Photo by Fabrice Giger
Biography
Talking about yourself is like staring at a carnival mirror. You never quite get the true image. Perhaps a more well-rounded rendition is that painted by others....Then again....
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"Luckily for (Warren) Ellis (on Planetary), he's abetted by the opalescent talents of John Cassaday, an artist capable of stunningly imaginative vistas, costumes and constructions, all accomplished with a line combining strength and an almost ethereal delicacy. Cassaday seems almost to be in a both dynamic and productive rivalry with his writer, each one striving to outdo the other with some new outrageous notion, some delineation of an idea that will take it further, pushing it across the edge into the territory of that which has not previously been conceived. The end result is an extraordinary work of hard-edged science fiction, realised by a vision that the Pauls and Finlay's, the acknowledged master illustrators of the genre, would not be ashamed of."
-Alan Moore
From Planetary: All Over The World And Other Stories
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When I first met Johnny, he was a starry-eyed 17-year-old with big dreams and great expectations. But times have changed. He's 17 no longer.
The part of Johnny's life story I know best involves what he no doubt thinks of as one of the darkest times of his life: the college years.
I don't think I've ever known anyone who hated college more than Johnny. And yet he went to great lengths to stay in school, making a long dull commute five or six days a week to a full-time job as he worked his way through several torturous semesters. Not to paint him as a noble, suffering character: he didn't do this without complaining and he never finished.
But he did manage to make it through this potentially demoralizing period--still starry-eyed--with enough wisdom to see that he had been heading the wrong way and with enough confidence to take a leap of faith onto the Road Less Traveled. And he ended up doing better than merely hanging on to his big dreams and great expectations. He actually did the unthinkable and made some of his dreams come true. I've never met anyone else like him, especially not anyone I met in a tiny town in rural Oklahoma, where people tend to stay still and hope for the best. . . .
-Heather Goggans
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I have been to two hundred conventions and looked through two thousand portfolios--which, next to watching the fat guys in the costume contests sweat (remember, spandex is a privilege, not a right), is my least favorite thing to do there. As such, I remember being eager to blow John off the first time we met, but any glaze there was to my stare melted away in the heat of John's samples. I can say honestly that I've never seen a better convention portfolio ever, and I knew the moment I looked at his work that he'd be a pro in short order. I figured I'd stick my secret knowledge of him away in my back pocket for a little while so I could volunteer him for my next project--but then (luckily for Wildstorm and stupidly for me) I gave him up to Jeff Mariotte over a Mid-Ohio Con breakfast, thus helping leverage John to stardom while simultaneously further accelerating my plummet into has-beenness. Jeff, if you're out there, I take it all back. John sucks. Cut him loose. Let him go, man. Inflict him on someone else. In fact, I volunteer to take the hit.
-Mark Waid
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No one I know can lay down the lead guitar riffs on Slayer's album "Reign In Blood" like Johnny Cassaday. Period. There we were, atop a '64 Chevy Impala, rocking out "Postmortem" to the bustling Springtown, Texas community like none had before. Now let me tell you, it's not like our fellow band member, David was bad on his electric ukulele (he was actually one of the best I'd seen), but when I turned and saw Johnny wielding that Fender.....man it escapes description. The fiery sun was blazing behind him like he was the Angel of Death himself, and as blood flew like colored Karo syrup across his strained features, I realized that he was destined to be an unnatural force of talent and power.
Unfortunately for the death-metal fans of the world, Johnny soon turned his creative prowess towards the illustration of comic books (and note how quickly said music faded — coincidence? I think not!). To this day, I personally feel that without Johnny's charisma and dedication to his art, there is no way we could've pulled an "A" on that high school dramatics project. Johnny, I owe you man.
-Craig Newby
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So I'm writing this book for Marvel Comics, EXCALIBUR, and they've just hired a new artist that I've never heard of. And I'm sitting home one night waiting for the guy to come by so we can hash out ideas for a new direction for the series.
Now, I saw maybe one or two pages of this guy's work, and it looked pretty good. But personally, I didn't know him from Adam. Would we get along? Did we share the same creative vision for the book? I was starting to sweat. What if we hated each other? Were we destined to become another pair of those hyper-egotistical creative teams, bashing each other in the press, like petulant little children desperate for media attention?
