The Futurians Day!

Dave Cockrum was born on yesterday's date in 1943. Cockrum was an active artist in the fan community of the 60's and an assistant to Wally Wood. He made his first big breakthrough in the back pages of Superboy on the Legion of Super-Heroes feature which soon took over the comic. Cockrum's redesigns of the classic characters was sleek and fascinating. He came over to Marvel and applied the same magic to The Uncanny X-men. One of his most personal projects was The Futurians which he both wrote and drew. 

If you're a fan of the X-Men and the Legion of Super-Heroes, you know that Dave Cockrum was the man largely responsible for the revived interest in both teams during the Bronze Age. He first redesigned the Legion for DC in the pages of Superboy, and then found himself at Marvel where he got to do pretty much the same thing with the X-Men. When Cockrum took over both teams, they were largely defunct, when he left them they were much much more successful. Cockrum left the X-Men and was replaced by John Byrne and the rest (as they often say of course) is history. But back to the Futurians. After Byrne left the X-Men, Cockrum was asked back. Here's what happened later in his own words:

"The only reason I left the book the second time was because I had previously put in a proposal for The Futurians. It sat on Jim Shooter's desk for about a year, and he finally said, "Yeah, you can do this if you want." I was in some doubt whether I should quit the X-Men and do that but I really wanted to do it. Chris and Louise Simonson, the editor, talked me into giving up the X-Men because they thought I was more enthused about The Futurians. That was probably the biggest mistake of my life! That was about the time they started paying the royalties and reprint money. It takes nine months after an issue goes on sale before you get a royalty check so I hadn't received one yet by the time I quit the X-Men. When the first one came it was $2000 right out of the air! I thought, "Geez!" And it got better, and from what I heard, people like Jim Lee were making $40,000 a month on royalties. (That's why they could afford to go off and start Image.) If I had known about that kind of money coming in (even the $2000 a month)you couldn't have pried me off that book with a crowbar. The Futurians was never that successful." (CBA Interview)

The Futurians showed up later at Lodestone, the ill-fated company that also revived the THUNDER Agents, and then there's a much later one-shot which was the up-to-then unpublished fourth issue of the series from Aardwolf which was produced at the time to some extent help out Cockrum with medical bills I believe.

Cockrum's designs largely informed the Bronze Age. They were at once sleek, elegant, and sexy. He was very good with younger heroes, as he did a handsome idealized youthful figure. Personally, I've always preferred Cockrum's X-Men to Byrne's but that's a close call. Certainly 

both men are much better than the talent that has handled the team since their heyday.

He was a great talent.

Apparently The Futurians have been revived for a modern comic. Here's a link. It doesn't have that magic though that Cockrum brought to the feature alas.

 

No matter when or where you found a Cockrum image, it was almost invariably smitten with delicacy and featured an idealized hero or heroine, especially the latter. Dave Cockrum broke into my consciousness when he took hold of the somewhat weary DC Legion of Super-Heroes series and injected it with some new fashions and once in a while new characters. It was a series for a hungry audience which leaped to embrace it and the popularity which the feature had once had, kindled again as these young heroes from the far far future eventually took control of Superboy's comic. Then,  Cockrum left it for greener pastures and allowed another stellar talent by the name of Mike Grell to make a name for himself.

Then it was Marvel which had young heroes of its own to revive and brought forth a new and as it turned out lasting assembly of Uncanny X-Men. Once again Cockrum was the darling of the fanboy set as he drew his marvelous and delightful costumes in stories which struck a chord. Eventually though Cockrum left it for greener pastures and allowed yet another stellar talent by the name of John Byrne to make a name for himself. Eventually Cockrum returned to the mutants and admitted in interviews that leaving might have been a career mistake, but there was no denying that Cockrum was a hit. Cockrum gave us a new Ms. Marvel, the lady currently heating up the theaters and revived at least for a bit. Eventually he gave us his own heroes dubbed The Futurians who tumbled around the Indy marketplace for a few years in an attempt for him to get more remuneration for his hard work. But as much a master of revivals as Cockrum was he couldn't overcome the challenge which we all face and he died much too young leaving a legacy of handsome smiling heroes in his wake.

Rip Off