What would you do if an artist who drew the seminal issues of what is perhaps your most popular comics series and a hot movie property turned up impoverished and near death in a Bronx veteran's hospital? If you're Marvel Comics, you see an opportunity to reach a mutually beneficial business agreement.

Dave Cockrum had been penciler on The Uncanny X-Men during one of its most popular runs in the late '70s and early '80s, but earlier this year, he lay seriously ill with pneumonia. Approached for help by friends of the artist, Marvel offered Cockrum financial support in return for his signature on a contract, the terms of which he was not allowed to divulge.

Marvel did not seek publicity for its arrangement with Cockrum, but word got out and was reported in the comics press as a heart-warming rescue of the artist by his former publisher. "Congratulations to Dave Cockrum!" Tony Isabella wrote in his April 16 Comics Buyer's Guide column. "Kudos to Marvel Comics.... That there are heroes in this story is no secret.... I think it should also be noted that there are no villains in this story. Marvel found a way to help Dave and his family without jeopardizing its interests.... There just might be a lesson there, something for all of us to ponder after we take time to celebrate Dave's good fortune and Marvel's welcome role in that good fortune."

Pre-Existing Conditions: From Success to Sickbed

In 1975, Cockrum drew Giant-Size X-Men #1. Written by Len Wein, it was an attempt at a comeback for the series which had been wobbling on the verge of extinction after a run of reprints. The new international mix of young mutants successfully re-started (with issue #94) the regular, non-giant-size series, which eventually became Marvel's top-selling book and the premise of Marvel's first unqualified Hollywood hit.

By that time, however, other artistic hands and styles had displaced Cockrum's work. The last issue of his lengthy run was #167 in 1982. For a while, Cockrum was a frequent Marvel cover artist and former Marvel Editor in Chief Jim Shooter was a reliable source of pencilling assignments as Shooter jumped from company to company, but long before the end of last year, comics work had dried up for Cockrum. It was not a good time for his health to fail him, but fail him it did, in just about every way imaginable.

Cockrum was living in upstate New York but preparing to move to South Carolina in late 2003, when he was struck down by an illness that became pneumonia and then double pneumonia. According to Clifford Meth, Aardwolf Publishing writer/editor and Cockrum's longtime friend, the pneumonia combined with a worsening diabetic condition, heart problems and a malfunctioning kidney to leave the artist in a near-comatose state: "He didn't speak. He didn't know where he was. He was on the critical list for weeks."

When Meth learned of Cockrum's condition, he immediately set about enlisting Cockrum's comics-industry colleagues to contribute original art for fundraising efforts, including auctions and a planned tribute book. One source of help had already been ruled out. A Commitment to Our Roots was founded in 2001 by Jim McLaughlin and CrossGen Publisher Mark Alessi in order to help down-on-their luck veteran comics creators -- a description that would seem to fit Cockrum precisely. Meth told the Journal, "I don't want to sound bitter, but A.C.T.O.R. never did anything for us."

According to Marvel artist and A.C.T.O.R. disbursement committee member John Romita Sr., A.C.T.O.R.'s assistance had been turned down by Cockrum, not the other way around. Romita told the Journal he had seen Cockrum's deteriorating health and finances as long ago as 2002: "I said the committee would help if he needed it, and he said he'd had other people offer to help but that he couldn't accept it." Cockrum's medical needs were being covered by his veteran's benefits and he feared that if he were to receive cash assistance from A.C.T.O.R., it would interfere with those benefits.

By the beginning of 2004, the 60-year-old Cockrum was in no condition to turn down any offers of help; he was barely in a condition to speak. Meth obtained power of attorney to seek help on the artist's behalf. Artist Neal Adams agreed to contribute to a tribute book and helped to get other artists involved, but also suggested that Cockrum's former employer, Marvel, be contacted for help. Adams had been heavily involved in a 1980s effort to organize comics artists around labor issues and knew that Cockrum was part of a generation of comics creators who were, for the most part, neither highly paid nor eligible for Marvel's later-instituted policy of paying royalty-like incentives. Now that Cockrum-designed X-Men characters were making Marvel a fortune in licensing income, Adams suggested the publisher might be willing to salve its corporate conscience by offering Cockrum the sort of bonus arrangement it had offered other creators.

