Celardo, John

John Celardo (December 27, 1918 – January 6, 2012) was an American comic strip and comic book artist, best known for illustrating the Tarzan comic strip. After creating sports cartoons for Street & Smith magazines, he began drawing for comic books, including a job at the Eisner & Iger shop. During the 1940s, he was an assistant art director and a major contributor to the Fiction House line, notably for Wings Comics. Over decades, he did work for a variety of publishers, including American Comics Group, DC Comics, Gold Key Comics, Quality Comics, Standard Comics, St. John Publications, and Whitman Comics. After 1969, his comic book work was primarily for DC Comics and Gold Key Comics. In the early 1950s, he succeeded Bob Lubbers as illustrator of the Tarzan comic strip. He began the Tarzan daily strip on January 18, 1954, and the Sunday strip on February 28, 1954, eventually drawing a total of 4,350 daily strips and 724 Sunday strips. His work was then appearing in 225 newspapers in 12 different countries. Celardo continued on Tarzan until January 7, 1968, when Russ Manning took it over.