Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 11, 2019 | 3 comments

The late fan-fave artist was born 76 years ago — and here are 13 PAGES from his upcoming IDW volume…

Normally for a favorite artist’s birthday, we’ll publish a 13 COVERS salute.

But for the late Dave Cockrum’s birthday this year, we’ve got something extra special for you — an EXCLUSIVE EARLY LOOK at Dave Cockrum’s X-Men Artifact Edition, from IDW and Marvel.

That’s right — 13 PAGES of classic original Cockrum art made available to us by IDW and the book’s editor, Scott Dunbier.

Here’s IDW’s official description:

By 1975 the X-Men had been relegated to reprint status for a number of years, and the title was not a safe bet to become one of the most popular comic book franchises of all time—but with the launch that year of GIANT SIZE X-MEN #1, by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, that is precisely what happened! Dave Cockrum was the artist and architect of this newly revamped team, and he co-created Storm, Colossus, and, perhaps most notably, Nightcrawler. After the runaway success of Giant Size X-Men #1, the title began producing all-new stories with X-Men #94… and the rest is the stuff comic book dreams are made of!

This Artifact Edition contains more than 100 pages from Cockrum’s initial run on X-Men, as well as some pages when the artist returned later for a second run on the characters several years later. As with all Artist’s Edition style books from IDW Publishing (which have so far won six Eisner Awards), the pages presented were all scanned from Cockrum’s actual original art and are printed at the same size they were drawn, mimicking the look and feel of the artist’s hand-drawn work. As an added bonus, there is a gallery section featuring covers, sketches, and a few surprises—this is an art book MADE for fans of Dave Cockrum’s X-Men art!

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(Side note: Generally speaking, Artist’s Editions feature complete stories while Artifact Editions are compilations of pages.)

The 144-page oversize edition is due in March 2020 but you get this SNEAK PEEK right… NOW:

Giant-Size X-Men #1 cover. Gil Kane pencils, Cockrum inks.

Giant-Size X-Men #1, Page 44

X-Men #103, Page 1

X-Men #95, Page 6

Nightcrawler #3 cover

X-Men #109 cover

X-Men #96, Page 23

X-Men #97, Page 27

Iron Fist #15 cover

X-Men #98, Page 3

X-Men #104 cover

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MORE

— 13 COVERS: A DAVE COCKRUM Birthday Celebration — 2018 Edition: The X-Men. Click here.

— EXCLUSIVE: Inside JOHN BYRNE’S MARVEL CLASSICS ARTIFACT EDITION. Click here.