Well the bad news is confirmed. Artist Dave Cockrum, the co-creator of what everyone now thinks of as The X-Men died in his sleep this morning of complications from diabetes.
I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cockrum but it’s reported that he was a good guy and very well-liked in the comics professional and fan communities.
I’m sad for his family and loved ones and also for Cockrum himself on account of his last few years which sound as though they were hard indeed.
It’s a familiar story: Artist/Writer creates or revamps a corporate property, essentially spinning gold from ether. Contractually he doesn’t own a piece of it. Suits get rich, creator gets the short end.
If you haven’t heard, the post-Cockrum X-Men have made a few dollars for a few people. Cockrum ended up in a lousy VA hospital when his health went south. Putting aside the separate outrage that Veterans hospitals are not the world’s best, it was a disgrace that it took Marvel Entertainment as long as it did to finally pony up enough to let one of the guys who saved their company live the last few years of his life like a human being.
So here’s my tribute/story:
It’s May of 1975. I’m 11 years-old. I’ve had all my comic books stashed away as punishment for my grades being lousy again. I’m in the local Drug Fair store at the corner of Indian Head Highway and Fort Washington Road, in PG County, Maryland. Maybe I’m with my mom or my dad, I forget. What I don’t forget is seeing on the spinner rack a copy of “Giant-Size X-Men #1 with one of the flat-out most awesome covers I’ve ever seen. There’s a bunch of super-heroes on it, running out of the cover toward me. A guy with claws, a black woman with white hair, a demon, and a big metal guy with articulated musculature the likes of which had never been seen before. Others.
I talked whichever parent I was with into buying the comic for me with the understanding I wouldn’t get to read it until my grades no longer sucked. By rights I should never have gotten to read the comic but I guess “suck” was a variable term and anyway I searched the house when my parents weren’t around until I found where they hid it. I read it and put it back. Several times until my grades stopped sucking. By several I mean about a million.
That 50-cent comic book changed the world. If you want a mint-copy today it’ll cost you over a thousand dollars. I still have my copy with its creases, dog-ears, coffee and beer stains, and its torn and scotch-taped spine. You couldn’t have it for anything.
The stuff that hits us in youth is powerful. The stuff that sticks even more so. I was the perfect age and in the perfect circumstance for that Dave Cockrum comic book to hit all my nerves. It had monsters, angry born outsiders (mutants), and spectacle beyond the reach of any other pre-CGI medium to create. I was hooked and happy to be so.
This is turning out to be more about me and less about Dave Cockrum than I wanted but the story above is the main reason I’m feeling sad at his passing. Dave Cockrum’s work brought me a lot of happiness in a time that was largely devoid of it. Like many people my early adolescence wasn’t fun and some of the best memories I have are of escaping into the stories he helped create. I’m still thankful and I wish I’d had a chance to tell him that.
Here’s a link to his Wikipedia page and another to a shot of that amazing comic book he drew.
(I’d post the cover here but I’m having problems with images right now. Sorry.)
UPDATE April 2008: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling for 11 Year-Old Boys.
