ARTISTS WE LOVE: JIM LEE

We made our way from Allred to Kirby before dropping the feature. Luis brings it back

I was raised on a steady diet of comic book artistic legends. John Byrne, Frank Miller, George Perez, Neal Adams, and Walt Simonson were early favorites of mine. As I became a teenager in the late ’80s and started to develop tastes of my own, I instantly gravitated to a new young dynamic penciller who was taking the Marvel world by storm—Jim Lee.

Jim Lee quickly became my favorite penciller. It didn’t matter what title he was on, I scooped it up. Alpha Flight and Punisher War Journal made me first take notice, but he flipped the comics world on its side when he took over the X-Men. He became a superstar in the house of X.

Even though Lee grew up a comic book fan, he was studying medicine at Princeton (like his father) before he took an art class in 1986 that reignited his love of art and the trajectory of the young Korean born star was changed. Lee worked the convention circuit in hopes of showing his burgeoning skills to comic publishers. Met with initial negative feedback, he kept working until getting his big break from Archie Goodwin at Marvel Lee worked on perfecting his craft for three years on Alpha Flight (the Canadian super-team created by John Byrne) before taking over the X-Men in 1989.

When Lee took over the X-Men, he moved to New York City to be closer to the Marvel offices. He would go in every day to pencil his comics. There he could see all the other work being delivered by other artists. By becoming a bit of a chameleon, he was able to blend his style with that of some of his comic contemporaries (Liefeld, McFarlane, Silvestri, Lim, etc.) to create a style all his own, blending the best of everything. He became a sort of comic art Voltron.

Lee’s career trajectory continued to rise as he left Marvel for the creatorowned pastures of Image comics. There he launched Wild C.A.T.s where its success allowed him to fund his own WildStorm Productions. While the head of Wildstorm, he quickly became an insane judge of talent and a top recruiter. He discovered the likes of Travis Charest, Dustin Nguyen, and J.Scott Campbell to name a few and talked Alan Moore into creating a series of new comics (Promethea and Top 10). Wildstorm went on to become one of the best selling studios under the Image umbrella. So much so that Lee packaged WildStorm, broke away from Image, and sold his entire company to DC.

Selling WildStorm to DC led to the current leg of Lee’s long career in comics as he is the current Chief Creative Officer. While I will always think of him as the cross-hatching genius with brilliant linework and some of the most dynamic poses in comics, it’s hard to not be impressed by his business savvy and his ability to reinvent himself. A true inspiration to me and absolutely an artist I love.

The first Alpha Flight piece made me take notice (I’ve always loved the Guardian’s costume) which led to me follow Lee over to Punisher. The top piece is from Superman Unchained, Lee’s 12-issue collaboration with Scott Snyder.