Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Visionaries of Tomorrow How important was Dave Cockrum?

On a personal level, Dave was important to me and my "indoctrination" into the Legion because I discovered his work a mere six months or so after I started reading the Legion. The first three Legion stories I read were reprints from the '60s, featuring the able but more conventional renderings of Jim Mooney, John Forte and Curt Swan. The Legion of those days was clearly aimed at children. The costumes were very simple, and the settings, though laced with science fiction, were hardly threatening, even to a nine year old.

So, at the end of summer, while I was looking in vain for the fifth reprint issue, I discovered SUPERBOY # 197, "Timber Wolf: Dead Hero, Live Executioner." It was like reality had slapped me in the face, and said, "This is the '70s, boy, not the '50s!" The feral Timber Wolf would have looked so out of place in the earlier stories. And what happened to Lightning Lad's cape? Duo Damsel's split-in-two costume was a definite improvement over her drab purple dress, and Cham's red suit with the head piece and humungous shoulder attachments seemed like something a stealthy shapeshifter would wear. I wasn't ready, at first, to embrace such wholesale changes in characters I'd come to know just a few months earlier. But Dave and writer Cary Bates made it worth the while. "Timber Wolf: Dead Hero, Live Executioner" was the most dramatic and action-packed Legion story I'd yet read, complete with the titular hero attempting to assassinate the president of earth!

Of course, Dave and Cary were just setting us up for even more drastic changes. The marriage of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel came just three issues later. Wildfire, a character who in name, costume, and powers, would also have been out of place in the '60s, joined the issue after that. Then, in # 203, came the death of Invisible Kid, already one of my favorites. Dave had moved on by then, but his legacy would remain and influence the Legion for decades to come.

Dave's successor, Mike Grell, was also a dynamic artist who, if memory serves, initially tried to mimic Dave's style. This proved to be a smart move, as Grell would gradually work in his own style, which also gained widespread fan acceptance. But when Grell left, and his successors proved less than equal to the task (with the brief exception of Jim Sherman's early issues, before he was teamed with an inappropriate inker), something vital was lost. I remember writing a letter to DC about that time, requesting that they bring back Dave or have someone draw the Legion who could utilize a similar dynamic style. DC, of course, never printed the letter.

For all the praise we justifiably heap upon Dave, he was not a perfect artist. His science fiction settings and equipment borrowed too heavily from Star Trek, and lacked the breadth of imagination of the earlier artists. But Dave excelled where it counted the most: In redesigning the Legionnaires as young adults in a genre that was rapidly appealing to a more mature audience. I was not quite ten years old when I read SUPERBOY # 197. But even then I was ready for this unexpected adventure that he and Cary were taking me on. Their collaborative work on the Legion was an exciting portent of things to come.

Cool post He Who Wanders.

My point was not to bash the Adventure Era stuff...but to really try to show people how cool the Cockrum stuff was and later the Levitz/Giffen. The Legion as young adults and not skinny kids just makes so much more sense. I really do not know why the last two reboots had them return as skinny kids. They can be teenagers and young adults...without such a heavy emphasize on the teen part.

Sure volume 4 made them middle aged adults. Or close to middle age. It's been done. Got it. So has the teen thing. And I don't want middle age...i want young adults. I think it's probably the best broad appeal for the Legion. I've said this too many times as other have pointed out.


I was looking at Legion history and noticed when things started taking off for me. It was during the Cockrum era. The Shooter stories are pretty good...and IMO have set up the Legion plot dynamic for all time...but we need to have a bit more Cockrum IMO in this Legion.

It's interesting to compare Cockrum's impact to Shooter's. Shooter's being hired as Legion writer is usually praised in part because it made the Legion genuinely seem like teenagers, rather than the adults trapped in teen-age bodies they were often portrayed as before he took over. Then the next big overhaul of the Legion is Cockrum's re-design of them as young adults rather than teen-agers, which kind of took them in the opposite direction.

I think Cockrum was hampered quite a bit by Bates's weaknesses as a writer. Superboy #200, for example, should have been a major story. It featured the return of a villain who hadn't been seen for quite awhile, and who had largely wiped the floor with the Legion the first time around. Hamilton's Starfinger was a major bad guy with an interesting motivation, and worthy of the James Bond-inspired moniker he adopted. There were something like fifty super-heroes at the Bouncing Boy/Duo Damsel wedding, and Starfinger should've been able give all of them a challenge. But instead Bates ends up sending a posse of four Legionnaires after him, and he's defeated relatively easily.

It would be quite awhile, really not until the Levitz era, that the Legion would once again have stories that had the scope and dramatic impact that the Adventure era tales had. Most of the stories of this period seem so small by comparison.

