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The Life And Legacy Of Dave Cockrum
years to come. And Dave had that blessed sketchbook.” The sketchbook to which Wein referred was one of many which Cockrum had used throughout the years to store characters of his own creation. In 1999, the artist told Jon B. Cooke, “It’s a story that Len Wein loves to tell about the creation of the New X-Men; I had this huge sketchbook filled with characters I had come up with. Len keeps remembering that I took the X-Men drawings out of that book, but that’s not actually true. I made them up separately, but I did have that book of characters. That’s one of the things I loved to do: invent characters.”37
A Trio Of “Mutant Blackhawks” (Above:) Wolverine by Cockrum, 1983. As Roy T. has often stated, he could’ve easily wound up being called The Badger, instead! (Right:) A pencil sketch of Phoenix and Storm. The 1975 model sheet of Storm’s predecessor, Black Cat, was seen in A/E #24. Both these sketches were retrieved by Glen C. from the Heritage Comics Archives. [Wolverine, Phoenix, & Storm TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]
With the creative team in place, the next step was for the pair to select the individual members of the group. While the exact order in which members of The X-Men were chosen is unknown, Cockrum did tell J.R. Riley in 1982, “Cyclops was the first choice, then Wolverine was number two.”38 As the artist of the new X-Men series, Cockrum “resented [Wolverine’s] existence for a long time, because I had come up with a Wolverine and shown it to Roy before this Wolverine.”39 In 2003, the artist wrote online, “Len Wein created Wolvie at Roy’s suggestion. Roy freely admits he had the idea for a Canadian character named Wolverine after seeing my group of proposed Legion villains [The [Devastators] which included a brother and sister team, Wolverine and Belladonna.” In 2004’s The Uncanny Dave Cockrum... a Tribute, Thomas wrote about the matter, “I accept [as] fact that he probably once showed me a design for a character called Wolverine—and he takes my word for it that I have no conscious memory of that, and that in any event it was a virtual toss-up in 1974 as to whether that new
Buckling A Few Swashes (Left:) Dave liked drawing Kurt Wagner in pirate/swordsman garb, as per his 1985-86 Nightcrawler limited series. We used one such illo back in A/E #24— and here’s another commission drawing, done for collector Lance Falk. Also, see p. 21. [Nightcrawler TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Right:) A self-sketch by Dave, courtesy of P.D. Prince, with special thanks to Mark Trost. [©2008 Estate of Dave Cockrum.]