| Nick Cardy | |
|---|---|
Nick Cardy at the 2008 New York Comic Convention. |
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| Born | Nicholas Viscardi October 20, 1920 |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Penciller |
| Pseudonym(s) | Nick Cardi |
| Notable works | Teen Titans Aquaman |
| Awards | Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, 2005 |
Nick Cardy (born Nicholas Viscardi, October 20, 1920),[1] a.k.a. Nick Cardi, is an American comic book artist best known for his DC Comics work on Aquaman, the Teen Titans and other major characters.
Cardy was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2005.
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Nicholas Viscardi attended the Art Students League of New York, studying painting and sculpture. As did many early comics professionals, he entered the field working for Eisner & Iger, one of a handful of comic book "packagers" that would create comics on demand for publishers testing the waters of the emerging medium. Joining the studio in 1939, at age 18, he worked on Fight Comics, Jungle Comics, Kaanga Comics, and Wings for Fiction House Publications. He wrote and drew the four-page backup feature "Lady Luck" in Will Eisner's 16-page, newspaper Sunday-supplement comic book colloquially called "The Spirit Section", from the May 18, 1941 strip through February 22, 1942. Though his Lady Luck stories were credited under the house pseudonym Ford Davis, Viscardi would subtly work in the initials "NV" somewhere into each tale.[2]
He began signing his name simply "Cardy" on the feature "Quicksilver" in National Comics. Using both that shortened form and his original name concurrently for a time, he eventually adopted Nick Cardy for his comic-book work.
Cardy recalled of his start at Eisner & Iger that he worked alongside
"...Lou Fine, George Tuska, [and] Charlie Sultan. Bob Powell came in later when I was doing "Lady Luck" [after Eisner had split from Iger to concentrate on 'The Spirit Section']. He was sitting behind me. He would help a kid around the block — tell a newcomer to take it easy and that sort of thing. When I worked on 'Lady Luck', Will Eisner had rented an apartment at [the Manhattan complex] Tudor City.... He had one room where he worked, and the other room took up all the rest of the paraphernalia. I sat next to Will's door, Bob Powell sat next to me; Tex Blaisdell used to come in, and Chuck Cuidera (who was doing Blackhawk) was there. ... It was a learning experience. Watching Lou Fine work — his work was like a fine painting; it took a long time to do it but it was a brilliant piece of work. In my opinion, for drawing, you couldn't beat Lou Fine; he was terrific. I think Will Eisner had a coarser line but his work was more dramatic and he told a better story."[3]
Cardy did World War II military service from 1943 to 1945, earning two Purple Hearts for wounds suffered as a tank driver in the armored cavalry. He began his Army career with the 66th Infantry Division, during which time he won a competition to design its patch, creating its snarling black panther logo. His art talent led to his being assigned an office job at division headquarters. This lasted, Cardy recalled in an interview,[3] because a general who had seen Cardy's cartoons in an Officers Club had Cardy assigned to his own corps. (Cardy gave the name as "General Shelby Burke", but no one by that name or similar is found in the federal archives.)[4][5] As the artist tells it, the only opening was for a corporal in the motor pool, so Private Cardy was promoted and assigned to that duty. This, he said, led in turn, upon his being shipped to the European theater, to Cardy's assignment as an assistant tank driver for the Third Armored Division, under General Courtney Hodges. Later, between the end of the war and his discharge, Cardy said he worked for the Army's Information and Education office in France.
Back in civilian life, Cardy begin doing advertising art as well as covers for crossword puzzle magazines and other periodicals. Though he hadn't planned on returning to comics, he landed the assignment of drawing the black-and-white daily Tarzan comic strip of writer-artist Burne Hogarth. Cardy also worked on Warren Tufts' comic strip Casey Ruggles.
In 1950, Cardy began his decades-long association with DC Comics, starting with the comic book Gang Busters, based on the dramatic radio show. He began developing his breakout reputation with Tomahawk, his most prominent series at the time, which starred a white American colonist fighting the British undercover as an Iroquois Indian during the American Revolutionary War.
From 1962–1968, he drew the first 39 issues of Aquaman (whose character had previously starred in a backup feature in Adventure Comics), and all its covers through the final issue (#56, April 1971). In the book The Art of Nick Cardy, he recalled that, "Ramona Fradon had been drawing the character but was moving on for some reason. I remember being in [editor] Murray's [Boltinoff] office with Ramona during the transition. ... Anyway, they must have liked my work because when the character got his own series, they made me the artist".[6]
From 1966-73, Cardy penciled or inked — sometimes both — all 43 issues of Teen Titans, a light-adventure series featuring the superhero sidekicks Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Aqualad and Green Arrow-protégé Speedy. In 1968-69, he drew the fondly remembered but short-lived, quirky Western series Bat Lash, about an expert gunslinger who was nonetheless a dandy, and who, in a nod to 1960s counterculture, wore a flower in his hat.[7] Cardy during this time also assisted artist Al Plastino, a childhood friend, on the Batman syndicated comic strip.
Cardy became the primary DC cover artist from the early to mid-1970s.[1]
A popular but apocryphal anecdote, told by DC editor Julius Schwartz, concerned Cardy being fired by DC editorial director Carmine Infantino for not following a cover layout, only to be rehired moments later when Schwartz praised the errant cover art. Cardy said in 2005,
[A]t one of the conventions ... I said, 'You know, Carmine, Julie Schwartz wrote something in [his autobiography] that I don't remember at all and it doesn't sound like you at all'. And I told him the incident ... and he said, 'That's crazy. You know I always loved your work. Gee, you were one of the best artists in the business. The guy's crazy'. So I said, 'Okay, come on'. We went over to Julie Schwartz's table and we told him what our problem was. And Carmine and I said, 'We don't remember the incident'. So Julie said, 'Well, it's a good story, anyway'. [laughs] And that was it. He let it go at that. [laughs] He just made it up."[8]
Cardy left comics in the mid-1970s for the more lucrative field of commercial art. There, under the name Nick Cardi,[9] he did magazine art and ad illustrations, including advertising art (though not necessarily the "one-sheet" movie posters) for films including The Street Fighter (1974), The Night They Robbed Big Bertha's (1975), Neil Simon's California Suite (1978), Stanley Donen's Movie Movie (1978), Martin Ritt's Casey's Shadow (1978), and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979).
In 2011 a full color hardcover collection of Nick Cardy's World War II field-combat sketches, Nick Cardy: The Artist At War, was published by Little Eva Ink publishing.[10]
On July 15, 2005, Cardy was one of four professionals that year inducted into the comics industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.[11]