Fri Dec 26, 2008 — by Robert Greenberger

Artist Edd Cartier Passes Away at Age 94

Edward Daniel Cartier passed away on Christmas Day.

According to pulp historian Anthony Tollin, “Edd was one of the all-time greatest pulp illustrators, legendary for his whimsical work on John W. Campbell's Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction and 800 illustrations for The Shadow Magazine. He also drew stories for Street & Smith's Red Dragon and Super-Magician Comics.

“The favorite artist of Astounding editor John W. Campbell and writer L. Ron Hubbard, Cartier also illustrated the beloved Hoka tales by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, and stories by John D. MacDonald, Isaac Asimov, Henry Kuttner, L. Sprague de Camp, Clifford D. Simak, Walter B. Gibson, Lester Dent and many others.”

Born in 1914, he studied at the Pratt Institute in New York before beginning his professional illustration career in 1939.

He once said of his work: “I put a bit of humor into what I drew. I was even told at times that I put too much humor into drawing science fiction. It’s a serious thing. When I started out doing science fiction, it was all kind of a weird thing. I had started out in art school drawing the Shadow magazine. The art director from Street & Smith happened to like my work and he gave me some work to do on Western Stories and from there he asked me to do some work on The Shadow magazine as that artist was leaving. He insisted that I follow the previous artist’s type of work. Later on I expanded into my own type of work, my own technique.”

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