Dave Cockrum

David Emmett Cockrum was born in Pendleton, Oregon, on November 12, 1943. He grew up loving comic books with the ambition to become a comic-book creator himself, and later become a professional comic book 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. Following his school graduation, Cockrum joined the United States Navy for six years. After his discharge in the early 1970s, Mr. Cockrum moved to New York, where h…