"When Clifford contacted me, I realized we had to do something dramatic," Adams told the Journal. "We talked about the possibility of contacting Marvel. Dave talked to Joe Quesada, but Marvel passed on doing a [cash] donation." Adams did not see Cockrum's veteran's benefits as an insurmountable obstacle. "There's always a way," he said.

One way that was proposed to Marvel was to simply cover his health-care costs, which would have allowed him to seek better treatment than the notoriously minimal veteran's hospital system could provide. However, his pre-existing conditions would have prevented Marvel from extending its group health benefits to him, and the company apparently balked at the idea of paying his medical bills out of its own pocket.

Another solution, suggested to Marvel by Adams, was to put Cockrum on a royalty plan that would compensate him over a period of time for his past creative work. The down side of this plan to Marvel, beyond its immediate cost, was that it would mean retroactively extending its "incentives" policy to cover creative work done by Cockrum during a period prior to the policy's implementation. If Cockrum were to receive royalty-like payments for that period, then what about Len Wein, who wrote some of the same comics that Cockrum drew -- or any number of creators who worked on and designed characters for Marvel comics during the same period? Adams pressed Marvel on the matter, armed with knowledge of other precedents, similar royalty-like arrangements that Marvel had extended to X-Men writer Chris Claremont and artist Michael Golden -- but Marvel was anxious not to slide any further down that slippery slope. (Claremont, who wrote many of the X-Men issues that Cockrum drew, confirmed to the Journal that he receives royalty-like payments as part of Marvel's incentives program for encouraging the creation of new characters and concepts. Wein did not respond to the Journal's request for comment.)

"Initially Marvel didn't want to talk about this stuff," said Meth. "It reached a point where Marvel wouldn't talk to Neal. Neal was the Bad Cop." For his part, Meth launched a weekly online column (called Past Masters) for the Silver Bullet website, largely based around his ongoing efforts on behalf of the ailing Cockrum. Cockrum was the topic of six of the first 11 columns.

In his own dealings with Marvel, Meth played the PR card, a strategy that was reinforced by Meth's access to the public via his column. At no time, according to Adams and Meth, was Marvel threatened with legal action challenging Marvel's copyrights over characters created or co-created by Cockrum. But the potential of that threat and the terrible publicity that would accompany a legal challenge to Marvel's X-Men franchise by a desperately sick and penniless creator was nevertheless hovering in the air when Quesada paid a personal visit to Cockrum and Meth at the veteran's hospital. Cockrum was recovering from the worst of his illness and able to talk to Quesada, but his hands shook uncontrollably and he was clearly in a fragile state. The overburdened, under-financed hospital was itself an unnerving environment for the meeting. "The VA is better than nothing, but it's a hell of a place," Meth told the Journal. "As we were leaving, I said to Joe, 'Wouldn't this be a terrific place for a press conference?' I think he understood the implications of that.

"He said, 'We're going to do something. What do you want us to do?'

"I said, 'What does Chris Claremont get? What does Mike Golden get?'"

A Setback for Cockrum Becomes an Opportunity for Marvel

Though no mention had been made of legal action, Marvel brought its senior litigation counsel, Eli Bard, in on negotiations with Meth and Cockrum. Finally, Marvel offered to help Cockrum out, but it wanted something in return. Adams told the Journal, "They wanted to get Dave to sign a piece of paper and not show anyone what was on that piece of paper. When I was approaching artists to help out, I didn't hear from anybody else that they would be willing to donate drawings if Dave would sign a piece of paper. But businesses are not the same as people."

