Available online now is a tribute to the late, great Dave Cockrum.

Dave Cockrum passed away last November.
Dave Cockrum 1943 – 2006

The Uncanny Dave Cockrum…A Tribute is available at aardwolfpublishing.com.

The tribute book contains art from many artists in the industry including Joe Quesada, John Cassaday, Travis Charest, and Jim Lee.

Clifford Meth, journalist and good friend of Cockrum’s, produced the publication.

Despite ongoing ailments, Dave Cockrum remained happy to the end. His wife Paty assured me that following Aardwolf Publishing’s release of “The Uncanny Dave Cockrum…A Tribute” in 2004, Dave’s spirits were forever lifted. He felt somehow fulfilled in knowing that he hadn’t been forgotten. Seeing this book, which contains renditions of his characters by his teachers Neal Adams and Johnny Romita, tributes by Stan Lee, Harlan Ellison, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, and well-wishes from Will Eisner, Gene Colan and Sergio Aragones– touched Dave more deeply than I could have imagined.

Still, I was disappointed with the original soft-cover edition. The layout was uninventive, the font was a horsy 12-pt. ComicSans, and the paper was coloring book quality. You don’t look a charity project in the mouth, especially when all efforts, including typography, are donated, but my aesthetic conscience gnawed at me long after Dave had left the hospital. So, a year later, I suggested to Jim Reeber, Aardwolf’s long-suffering publisher/martyr, that we revamp the book and add a section of Dave’s art. I was also seeking projects to keep Dave busy, so I suggested that he add remarques to the end sheets. Dave loved that idea, so he worked on the project whenever he felt well enough, creating sketches to be inserted into the book. But the sad truth is it took Dave nearly eighteen months to do 220 sketches. Not exactly Kirby speed, but these were his last sketches. The work was finally done and we were putting the book together when Paty called to say that Dave was gone.
www.comicbookresources.com

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