A BIRTHDAY SALUTE: Plus, a gigantic fold-out house ad…
By WALT GROGAN
The late Dave Cockrum was born 80 years ago on November 11, 1943. He gained a following with his energetic and realistic pencils and inks, and his popularity rose when, in the early ’70s, he took on the art chores for the Legion of Super-Heroes feature in DC’s Superboy, written by Cary Bates. Their work was so popular that DC added the Legion to the title’s name and made it the series’ main attraction.
To me, Cockrum’s versatility was evident when he drew a Captain Marvel Jr. backup in DC’s Shazam! comic; he was one of those artists who captivated me and I always wanted to see how he would interpret my favorites.
But Cockrum really shot to stardom when he re-imagined the X-Men with writer Len Wein, and later Chris Claremont, first in Giant-Size X-Men #1 and then The X-Men in the mid ’70s. It was Cockrum and Claremont (and, later, artist John Byrne) who popularized Wolverine into one of Marvel’s headliners.
Dave got a crack at The Avengers when he did finishes over artist John Buscema’s layouts for several issues of that title in the mid-1970s. You can his style break through every once in a while, like in the fifth panel on this page from The Avengers #125:
What a trip it would have been to see Cockrum take on the Mighty Avengers by his lonesome. Well, we don’t have to imagine it: He shared his Avengers designs in Marvel’s mail-in fan magazine, FOOM. Issues #6 and #7 featured eight pages of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
The Hulk and Hercules led off the groupings as two of the Avengers’ most powerful characters:
They were followed by two other of the Avengers’ powerhouses: Thor and Iron Man:
Cockrum’s next piece featured the many incarnations of Dr. Henry Pym along side his bride, Janet Van Dyne. By the way, it only took me 63 years to get the pun of Ant-Man and Gi-Ant Man!
Cockrum then gave his take on those misunderstood mutants: the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver:
One of the coolest storylines was the re-introduction of that old baddie the Swordsman and his sponsor, Mantis. Cockrum did a great job with the couple:
Much like the Hank Pym piece, Cockrum showed both incarnations of Clint Barton along with the Black Widow:
(Maybe he should have added the Black Widow to the Black Knight and Black Panther piece!)
Cockrum rounded it out with the Vision and Captain America:
Because of budgetary constraints, FOOM was printed two-color, so many of these pieces have never been fully colored — although I’ve found a few. Our friends over at TwoMorrows published a great book devoted to the artist, The Life and Art of Dave Cockrum, by Glen Cadigan, who included colored versions of the Vision and Captain America, and Mantis and Swordsman images:
And Marvel itself used Cockrum’s Thor and Iron Man for a variant cover to All-Out Avengers #1:
It seemed a shame, though, to leave all those other pieces uncolored, so I did them all up as Marvel Masterwork Pin-Ups!
All of Cockrum’s pieces are marvelous but I wondered what they would look like together. Now, I could have easily jumbled them around and tightened them up a bit by overlapping all of the characters, but I really liked the idea of seeing them side-by-side. But I needed a theme!
So what if Marvel had let Cockrum both draw and write a King-Size book featuring all of these Avengers? Sure, Ant-Man and Giant-Man and Goliath and Yellowjacket weren’t on the team at the same time as was true of Clint Barton’s Hawkeye and his incarnation as Goliath. But this is is comics! Perhaps Kang or Immortus plucked these Avengers out of different time periods to have them all work together!
That was the hook, so, of course, a book of that stature would need a house ad — but with so many heroes standing next to one another, it would be either pretty big or very small!!
Back in the heady days of the early- and mid-1970s, Stan Lee was always coming up with some crazy-ass scheme to sell comics — what if, again, he decided to make the a giant fold-out comic that would expand like an accordion when you opened it up? Yeah, it would be hard to keep it in mint condition but it would be a lot of fun when 44 pages flopped out between the covers.
To entice readers, why not publish a house ad in that same format?
Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Boy, that image is pretty small! What’s the deal?!? I’d love to see it bigger!” Well, to paraphrase Doug Henning, “Size is just an illusion!” — we’ve got you covered!
In your desktop browser, simply right-click the image and choose “Open image in new tab” from the pop-up menu. Select that new tab! Now it might still look small, but if you click it, it will expand in size and you’ll get to see the fold-out house ad in all its glory! And, of course, you could always save it and open it up in your favorite image software!
AVENGERS ASSEMBLED!
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MORE
— DAVE COCKRUM: The Illustrated Evolution of the X-MEN’S STORM. Click here.
— Dig DAVE COCKRUM’s Rare, Unpublished CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. Story. Click here.
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A 10-year-old Walt Grogan fell in love with the Big Red Cheese thanks to essays written by Dick Lupoff and Don Thompson in the paperback edition of All in Color for a Dime, released in 1970 and bought for him by his father off a paperback spinner rack in a liquor store on the South Side of Chicago. Walt runs The Marvel Family Web Facebook page devoted to all incarnations of the Fawcett/DC Captain Marvel and blogs about Captain Marvel at shazamshistorama.com.
November 11, 2023
These are GREAT!
(Um… not to seem ungrateful, but was there also supposed to be a Captain American and the Vision pin-up?)
November 11, 2023
There is!
November 11, 2023
What an awesome presentation of a fantastic collection. It all feels so iconic.
November 11, 2023
Walt, I love these, both as individual pinups and as the larger foldout! Dave Cockrum was always one of my favorite artists of the 70’s. I wish Marvel would print all of your fantastic layouts celebrating all of these top artists in a book or portfolio of some kind.
November 13, 2023
Thanks for the kudos, Jim! It was a fun piece to do!