The Art of Nick Cardy

I have to admit to being somewhat unaware of Nick Cardy. Sure, I knew he was a comic artist but I never realized just what an outstanding talent he was until I checked out his book from Vanguard Productions. I guess one reason while I was unfamiliar with Cardy was that he got out of the comic book industry in the mid-1970's, just after I started getting into comics. Plus, Cardy worked primarily for DC while I read mainly Marvel titles. "The Art of Nick Cardy" traces his roots from his earliest days through the present when Nick was "re-discovered" by many modern day fans when he began to make convention appearances. Nick relates his story through a book-length interview with writer John Coates. Cardy got his start working at the Will Eisner/Jerry Iger studio with other well-known artists such as Lou Fine and George Tuska. For some reason it always surprises me to learn that so many of the artists that I enjoyed in the 1970's got their start back in the dawn of the Golden Age. I always considered comics a "young man's" game I suppose. On display in the book is many of Cardy's great early covers for comics like Jumbo Comics and Jungle comics, depicting Sheena Queen of the Jungle. It's just gorgeous stuff with a breath-taking, pulp magazine-style look. Cardy would move to DC in 1948 working on a number of non-superhero titles. Modern comic fans seem horribly unaware of the number of non-superhero titles that DC and other publishers used to put out back in the 40's and 50's. In fact many crime, western, romance, and war comics outsold many superhero titles and it's a shame that many of these comics have been forgotten. Nick worked on titles like "Legends of Daniel Boone", "Tomahawk", and "Congo Bill". Cardy is perhaps best known for his 60's and 70's work on Aquaman and the original Teen Titans series. Nick discusses both books in detail and talks about how keeping up on the changing fashions and trends was a challenge for a book like Teen Titans. The book reprints many of Cardy's outstanding covers for titles such as Superman, Action, The Spectre, Ghosts, The Flash, and the Witching Hour. He was equally adept at doing action-packed superhero comics as he was terrifying horror titles. I became an instant fan just admiring this cover gallery. Cardy would tire of the comic industry and leave in the 1970's to pursue work in other areas such as film and TV work, doing posters for the movies "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" and "California Suite". Cardy seems genuinely surprised and humbled about the acclaim he is now getting late in life. The book features tributes to Nick from many comic luminaries like Julie Schwartz, Carmine Infantino, Marv Wolfman, Dick Giordano, and others. This book was a real pleasure for me to read. Cardy is a artist who deserves to be mention right up there with the greats of the 1960's comic artists like Kirby, Buscema, Adams, and Steranko. Hopefully this book will help other comic fans be intro

Growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I discovered the wonderful four-color world of comic books. I progressed quickly from Casper and Wendy through Archie and Jughead to the amazing adventures of Superman, Batman and their all-powerful peers. The great comics of this time period formed my definitive view of what the medium should look like: exciting, powerful, and daring.Like most kids, I didn't pay very much attention to who made these books. That appreciation came later. Names like Stan Lee, Carmine Infantino, Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Will Eisner, Joe Kubert, and others came into my sphere of awareness. And, of course, Nick Cardy.Way back then, I didn't even notice how much of his stuff was on my favorites list: Aquaman, Teen Titans, and countless mystery stories from Ghosts, Unexpected, and House of Secrets. Not to mention some of the most memorable covers I'd ever seen (many of which are reprinted in this book, including some in full color).This book is a fantastic collection of Nick Cardy's work, presented as an overview of an amazing career. The material is presented mostly as a chronological survey, which actually makes it easy to follow Cardy's career. There are a few other chapters, including one on the differences between inking and penciling. The meat of the book - in fact, the bulk of its text - is an interview that author John Coates conducted with the formerly reclusive Cardy.To call the book "lavishly illustrated" is to make an understatement. There are so many illustrations and samples, including a four-page run of "Tarzan" daily strips, that you'll find yourself reading the book twice; once for the interview and once more to read all the great comics and strips peppered throughout the book.This is a VERY good book for fans of Nick Cardy, and for people interested in the early, wild-n-wooly days of the Golden Age of comics. There are plenty of anecdotes and stories about other comic creators, so this book has significant value to comic historians. It also provides a detailed index of his comics work. So, if you're a fan or historian, this book will not let you down... and you won't be able to put it down, either!