Dave Cockrum
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Dave Cockrum (November 11, 1943 - ) is an American comic book artist.
Cockrum was born in Pendleton, Oregon. His father was a Lieutenant colonel of the United States Air Force, resulting in the Cockrums frequently transporting their household from one city to another for years.
He discovered comic books at an early age. His reported favorites being Captain Marvel by Fawcett Comics and Blackhawk by Quality Comics.
His ambition was to be become a comic book creator himself. However following his school graduation, Dave joined the United States Navy for six years. After leaving the service, Dave managed to find employement by Warren Publishing. He was then hired as an assistant inker to Murphy Anderson. Anderson was responsible for inking various titles featuring Superman and Superboy for DC Comics. The later title was featuring a backup strip by the name of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
When the position of artist for the Legion of Super-Heroes was left vacant, Cockrum sought the job and had his first assignent at drawing a series. Cockrum's work on the Legion (beginning in the early 1970s) is generally seen as redefining the team. Certainly he redefined the look of the Legion, creating new costumes and designs that would last until artist Keith Giffen did a similar revamp in the 1980s.
At Marvel, Cockrum and Len Wein (under the direction of editor Roy Thomas) put together the new X-Men, co-creating such characters as Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus (some of which had been designed by Cockrum as possible additions to the Legion during his tenure). These characters made their debut in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (Summer 1975), and then in a relaunched Uncanny X-Men (beginning with issue #94). Wein left after an issue and a half, succeeded by Chris Claremont, the team's primary writer from then on. Cockrum stayed with the title until 1977, when he was replaced by penciller John Byrne. When Byrne in turn left in 1981, Cockrum returned to the title, but left again in 1983.
Cockrum has also pencilled and/or inked a number of other titles for both Marvel and DC, and was Marvel's primary cover artist in the late 1970s.
In recent years Cockrum has worked less frequently in comics. In 2004 he became seriously ill due to complications from diabetes and pneumonia; a number of fellow artists organised a fund-raising project, and Marvel announced it would compensate him for his work in co-creating the highly successful X-Men.
He was due to draw an 8-page story in Giant Size X-Men #3 (2005), but a recurrence of his health problems have prevented this [1] (http://nightscrawlers.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=4886&page=2#pid33627998)