Dave Cockrum, an illustrator who in the mid-1970s helped invent a dynamic new look and intriguing new characters for the moribund ?X-Men? comics, paving the way for what became America?s most popular comic books and a billion-dollar movie empire, died on Nov. 26 at his home in Belpon, S.C. He was 63.
The cause was complications of diabetes, Andrea Kline, his former wife, said.
The X-Men are mutants who as a result of a sudden leap in evolution are born with latent superhuman abilities that usually manifest themselves at puberty. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, two creative legends at Marvel Comics, created the odd group in 1963, but by 1970, fan interest, never great, had petered out. Marvel put new X-Men adventures on hiatus.
Enter Mr. Cockrum, who with the writer Len Wein, under the direction of the editor Roy Thomas, was assigned to restart the series in 1975. After an issue and a half, Chris Claremont replaced Mr. Wein.
New international characters with strange new powers sprang to life. They included Thunderbird, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm, and they joined compelling standbys like Wolverine to eventually be the heroes of a dozen comic book titles, cartoons and video games, as well as three movies that have together brought in more than $1 billion in worldwide box office receipts.
Mr. Cockrum saw the characters as dark and appealingly dramatic; they became weathered adults instead of smooth-faced children. Comics Reporter noted the handsomeness of both men and women, as well as an overall ?sumptuous, late-?70s cinema style.?
Clifford Meth, who has written extensively about comic-book art, said Mr. Cockrum created a new look for superheroes, featuring wide shoulder lapels, big belts and buccaneer boots.
?It was space opera,? he said. ?It wasn?t just Spandex anymore.?
Neal Adams, a well-known illustrator who drew the X-Men before the hiatus, said Mr. Cockrum created ?just crazy characters.? He said Mr. Cockrum and Mr. Claremont had so much fun during their collaboration that they were like ?two kids in a playground.?
David Emmett Cockrum was born in Pendleton, Ore., on Nov. 12, 1943. He grew up loving comic books, but his father, a colonel in the Air Force, disapproved of them, Ms. Kline said.
Mr. Cockrum majored in fine arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, but left before he graduated to join the Navy. He was assigned to Guam, where worked as a captain?s secretary. He used his spare time to paint colorful emblems on fighter planes and to dream up interesting characters that later appeared in comic books.
Ms. Kline said Mr. Cockrum created and named Nightcrawler, who has blue fur, is acrobatic and can teleport, while on Guam. The character was first imagined as a demon dedicated to doing good deeds to avoid being sent back to hell. Another character, Storm, whose superpowers are flying and manipulating the weather, is played by Halle Berry in the X-Men movies.
After his discharge from the Air Force in the early 1970s, Mr. Cockrum moved to New York, where he worked as an inker, who refines the art of the original artist, called a penciller. He did this for Murphy Anderson, who created the modern look of Superman, Batman, Flash and other characters at DC Comics.
DC made him the first artist, or penciller, in redefining the DC team the Legion of Super-Heroes. His costumes and style for the group persisted into the 1980s.
After a dispute with DC, Mr. Cockrum moved to its archcompetitor, Marvel. His first assignment was as an inker on ?The Avengers,? and then, in 1974, he became the penciller on the publication ?Giant-Size X-Men? No. 1, working with Mr. Wein.
?Giant-Size? referred to the length of the comic book, not to the dimensions of its characters. The extra pages were necessary for the huge cast Mr. Cockrum dreamed up, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2000.
Mr. Cockrum?s rendering of Wolverine is scheduled to be used on a postage stamp next year.
Mr. Cockrum is survived by his wife, Paty, his son, Ivan Sean, of Seattle, and his stepsons Lauren and Philip Greer, both of whom live in upstate New York, Ms. Kline said.
He worked less often as his health deteriorated. By 2004, he was in a Veterans Administration hospital in the Bronx, and in financial straits. Mr. Adams led a drive to persuade Marvel to share some of the riches it had generated from his characters.
Though the company contended it owed him nothing because he worked as freelancer, it paid him $200,000 and royalties for one character, Nightcrawler, his earliest, according to The Comics Journal. The terms were not officially revealed.
While not confirming or denying the $200,000 figure, Mr. Adams said Mr. Cockrum deserved more.
?They took his characters and made an industry out of them,? he said.
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