This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that Cockrum was obviously incredibly important as a designer, but one wonders what he could have achieved had the stories been of the same caliber as his artwork.

EDE, true. We talk about what if the Legion had become as popular as the X-Men when Cockrum was on it. They would have needed better writing...but if Cockrum was paired with a Shooter or Levitz...it may have gotten big. Actually it would've...Levitz/Giffen got very popular not much later...ohwell. What if

"I really do not know why the last two reboots had them return as skinny kids."

Some people-- including editors-- don't want change. With some series, change can actually be detrimental to the format. This may explain why Batman, Superman & WW never seem to age. But with the LEGION, from 1959-1986 or so, change was part of the whole thing, whether it was initially intended or not. By having a series set in a different era, there was no need to tie anything to "current events", and characters had the freedom to age as quick or slow as writers felt like it. So deciding the Legion "should" be about teenagers... hmm. (EXPLETIVE DELETED)


My first exposure to Dave Cockrum was a story he did in EERIE magazine. Really cool stuff. But in color superhero comics, it was THE AVENGERS. They had art by the likes of Don Heck, Bob Brown, Mike Esposito, etc. It wasn't the greatest era for art on that book. And then one issue you had John Buscema inked by this new guy, Dave Cockrum. DAMN! Good stuff. A couple months later, Bob Brown was inked by Cockrum. DAMN!! Even better! That issue had one of the SEXIEST renditions of The Scarlet Witch I'd ever seen (until John Byrne did her in WCA years later). Brown did a lot of sexy women (check out his Black Widow over in DD) but often was saddled with inferior or inappropriate inkers (something that's plagued Marvel in general for generations).

And THEN I saw GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #2, with full art by Dave Cockrum. WHOA!!! This is STILL one of my favorite Cockrum comics of all time.

3 months later Dave did GIANT #3... but they had Joe Giella on inks. Joe's a WONDERFUL inker-- but I think is style "toned down" Dave's work too much. He would have been a much better match with then-regular penciller Sal Buscema (as was proved later on ALL-STAR COMICS).


I had no real interest in X-MEN when I heard it was being revived... I bought the book basically for Dave's art-- PERIOD!!! The stories proved far too nasty & intense for my tastes, and they stayed that way for its entire run-- until it got WORSE and I finally gave up on it (by which time Dave had left-- twice). At the time, if I'd had my choice, I'd have rather Dave STAYED on THE AVENGERS, and never touched that X-thing... (but that's me!)

My favorite version of Colossus was drawn by Dave Cockrum. That was my favorite era of the X-men too. He just had a very dynamic and distinctive style.

True, to a point. Bates had his problems (flagrant disregard of continuity being one), but, in his defense, he also had considerable strengths. Few writers then (and even fewer now) could develop a complete story in 13 pages or less, the standard length of most cover stories back then.

SUPERBOY # 200, it must be remembered, was written at a time when DC had yet to fully embrace the multiple story arc format. Most of their stories in those days were self-contained. So, I think it's understandable (and quite a feat, actually) that Bates and Cockrum developed a complete, one-issue story that 1) married off two Legionnaires, 2) featured a returning villain, 3) foreshadowed the return of ERG-1/Wildfire, and 4), as a bonus, featured a cameo from virtually every supporting character in Legion history. Judging SUPERBOY # 200 by Levitz/Giffen standards is like comparing the price of apples in 1973 with the price of apples today.

What was the first extra-long self-contained LEGION story? Not counting the 68 page Levitz/Grell/Colletta epic "The Millennium Massacre" - S/LSH 231?

I was never a huge Cockrum fan, but he is a heckuva nice guy, and clearly deserves the lion's share of the credit for reinvigorating LSH.

But if he had stayed on, we wouldn't have had Grell, and possibly not Sherman, and those would have been tragic losses.

I think we would have had Grell & sherman, anyway. If the Legion had gone monthly, and moreso if it expanded its page count, as it did, they would have been necesasary. As Chris Claremont once said, "He's slow!"

Yeah I always wondered what could have been if Dave had stayed until Jim Shooter returned to the Legion, those two guys alone came up with most of the greatest concepts in the Legion's history together they could have been unstoppable.
I read somewhere that at the time Shooter was writing the Grimbor and Charma story he and Dave were living together in New York and Dave even came up with a design for Charma.

Dave Cockrum was vital to the Legion's revival in the early 70s. If not for him, there might not be a Legion today.

I think I'd even take "might" out of that statement. I can't think of another artist at that time who could have or would have jumped on board the Legion the way Dave did.

DC might have revived the concept later, but I really beleive that the path that Dave helped set the Legion on was a one-of-a-kind opportunity.