Art For Art’s Sake #327: The Astonishing John Cassaday
by Richard Bruton
Art For Art’s Sake, because great comic art is always worth celebrating…
We’ll end with the astonishingly good covers to Astonishing X-Men by the late and much-missed John Cassaday, because they’re just such a great example of strong cover design. You know, like this…
But first, more great comics art…
Peach Momoko – Magik sketch piece
Russell Dauterman – Storm variant
Tradd Moore – Ultimate X-Men
Warwick Johnson-Cadwell
Michael Cho
P. Craig Russell
Nicola Scott – Black Canary
Terry Moore
Charlie Adlard – Catwoman & Riddler
Paul Smith & Joe Rubinstein – Rogue
Johan Aberg – Judge Dredd
Chris Wahl – Tank Girl
Becky Cloonan – Absolute Batman
Francesco Francavilla – Absolute Batman
Bruno Redondo
Jeff Spokes – Jenny Sparks
Jorge Fornes
Sam Johnstone – Jubilee
And to end, as promised, more of that great John Cassaday work on the front of Astonishing X-Men. Sadly, we lost John back in 2024, and comics is all the worse off for that. His work was just beautiful,
You can read our obituary an overview of Cassaday’s life here. I’ll repeat what I wrote there:
‘John Cassaday, artist of Planetary, Captain America, Astonishing X-Men, Star Wars, Desperadoes, I Am Legion, passed away at the all too young age of 52. Tributes have, understandably, come pouring in over the last few days. It seems that Cassaday was not just supremely talented but a rather lovely person as well, a man well-loved by friends and colleagues.
‘And what art it was. Cassaday just had this style, a manner of getting something on the comic page that looked both seemingly effortlessly beautiful and perfectly simple, always serving whatever script his incredible art was about to make so much better so wonderfully well.’
