A Few Words About Nightcrawler

Clifford Meth, who worked on behalf of Dave Cockrum and his family in the years before the Uncanny X-Men artist's death late in 2006, has organized a benefit book that will be released four weeks from Wednesday, The Uncanny Dave Cockrum Hardcover. In support of that book -- to which I contributed an essay -- Meth has announced a contest by which someone out there can win an original sketch by the late Cockrum. To enter, look here, choose a title you like best/think is the coolest, and send your choice via e-mail to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

I was struck at the moment of Dave Cockrum's death how effective he was during his longer superhero comic runs, which got me thinking about that whole generation of writers and artists as more and more of them hit 60 and points beyond. Things like the newer, re-launched X-Men coming along at such a late date for comics and really hitting with its core audience just as effectively as any of the great comics characters of the 1940s or early 1960s? That doesn't happen by accident. No company wills that to happen. If you look at the works and are honest with yourself you'll find that there are no standby beneficiaries of a corporation's ability to capitalize on a concept. Dave Cockrum's work meant something beyond a nostalgic impulse that developed because it was his name at the bottom of the credits page. His art was handsome and appealing and stylish; it allowed Chris Claremont to count on being able to compress and refold complicated narrative into the main story if he needed to, without losing flow. It was adult and warm and casually romantic. Everyone that followed on the book followed Dave Cockrum, both literally and spiritually, even if they didn't realize it.

Often when comics readers and professionals look at the issues of what's just in comics we complicate matters by demanding that artists and writers show almost superhuman restraint in resisting any and all shorter-term rewards in a game stacked against them. While we should recognize that people sign bad contracts and don't always have to, but we should also recognize that this provides a legal justification for exploitation, not always a moral one. Sometimes you have to look at the end result and see if things are just or not, if executives who supervise the production of toys should get authorship royalties while the character's creators don't, if we're applauding improvements in the bottom line whose rewards aren't going to the people who make the things that drive that improvement. In Dave Cockrum's case, he had to get really sick, and people had to advocate on his part in almost nasty fashion, for him to get what he should have received long before. In the memory of Cockrum as an artist and as a person who was treated unjustly, I hope you'll consider buying that last book when it comes out next month.
 
posted 8:02 pm PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives