly beloved figure in the comic book community, many creators are pouring out love for their friend and colleague on social media. Among those friends were DC’s Jim Lee, Marvel’s Bill Rosemann, Mitch Gerads, and many, many others.
A Texas native, Cassaday was known mainly for his work at Wildstorm and Marvel, where he drew a highly-praised run of Astonishing X-Men and relaunched their ongoing Star Wars series. After going to film school, Cassaday started working in comics in the early ’90s, on series like Negative Burn for Caliber Press and later Ghost for Dark Horse Comics. But it was in 1999 that Cassaday really broke through, working on the series Planetary for Wildstorm/DC Comics.
Written by Warren Ellis, Planetary was about a group of interdimensional archaeologists. It was Planetary that really put Cassaday on everyone’s radar. His detailed renderings and ability to convey facial expressions won him tons praise. Planetary came out on a random release schedule, which allowed him to pursue other projects. In total, it ran 27 issues and ten years. This included an acclaimed Batman crossover one-shot. In 2002, he began illustrating a new Captain America series, written by John Rey Neiber. The book was a hit and Cassaday’s illustrations of Cap in his WWII glory made Steve Rogers look more inspirational than he’d been in years.
In 2004, Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon chose Cassaday to illustrate his entry into comics with Astonishing X-Men. This relaunch of the iconic mutants saw massive critical acclaim and big sales, and Cassaday illustrated the entire 25-issue run. Astonishing X-Men remains one of the most critically acclaimed X-Men runs of all time, in large part thanks to his stellar art.
Cassaday’s redesign of Wolverine’s costume from Astonishing X-Men is the main inspiration for Hugh Jackman’s outfit in Deadpool & Wolverine. The series won John Cassaday two Eisner Awards for Best Penciler/Inker. After finishing X-Men, Marvel tasked him with launching Uncanny Avengers, an X-Men/Avengers hybrid series, with writer Rick Remender, in 2012.
In 2015, Marvel Comics got the Star Wars license as part of the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm. The company relaunched a brand new Star Wars series written by Jason Aaron, featuring the cast of the original trilogy. The first issue sold a million copies. After this point, Cassaday mostly just drew covers for various publishers, and no longer drew interior pages.
In 2018, publisher Humanoids hired John Cassaday to serve as its Chief Creative Officer. However, he continued to draw covers for other publishers, like Dynamite Comics. At Dynamite, he illustrated a series of covers for their Lone Ranger series. Having gone to film school, Cassaday did design work for Watchmen. He also directed an episode of Joss Whedon’s TV series Dollhouse. The world of narrative storytelling is a lesser one without him.