Just as I'm sweating bullets, thinking, "Oh, man. This is all gonna suck ass," the doorbell rings. I open the door, and there's this lanky, long-haired Texan. We shake hands, introduce ourselves, and he walks into the apartment. First thing out of his mouth when he sees the "Kafka" movie poster hanging over the mantle...? "Great movie."
We've been best friends ever since.
-Ben Raab
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"I curse the day I ever met you and had faith in you as a person, as a man, as a friend."
-Anonymous Ex-girlfriend
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John Cassaday, having watched "Midnight Cowboy" a few times too many, tossed his saddle bags and his fringed jacket in the back of a Greyhound and left the wide open spaces of Texas for New York City to try his hand (or whatever) at the male prostitute business. John Cassaday is taller than Jon Voight, has longer hair, and has that "h" in his name that Voight is missing, so he figured he would have it easy.
Failing to find a Ratso Rizzo to show him the ropes of survival in the city, though, Cassaday had to fall back on a second career, that of drawing pretty pictures that someone else would cover up with words. This career path seemed to go better for him. A couple of wordsmiths, folks like me and Ben Raab, were lucky enough to get to be the people who would write the words that covered John's art for a while. But after "Desperadoes" and "Union Jack" and more "Desperadoes," he moved on to work with, of all things, an Englishman who has probably never fired a gun while clutching the side of his horse with his knees, one foot in the stirrup, reins clutched between his teeth.
In other words, Cassaday's gone uptown. We follow the upward trajectory of his career arc with wonder and awe. We can only imagine which writers will be privileged enough to work with him in the future. And we know that he knows that at the end of it all, when he's back down on the ground with the people who knew him when, we'll be there to kick dirt in his face.
After all, that's what friends are for.
Yeee-ha, pard.
-Jeff Mariotte
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An example of how Johnny and I spent most of our time together as kids:
4:00 PM
Get home from school, drink a couple of Dr. Peppers and watch GI Joe.
4:30 PM
Try to convince Johnny's dog Spike to put the cat's head in his mouth without biting it off.
5:00 PM
Feed the cows.
6:00 PM
Eat his mom's homemade spaghetti.
7:00 PM
Adjourn to the barn to choreograph fight scenes. This usually came to a stop when Johnny would flip me over his back onto a rake, plow or something pointy with a lot of rust.
9:30 PM
Hang around the living room with Johnny's older sister staring at us in disgust.
10:00 PM
Rejoice in successfully driving Johnny's sister into her bedroom.
10:30 PM
Watch M*A*S*H* followed by The Bob Newhart Show.
11:30 PM
Throw a couple of boxes of mozzarella cheesesticks in the deep fryer.
12:00 AM
Watch David Letterman.
1:00 AM
Lay around wishing we were dead after eating all those damn cheesesticks.
1:30 AM
Watch old Superman cartoons and cliffhangers serials.
3:00 AM
Towel popping fights!
3:30 AM
Johnny's mom threatens: "Boys! You better hold it down or I'm gonna slap a knot on your heads!"
3:31 AM
Towel popping fights!
5:00 AM
Fantasize about the adventures that our pets would have if they were super heroes.
5:30 AM
Become delirious from exhaustion. (Johnny would repeatedly call me a puss for not being able to stay up all night.)
6:00 AM
Sneak outside to watch the sunrise.
6:30 AM
Sleep.
7:00 AM
Awaken to Johnny's dad pulling on his toes and telling him he needs to wake up.
7:30 AM
Receive instructions about the days chores from Johnny's dad.
7:45 AM
Secretly place a call to my mom to come and pick me up.
8:00 AM
Drive away with my mom while Johnny was left to build miles of barb- wire fences, move rocks or whatever it was that he had to do.
-Kyle Clabaugh
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Not only is John Cassaday among the handful of truly great artists working in comics today, he's also that rarity: the true professional. The man is not content to draw covers or do a single issue a year. Comics fans are fortunate that an artist of Cassaday's caliber has the kind of work ethic he does. His work is consistently intelligent and thoughtful. His design sense and creativity in that area are often taken for granted, but are unparalleled in the industry. I have had the good fortune to work with--in various fashions--some of the best artists from several eras in comics history, including Gene Colan, Marshall Rogers, Berni Wrightson, and Mike Mignola, but I won't be happy 'til I've collaborated with John Cassaday.
-Christopher Golden
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What can I say about big John Cassaday? He's one of the best friends a guy could have? Yep. He's a bad mamma jamma at the drawing board? Yessir. That's all true, but it doesn't say it by half.
Here's a story...
