Dave Cockrum, R.I.P.

I was sorry to hear that Dave Cockrum passed away, at the far too young age of 63 after several years of illness. I enjoyed quite a bit of his work over the years. Here are a few examples from books I pulled out to re-read today.

Sky-Wolf was a pretty fun attempt by Cockrum and Marv Wolfman in 1984 to do a Marvel version of the Blackhawks (which I think they were briefly slated to do at DC a few years earlier, following a Batman team-up they did together. That became the Evanier/Spiegle revival, which Wolfman briefly edited and Cockrum drew some covers and backup stories).



One of the last regular gigs that Cockrum had was a long stint on Claypool's SOULSEARCHERS AND COMPANY, which had a lot of opportunity for him to show off some of his expressive humour work and lots of outlandish creatures and situations.



And of course there's X-MEN. One of the few times I regularly read the book was during his second stint as artist in the early 1980s, which had a lot of fun stuff, including the very goofy #153 "Fairy Tale" issue. It wasn't until years later that I read reprints of his original run, which was also fun.