John Celardo

At age 93, Celardo died on January 6, 2012, at the Clove Lakes Health Care and Rehabilitation Center in Castleton Corners, survived by his son, John J.; his wife, the former Julia Esposito; his daughter, Donna DeForest; three brothers Joe, Frank and Edward; and three grandchildren Ryan DeForest, Kaitlin DeForest, and Devin DeForest.

During the 1960s, he also did artwork for Topps trading cards, including a comic strip on their Land of the Giants card series. In 1969, he illustrated Paperback Library's Get Your Shape in Shape by Rita Chazen and Fran Hair. From 1973 to the mid-1990s, he was a comics editor at King Features Syndicate.

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 4350 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. Celardo then succeeded Joe Kubert on Tales of the Green Beret. In the late sixties, he developed a Lassie newspaper strip, based on the still-popular TV series of the same name. According to John Wells, the newspaper strip was published and started on April 7, 1969. No end date is known. He drew the daily Buz Sawyer comic strip from 1983 until it was discontinued on October 7, 1989. His works on the Tarzan comics were among the first to be banned by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons of then-West Germany, who supposedly insulted him by stating that he has a "degenerate imagination".

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.

Born on Staten Island, Celardo continued to live there most of his life. After a childhood in Mariners Harbor, he graduated from Port Richmond High School. He began his art career in the late 1930s drawing animals for the National Youth Administration at the Staten Island Zoo at West Brighton, where he was once photographed in the alligator pit by the Staten Island Advance.

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.