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Dave Cockrum's Candle against the Darkness

Dave Cockrum enjoyed the height of comics celebrity in the early and middle 1970s, appearing unexpectedly in 1973 to renew Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes. He arrived with a talent with one foot in the Silver Age and the other foot in the future; for, in the early days, he demonstrated an uncanny ability to push moribund Silver Age creations forward. He did not resort to the cheap stunts of the fashion-following revisionist typical of recent attempts to revive a stagnant comics market. Why should he have, when he could define the new style that others would imitate?

Today, someone who mentions Cockrum's name will probably begin a discussion about the X-Men, a comics franchise that today provides most of Marvel comics' revenue. A fair historian must credit Cockrum's work, with Len Wein and whatever editorial guidance Marvel actually provided in the project, to saving (or, really, creating) the cash cow that did much to carry a withering comics stable. Granted, Lee and Kirby created the first version of the X-Men, which years of poor sales and a premature editorial decision allowed to die after Roy Thomas and Neal Adams almost rescued its single title. This notwithstanding, the modern X-books essentially evolved from the Cockrum/Wein version built on the carcass of the original.

Some of Cockrum's fans compare him to Jack Kirby, in that he fathered a rich bedrock upon which years of subsequent stories would evolve, and in his relentless ability to create hordes of superheroic characters. Such claims exaggerate slightly, since Cockrum did not create from nothing as Lee and Kirby had, and sometimes created highly derivative works (many of the superheroes of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard inflate his numbers, in spite of bearing intentional resemblances to the Legion of Super-Heroes). Still, even with all hyperbole brushed aside, one must wonder: If Cockrum did help create Marvel's biggest selling franchise, why does it remain so difficult to find information about him?

As I write, I recall nothing of his after 1983, a mere ten years after his miraculous rise to fame. Research debunks the premise that he vanished, since he did continue with some work for Marvel after that, but information available through the Web remains fairly scarce, and tends to end with his X-Men work. How many reading this even know of his creation "The Futurions," or know who (if anyone) publishes his work these days? Perhaps some small number of you might even suspect that Cockrum either retired or died, but, as best as my research confirms, Cockrum still works at his board and currently provides samples of his work via a commercial web page.

Considering his contribution to the mythos of both DC (through the Legion of Super-Heroes) and Marvel (through the X-Men), one might think of him as one of the Doctors of Comics. Yet, grotesquely, I recently observed one collector's gallery of LSH art, and noted that said gallery neither contained nor mentioned Cockrum's work. I had to tell the gentleman what issues included Cockrum's work.

What happened to Cockrum, that comics readers should forget him?

Cockrum and the Legion

Younger readers have logical reasons not to recall Cockrum's work, which has appeared in increasingly obscure places since 1983, and may well predate them. A comics historian, however, or someone who happened to witness his works as they appeared on the stands, might have enjoyed the privilege of watching his short, but very influential run, Cockrum put in on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, now over 25 years ago.

In previous paragraphs, I mentioned Cockrum's valiant revival of the X-Men after the death of their title some years previously. This performance, as well known as it seems to remain, repeated a somewhat less-known reinvigoration Cockrum had accomplished in 1973, work that brought him to Marvel's attention in the first place. Before he lay a hand upon the X-Men, Cockrum had dragged the Legion of Super-Heroes, kicking and screaming out of 1958 and into 1973.

During a run that lasted slightly less than a year, Cockrum redefined both the look and the feel of the magazine, replacing its campy late-fifties style with a more plausible (for the 1970s) futuristic feel. From costumes to settings to the visual tone of the magazine, Cockrum radically remade--by radically improving--the Legion; and his style echoes even in today's version of the Legion of Superheroes, now in at least its fourth revision.

In one brief campaign, Cockrum put himself and the Legion of Super-Heroes on the map, and the old-timers who followed the industry in those days still miss the things he did; because some of the points of style during Cockrum's Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes were never to reappear in his subsequent work.

For whatever reason, Cockrum didn't stay with the Legion very long. Perhaps he didn't want to get into a rut; too soon, the credits listed Cockrum as inking Mike Grell, and then Grell carried the title without Cockrum.

Cockrum's Changing Style

Without vast resources in time, money, patience, and luck, one will have a difficult time demonstrating the specialness of Cockrum's style for his work for DC. The original comics have grown in price while becoming scarcer and scarcer; and the few scanned DC pages that appear here fail to provide the complete impact of a complete Cockrum-drawn story of that period. Consider his original strong points to have included an idiosyncratic vision of futuristic architecture (comparable, in a lesser fashion, to Kirby's odd visions for futuristic machinery); a strongly aesthetic treatment of the human form within the parameters delineated by his idiosyncratic sense of proportion and body language; and a smooth, gorgeous inking style reminiscent of the work of Russ Manning, today remembered for his work on Magnus, Robot Fighter back in a more optimistic era of comics.

Put bluntly, Cockrum's work on the page stunned a reader with its beauty in a fashion very seldom matched by anyone working under monthly deadlines.

After Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes, Cockrum's work would not appear again with the clean, fluid, gorgeous inks that rendered his earliest works so top-notch; but, penciling for Marvel after 1974, he initially retained the other components of his original excellence.

Cockrum's earliest Marvel work includes a number of covers, with Cockrum's smooth inks complementing the output of excellent artists like John Romita Sr. for Fantastic Four and Gil Kane for Avengers.

Shortly, Marvel chose Cockrum to do what Roy Thomas and Neal Adams had failed to do years earlier: revive the X-Men.

