Nick Cuti – RIP

Cartoonist Nicola Cuti has passed away.

Nicola (Nick) Cuti
October 29, 1944 – February 21, 2020

 

News of Nick’s passing was made public on his Facebook page:

Legendary comic creator Nicola Cuti, whose career has spanned over fifty years, has died.

Sources close to the family have reported that Cuti passed in Tampa on Friday, February 21, 2020, after a battle with cancer. He was surrounded by family and close friends, including his daughter, Jaymee, brother, Emil, and his business partner and friend, Nakoma DeMitro.

Known to everyone as “Nick”, Cuti was born October 29, 1944. He served in the United States Air Force for four years. It was during this time that his first works were published.

An artist and comic and science-fiction writer and editor, he is best known as a co-creator of Moonchild the Starbabe and superhero E-Man, a series he worked on with his dear friend, Joe Staton. Other creations of his included Captain Cosmos, Brightstar, and Starflake the Cosmic Sprite. During his career, he worked alongside legends such as Wally Wood, Stan Lee, and Bill Black, founder of AC Comics. His works were featured in Charlton Comics, Warren Publishing, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics. He contributed to famous franchises such as Vampirella, Popeye, and Creepy Magazine.

Comic book writer and editor and cartoonist Nick Cuti is best known, in my mind, for making comics (especially Charlton Comics) fun again. Getting a start at the more adult Warren comics magazines he came over to Charlton Comics as writer and assistant editor. Nick became famous as the creator of E-Man. Nick Cuti’s entry at Jerry Bail’s Who’s Who of American Comic Books.

E-Man was the only comic book I ever subscribed to, but that was to get Nick’s comic book instructional booklet. More to my liking at that time were the Michael Mauser backup stories in Vengence Squad and other titles – Nick and Joe Staton’s wonderful take on the detective genre.

As assistant editor Nick got gag cartoons in the Charlton books if they came up a page short.

As Lambiek’s Comiclopedia tells, Nick spread out to novels and films.

 

Nick also contributed to comic strips.

He was part of Wally Wood’s studio when they were contributing comic strips to the military newspaper Overseas Weekly in the 1970s. Nick’s duties included plotting, layouts, and scripts on the comic strips Cannon, Sally Forth (the Wally Wood version), and Shattuck.

These strips ran alongside regular syndicated comic strips…

or, in the case of Sally Forth, side by side with a page of “girlie” pics.

 

I fondly recall Nick’s work. RIP.

update: Nick Caputa’s tribute to Nick Cuti