In the pages of X-Force, there is a tiki bar called the Green Lagoon, where mutant operatives go to unwind between missions. Joshua Cassara invented it, drew it panel by panel, and kept it running across roughly five years of stories, per ComicsXF. Cassara, the self-taught penciller who became one of the defining visual voices of Marvel's Krakoa era, died on September 22, 2026, at 46.

Cassara never trained formally as an artist. He graduated from La Mirada High School in La Mirada, California, in 1998, where he worked on the school newspaper, according to Overstreet Access, and spent years tending bar before comics became his living, per ComicsXF. His earliest published pages appeared through Titan Comics around 2015, on The Troop, Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook, and Doctor Who tie-ins. Marvel came calling the next year: his first work for the publisher was New Avengers #7 in 2016, written by Al Ewing, and he followed it with a run on Falcon, then Secret Empire, a Sentry miniseries, Venom, and a page in the company's 1,000th-issue anniversary special.

The role that defined him arrived in 2019, when he became the artist of X-Force, paired with writer Benjamin Percy for the start of the Krakoa era, and introduced the Green Lagoon along the way. His pencils were dense and kinetic, often finished in inkwash and colored pencil over brown craft paper. In 2020, Marvel named him a Stormbreaker, the publisher's designation for its most promising new artistic talent, per Dork. He and Percy stayed a team: X Lives of Wolverine in 2022, a rotating stint on the flagship X-Men book that carried through issue #700 in 2024, and finally a ten-issue Deadpool/Wolverine series in 2025. His last published art was a variant cover for Tales of Wonder #3.

Colleagues who worked alongside him during those years remembered a generous, easy presence as much as a talent. Artist Russell Dauterman called him "THE artist of the Krakoa era for me," adding, "His big headdress Havok will always make me smile." Writer Tini Howard, who shared convention floors with Cassara and his wife Martha, wrote, "Giggling on the Dragon Con couches is how I'll always remember him," and called him "Krakoa family." Percy, his most frequent collaborator, called him "a really, really good dude. Kind. Joyful." He pictured him back behind the bar he had drawn for years, "shaking up drinks behind the bar, serving Wolverine and Storm." Marvel's own statement on his death praised the "energy, detail and emotion" of his work and called him "a wonderful friend and collaborator with a kind heart."

Martha Cassara announced her husband's death on his Instagram account: "You might know him for his celebrated work in comics, but he was also a good man, a wonderful father and husband, my best friend, and the love of my life." She asked those who knew him to answer with memory rather than mourning: "He would not have wanted your condolences. He would have wanted your laughter and toasts."

What Cassara put on the page endures: close to a decade of X-Force, X-Men and Deadpool/Wolverine art, a self-taught bartender's path into the artist's chair on some of Marvel's biggest titles, and a bar of his own invention that other artists will keep drawing into future issues. Percy still keeps Cassara's original drawings framed above his desk. Fans who tuned into his Instagram livestreams watched him build those pages layer by layer, in real time, for anyone curious how the work actually got made.