Last year at Chicago Con, John and I were giving his girlfriend at the time and her best friend a tour of the dealers room floor (You see, most people find that stuff fascinating. Kind of like an ugly dog or a train wreck or when you're walking through the woods and you see a curled, knotted, horribly twisted stick on the ground and you're compelled to pick it up.). John and his soon-to-be-former-little-woman have taken point and the friend and I are bringing up the rear. During one of the lulls in conversation, I notice a group of young men walking towards us in the opposite lane of traffic. And I hear one of them say, "Hey! That's John Cassaday." (thoughtful pause) "He's a pretty good lookin' guy."
This John Cassaday kid is the Mick Jagger of funny books. All the men want to know him and all the women want to sleep with him. Hell! A lot of the guys want to sleep with him.
I mean everybody KNOWS the kid can flat out draw. But what may not be common knowledge is, the guy's pretty enough to be a girl.
It's intimidating as hell.
But, hell. I'd take a bullet for him.
-John Lucas
Funny book artist and sycophant
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RING RING
"Hello."
"Hey, did you hear about the new guy at school?"
"Oh, you mean John?"
"Yeah, he had a wreck last night.
I think he's dead."
And so my life with John Cassaday began. Of course, I later found out he was not dead, but had only crashed through a neighbor's fence, into their yard, destroying his pick-up, several parked cars and narrowly missing a couple of fuel storage tanks and some innocent cows grazing nearby. I should have known this was an omen of things to come.
I met John when he moved to the small Oklahoma town of Coleman when we were juniors in high school. We quickly became friends, although I'm not sure why. It may have been because we came from similar backgrounds with similar interests. Both of us were raised in rural areas on farms with cattle, we had similar tastes in music, and both loved movies of all kinds. But actually I think we became friends because no one else in Coleman liked John, and I really felt sorry for him.:)
Since meeting John, my life has been filled with odd experiences. From crazy ex-girlfriends, to crazy current girlfriends, John has helped to keep my life interesting. Everything from encounters with knife wielding ex-boyfriends of girlfriends, to the creation of those loveable characters, "Bill and Slappy," to pelting people with deep fried foods while racing around back streets with no headlights can all be directly traced back to Mr. Cassaday.
John is a ... complex man. As a good friend of ours, WB TV's Sean Kimerling, often says of John: "As an artist, one of a kind; as a human being, one of the kindest." I don't know what it means either, but I guess it's something show biz types say about their own.
Also, I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight on a matter that has caused much debate in our lives. It was in fact John's idea, not mine, to hang our roommate's stuffed kitty cat (by the neck) that his mother made him, by a chain from the ceiling fan in his bedroom. I merely suggested the red light bulb in order to provide the desired effect.
In closing, I'd like to leave you with some insight into what makes John who and what he is. I think the best way to do this is to give you one of John's favorite late night snack recipes:
"John's Famous Burritos"
-2 frozen microwaveable burritos, prepared per directions on wrapper
-3 slices of American cheese singles, unwrapped
-1 jar Ragu thick and hearty spaghetti sauce
-Cover burritos with cheese and melt in microwave. Apply liberal amount of spaghetti sauce to burritos. Enjoy!
I hope this opens a window into the world of the real John Cassaday. I've told you everything I know about him, and in the process realized I have no idea who this man is.
-Russell Watson
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I remember first meeting John when he was dating a friend of mine. (The first of many...*sigh*) She introduces us. "Jimmy, this is John. John, this is Jimmy."
Well, I already knew who he was because she had told me ahead of time. I quickly went through my head of what to say without sounding like too much of a fanboy. "Great to meet you. I love Planetary." I love Planetary? What the hell? Suddenly I was Marsha Brady meeting Davy Jones. After I got over my little schoolgirl crush, we were able to converse and hang out. Turns out, not only is he one of the most talented artists in the business, but he's a really nice guy to boot.
Over the years, we have become really solid friends. It's been really great to watch him blow up into this superstar artist. And to his humble credit, I don't even think he realizes how big he has become. The man works his ass off on his craft and it shows. He'll call me at 2 a.m. to go get a drink because he needs a break from all of that doodling. By 6 a.m., we grab a bite and head home. Me, to bed. Him, back to work. Now that's dedication!
John Cassaday: Rock star artist. Nice Guy. Future A-list director. Pretty motherfucker.
I hate him.
-Jimmy Aquino
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The man is an illustration god.
-Warren Ellis