December 15, 2012 

Florida Supercon proudly welcomes the Legendary Nick Cardy as a Guest of Honor! 
Nick Cardy's career as an artist and writer began in 1939 and has spanned over 60 years. Nick Cardy has hundreds of credits and is synonymous with Aquaman and Teen Titans. His early work included Fight Comics, Jungle Comics, Kaanga Comics, and Wings for Fiction House Publications, "Lady Luck" in Will Eisner's Spirit Section and "Quicksilver" in National Comics. Nick served in WW II, 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 designed its patch, creating its snarling black panther logo. Upon his return after the war he 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 daily Tarzan comic strip and also worked on Warren Tufts' comic strip Casey Ruggles.

In 1950, Cardy began his decades-long association with DC Comics, starting with Gang Busters and working on The Legend of Daniel Boone, Congo Bill, House of Mystery, House of Secrets and more. During the 1950's he also worked for Standard Comics drawing many horror and romance comics. He began developing his breakout reputation with Tomahawk at DC and from 1962–1968 drew the first 39 issues of Aquaman and all its covers through the final issue (#56).

Nick first drew the Teen Titans in The Brave and the Bold #60 (1965), wherein the superhero sidekicks Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad were joined by Wonder Woman's younger sister Wonder Girl in her first appearance. After next being featured in Showcase #59, the team was spun off into their own series with Teen Titans #1. From 1966-73, Cardy penciled or inked — sometimes both — all 43 issues of the series. In 1968-69, he drew the fondly remembered but short-lived, quirky Western series Bat Lash. During this time he also assisted artist Al Plastino  on the Batman syndicated comic strip. From the early to mid-1970's he was the primary cover artist for DC Comics, providing covers for the likes of Superman, Action Comics, The Brave and the Bold, Batman, Flash, Ghosts, Witching Hour, Secret Origins, Jimmy Olsen, World's Finest and the various 100 Page Giant comics.

In the mid 1970's he left comics to work in commercial art doing 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). Nick also did some work on the original "classic" Star Wars poster (1977), on which he added the droids (R2D2 and C3PO) to the poster image.