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COMIC ARTIST JOHN CASSADAY WAS ONLY 52 when he passed away in September 2024, cutting short the shooting star trajectory of a superstar artist. He was known for his work on the Joss Whedon-written Astonishing X-Men in the aughts and Marvel’s best-selling relaunch of the Star Wars comics in the 2010s.He gained a rabid audience among readers and the professional community for bringing a sense of realism to his figures and a cinematic presence in his compositions and layouts. Even though he's gone, Cassaday admirers can keep him in their hearts and keep his art even closer thanks to a special auction happening next week. With the participation of Cassaday’s art dealer, Albert Moy, as well as Nick Barrucci of Dynamite Entertainment, Heritage is putting on the John Cassaday Collection Comic Art Showcase Auction, taking place Nov. 6. The aim of the auction is to help Cassaday’s sister and his partner. Heritage is also donating all of the hammer price to the family, meaning it will only keep the buyer’s premium and not take a cut of the final gavel, like it usually does. There’s a lot of items from Cassaday’s own collection that he held back from selling, as well as from his personal collection from artists he loved, including a Marvel Fanfare cover by Michael Golden, New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke, and Captain America by Jack Kirby. Other artissts, such as Liam Sharp and Paul Pope have also donated pieces. But the most exciting item just may be the cover art for Planetary No. 1, the comic which made Casssaday into an award-winning and in-demand artist. The 1999 title from Wildstorm, the imprint founded by Jim Lee and acquired by DC the year prior, was a perfect turn of the century comic that took decades of comic and pulp and other genre tropes and history and inverted it in a pseudo-scientific, alternate reality-mashing lens before anyone was attempting that particular genre. It became a sensation, receiving Eisner Award nominations, before quickly hitting a stumbling block when writer and co-creator Warren Ellis became sick and Cassaday took on other work. (27 issues were put out between 1999 and 2009.) The cover features the main protagonists of the series — Jakita Wagner, Elijah Snow, and the Drummer — standing dramatically in a dutch angle, as if they knew that the title would become, along with The Authority, a lasting influence on comics into the 21st century. Cassaday is said to have turned down numerous offers for it, but here it is now, currently bidding in the $7,187.50 range. You have seven days left to get your finances in order to make a go at this. https://view.email.hollywoodreporter.com/?qs=247a97e7a2c3fc6191721bb580d7c281ccb1bfacf702737c8db24be6d2175d178744b2f0b376d16478083f9e8f4808e8add74f1c77ca3ea786a1c2654ef1a6be28185ee0ad126efc