Marvel's agreement with Cockrum is contingent upon Cockrum's nondisclosure of the terms of that agreement, and neither Adams nor Meth is willing to say anything that would endanger the deal. What is known is that Cockrum will receive financial assistance over a period of time in a way that will not interfere with his veteran's benefits. Unofficially, the Journal has learned that Cockrum will receive a total of $200,000, a figure that was not confirmed by either Marvel or Cockrum. In return, Cockrum was required to sign a statement, about which nothing is known except its requirement that Cockrum not divulge any details of the agreement.

It's not difficult, however, to deduce the overall nature of the agreement or the reasons Marvel would have for keeping it a secret. As Meth said, "It was very clear that Marvel wanted to do something for Dave, but they also wanted to be protected from litigation." That left Marvel in something of a Catch-22 situation stemming from Marvel's spotty copyright paper trail.

Under the law, publishers retain the rights to characters and other material created for them in the context of "work for hire." The Copyright Act of 1976 (which took effect in 1978) pinned down the legal definition of work for hire further than it had been before by requiring the terms of such work to be spelled out in a written contract. Prior to that act, comics companies rarely bothered with written contracts for freelance work. During the period when Cockrum was drawing for Marvel, the company had nothing closer to a written freelancer contract than a statement on the backs of canceled checks to creators, and as was revealed in the course of Marv Wolfman's Blade lawsuit, canceled checks from that period seem to be missing from Marvel's files.

It's easy to see how it would be in Marvel's interest to make sure its ownership of Cockrum-designed characters is nailed down: Aside from the ongoing X-Men franchise, Marvel recently announced plans to launch a new series featuring The Starjammers, interstellar pirate characters introduced by Cockrum into the X-Men series. With Cockrum in desperate need of financial assistance, Marvel was in a position to use that assistance to lure Cockrum into signing a retroactive work-for-hire agreement abdicating any and all rights in any of the characters he had worked on while employed by Marvel. The company is not above using that sort of leverage; it had attempted to use the return of Jack Kirby's artwork to force the artist to sign just such a work-for-hire agreement. But offering Cockrum monetary compensation in return for signing off on those rights would imply that he had rights to sign off on. The agreement would fortify Marvel against any threat that Cockrum might otherwise have mounted, but at the same time it could conceivably weaken its position with regard to challenges from other creators who worked during the same period -- creators who had signed no such document. If Cockrum had rights that were worth buying, why wouldn't other creators?

Not surprisingly, Marvel has had little to say about the deal with Cockrum beyond a two-sentence press release noting that the Cockrums were pleased with Marvel's assistance and that Marvel was pleased to extend it to them. In response to questions about the agreement, Bard told the Journal, "The Cockrums are entitled to their privacy. We can't comment."

The Journal asked whether it was the Cockrums' privacy or Marvel's privacy that was at issue, noting that the Cockrums were forbidden to comment on the agreement by the nondisclosure provision imposed by Marvel. Bard replied, apologetically, that he was still unable to comment. "We're happy to have been in a position to help," he said. "We wish him the best."

When the Journal was finally able to get in touch with Cockrum himself by e-mail, he also replied that he was "very happy that so many people cared about my work and about me. It feels like one big family again. I'm enormously grateful to Clifford Meth and Neal Adams for having moved this forward. You can't have better friends than these two."

About the agreement with Marvel, the Journal asked Cockrum, "Is it a good deal that fairly compensates you for your contributions to Marvel? Is the statement Marvel required you to sign as part of the agreement a reasonable and just one? Was it a statement you would not have signed if you were not in such desperate circumstances?"

Cockrum replied, "I'm very happy with what everyone has done, including Marvel."

By all reports, Cockrum's health has continued to improve. His immediate financial worries alleviated, he has begun work on a planned revival of The Futurians for Aardwolf.

[To read the rest of this article, please see The Comics Journal #260.]

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