Cockrum and the X-Men

This sample of Dave Cockrum's work from Giant Size X-Men #1, the book that ushered in the new X-Men in 1975, demonstrates that he could consistently create bold layouts with both beauty and energy. Cockrum, admitted as the last member of Marvel's "bullpen," enjoyed considerable celebrity in those days; his resume between 1973 and 1975 suggested a future eminence for the man that never came to pass.

Truthfully, his later work never seemed to reach earlier plateaus; as time went on, something happened to this remarkable storyteller. He continued with Marvel for years, but somehow time seemed to erode the quality of his work and the vehemence of his storytelling. By 1983, I had dropped The Uncanny X-Men for its lackluster art and uninteresting stories . . . and I did this while Cockrum's art appeared inside.

By 1983, after all, the things that drew me to Cockrum's work no longer seemed to appear in the books containing his work. Cockrum's excellent use of darks in his work had gone; Cockrum's earlier cleanness of line had gone by 1974; Cockrum's attention to detail had, somehow, also gone (perhaps the casualty of an indifferent inker); the eye-pleasing proportions had gone; and his occasional failings in handling body language that appeared as aberrations in his early work. Occasionally, figures appeared as Barbie or Ken dolls, toys with limbs that moved only at the hip and shoulder.

What Went Wrong?

Cockrum, it seemed, did not improve with time. Conversely, one found better work the further back one looked. Cockrum in 1983 produced work that did not live up to what he produced in 1978; his work in 1975, still rock-solid, failed to live up to the standard he created in 1973.

But by the eighties, something had definitely gone missing in his work. Granted, a discerning eye could recognize the Cockrum characteristics of his late Marvel work, including the square faces and idiosyncratic positioning, but these traits did not define his earlier excellence; they served as identifiers that did not attract.

Cockrum's resume up to 1975 almost demanded that his work would achieve not only fame but great influence in the industry, including the inevitable imitators and tributes. With only his work up until that year, one could seriously expect that, by the turn of the millennium, folks would mention his name in solemn, awe-saturated whispers, perhaps in the context of earlier Doctors of Comics like Eisner and Kirby.

Sadly, though the millennium now nips at our heels, Cockrum's name evokes no such reverence. Somewhere, tragically Cockrum ceased illuminating the medium and became a footnote.

A Theory (or Two)

Compare this black-and-white sample to the color specimen containing Cyclops (in the visor) and Thunderbird (in the fringe and feathers). The strength of the color piece, from 1975, does not appear in this later work. Yet the credits contain the same names: Cockrum penciling and Wiacek inking. What brought the change? What leeched out the excellence?

In the absence of a rich body of biographies of Cockrum and overviews of his 26 years and more of work, one may theorize, perhaps coming to one of the following conclusions:

1. Low pay, or lack of other rewards, such as recognition, inclined him to resent how little he received for the quality he produced.
2. He ceased to love what he did for a living, and this began to show in his work.
3. Some change in his working conditions forced him to output more material or produce in less time, which helped compromise the quality of his work.
4. His tastes changed and his new style reflected these new tastes, but these changes did not appeal to the consumers of his work.
5. Illness affected his ability.

Whatever dragged him, hopefully kicking and screaming, from excellence to mediocrity notwithstanding, his celebrity status definitely declined even as other peers of the same comics era rose, including that of John Byrne, who has managed to remain high in the talent pecking order for about 20 years. Cockrum, unlike fellow X-Men alumnus Byrne, would not enjoy such an enduring status in his chosen medium. In some ways, Cockrum became a piece of nostalgia by 1983; for example, the 300th issue of Legion of Super-Heroes featured one five page story with Cockrum's art, which, if overshadowed by previous achievements, did contain moments suggesting a desire on his part to regain something he had lost.

This sample represents a portion of his 1983 LSH story. Throughout this five-page work, many touches reminded the reader of an earlier Cockrum, including his handling of faces and his earlier sense of composition. Overall, however, this piece tended to depress; one could not mistake its creator, but neither could one deny a change for the worse.

I had hoped to find something more about Cockrum's work after 1983, but the Web disappointed me. Nonetheless, a history of The Uncanny X-Men's creative teams does demonstrate the artistic reigns passing to later talents like Paul Smith (whose profile now remains very low) and Jim Lee (whose profile remains somewhat higher than his work merits, in spite of the excellence of his art), and then to other celebrities-of-the-hour.

After Cockrum and Byrne's collected tenures, the art chores for X-titles became something of a political plum, representing a successful coup in office politics: To draw X-men demonstrated the presence of an alpha penciler.

Information about Cockrum remains hard to come by; perhaps Cockrum enjoys a lower profile, in spite of its smaller financial rewards, since some hope exists outside the Big Two publishers of working without becoming smothered by corporate nonsense and vitriolic office politics.

However, some of us still wait for a day when, like King Arthur returning, Cockrum will reinvent himself (as he did for DC and Marvel). As a mature talent, rather than some snotty young upstart (a title perhaps attached to Cockrum himself in the height of his career), Dave Cockrum could, perhaps, still lay down pages to make the arrogant and overrated young guns of the industry look pathetic.

Cockrum Today

I have seen one good sign: Cockrum's later work does stand well above his low point in the early 1980s. This example appeared on his commercial site.

One only barely sees the remnant of his 1973 style, but certain bright points occur. For instance, Cockrum appears once again interested in dabbling with shadow and detail; if his earlier beauty does not fully appear, neither does his later blandness.

Perhaps illusion clouds my thinking here, but, in this last piece, I sense a bit of a happy smirk on Cockrum's face as he lay down the inks and color on this piece. All things told, after all, love for one's work tends to show. So, out in the boonies, could we finally suspect Cockrum of some happiness?