Sad news on a Monday
I was saddened to hear about the passing of comic artist Dave Cockrum. I won’t go so far out on a limb to say that I wouldn’t be reading comics were it not for his work, but I certainly wouldn’t have the degree of affection for say, X-MEN, were it not for his art (and his co-creation of the characters.)
When I came into comics, John Byrne had stopped working on X-MEN. I’d heard folks waxing rhapsodic about his work, which was fine and dandy. To be frank, I got into X-MEN by way of ROM, but that’s another story. I started reading the adventures of everyone’s favorite mutants right as Dave Cockrum joined the book again. Having been a big fan of artists like John Buscema (by way of ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS and SON OF ORIGINS), I took to Cockrum’s muscular draftsmanship and layouts right from the start.
I can still remember being thrilled, yes thrilled, to get my mitts on X-MEN #150, which featured the big showdown between a returned Magneto and a re-united X-MEN on R’lyeh of all places. (Prove me wrong, I dare you.) Could I have asked for anything more? Well, sure, but only an ingrate of a 14-year-old would.
Sadly, Cockrum’s strengths were also perceived weaknesses. He had his finger on the pulse of the 70s in terms of costume design and fashion, as well as his physiques which seemed beefier and not a suitable middle ground between the anorexia/steroid bulk schizophrenia that seemed to grip comics art through the middle eighties and beyond. Even his later efforts on books like THE FUTURIANS felt somewhat dated (and I as a comic fan felt this, I can only imagine what editors thought).
That said, his vision of the Shi’ar Empire is still unique and individual. The fact that I can visualize it now, after years of reading and thousands upon thousands of other images crowding my brain after a lifetime of media absorption attests to that. And were it not for the fact that most of my comics are more than 500 miles away at the moment, I’d take the time out to study those old pages again. Because when I remember classic X-MEN comics, Orange Julius fries in one hand and a coke in the other, murmuring of the mall as background noise and being a kid in 1983, I remember buccaneer boots and flared shoulders and those capes that go from shoulder to wrists and were utterly impractical. Classic X-MEN means Dave Cockrum.
Rest in peace, sir.