Nick Cardy

Nicholas Viscardi (October 20, 1920 – November 3, 2013), known professionally as Nick Cardy and Nick Cardi, was an American comics 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.

Early life Nick Cardy was born Nicholas Viscardi on October 20, 1920, in New York City. He began drawing when he was very young, telling one interviewer that some paintings he had done for his school were "published in the [New York] Herald-Tribune or one of those early papers. The teachers wanted one on sports. It was a 4 × 8 panel. ... So that was published and quite a bit of the stuff was published. ... " and attended the Art Students League of New York, studying life drawing.

Career Early career As did many early comics professionals, Cardy entered the comics field working for Eisner & Iger, a company founded by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, that was one of a handful of comic book "packagers" creating comics on demand for publishers testing the waters of the emerging medium. Joining the studio circa 1940, he worked on Fight Comics, Jungle Comics, Kaanga Comics, and Wings for Fiction House Publications. 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. He used both his birth name and the pen name "Nick Cardy" 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

Later career Cardy left the comics industry in the mid-1970s for the more lucrative field of commercial art. There, under the name Nick Cardi, he did magazine art and ad illustrations, including movie advertising art (though not necessarily the "one-sheet" 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 1996, Cardy was one of the many creators who contributed to the Superman: The Wedding Album one-shot wherein the title character married Lois Lane. Other late-career comics work included a one-page illustration for Wonder Woman vol. 2 #120 (April 1997), the cover of Silver Age: Teen Titans #1 (July 2000), two pages for Titans #25 (March 2001), and the cover of Teen Titans Lost Annual #1 (March 2008). On July 15, 2005, Cardy was one of four professionals inducted that year into the comics industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Viscardi earned two Purple Hearts for wounds suffered as a tank driver while serving with the 3rd Armored Division in WWII. He designed the patch for the 66th Infantry Division after winning a competition.