By Jill Pantozzi

When one thinks “veteran,” most people imagine a worldy, seasoned individual near the end of their accomplishments. That’s the last thing that will come to mind when looking at energetic, megastar comic book artist Jim Lee, but he is already a 20-year veteran of the comics industry, with a list of achievements as both artist and publisher that few could match. To cover this story, Titan Books was inspired to publish ICONS: The DC and WildStorm Art of Jim Lee, a stunning retrospective of his prolific artistic career.

Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Lee was on the path to medical school when his love for art derailed his plans. Luckily he made the right decision. Starting his career at Marvel Comics, Lee went on to co-found Image Comics with his studio, WildStorm Productions, which would eventually lead him to his current home, DC Comics. He now serves as their recently appointed Co-Publisher. Titan Books has completed the almost impossible task of compiling a generous amount of the last twenty years of Lee’s work into the 296-page hardcover, which is in stores November 2. In addition to the vast array of art, ICONS also includes portions of an interview with Lee by comics journalist Bill Baker and all-new Legion of Super-Heroes story, written by Paul Levitz. PW Comics Week recently spoke with Lee about the book, his artistic history and passion for the art that’s made him so famous.

PW Comics Week: Twenty years ago, did you ever think you'd be the person that would have this kind of book, a retrospective spanning your entire career so far?

Jim Lee: No, not at all. You know, I wanted to be successful, that was kind of my immediate goal. Flash forward to the present, it’s gone by super fast. It’s interesting when you put all that artwork together, it actually adds up to be quite a bit of work. And, you know, all of it was done a page a day or half a page a day. So yeah, it took twenty years to get all that together. I never really intended to amass that much work when I started, like I said. I just really got in it to tell stories and draw pictures and then before I knew it I had a fairly large volume of work compiled. It’s been a pretty cool ride, I’d say.

PWCW: Do you have a favorite piece of work from your career? Anything you're most proud of?

JL: Oh boy. Not in particular. There are several pieces where I felt I had a breakthrough or I captured some sort of iconic quality in the character. With every piece you do you try to do your best and capture some special quality and most of the time you fall short. I think there was one in particular which is Batman and Nightwing running across rooftops from Batman: Hush that I wanted to capture the nostalgic value of the concept of Batman and Robin running across rooftops, but this time it’s Nightwing who is Robin all grown up, and at the same time make it feel contemporary. I liked how that cover turned out.

A lot of times covers I think I did particularly well aren’t the fans’ most favorite covers. Typically they’re cover images or layouts I’ve done for the first time that I’m happy with. More often than not, the fans really gravitate towards who’s on the cover as opposed to how it’s drawn or how it’s composed and so a lot of the time what an artist likes will be very different from what a fan likes.

PWCW: Is there anything you'd go back and change if you could?

JL: Oh yeah. [laughs] On every single image. I usually only look at this stuff, at my work, when people present it to me at conventions. They bring up my comics to get autographed or whatever and a lot of the times I’ll just flip through it and more often than not you see the mistakes. When you’re in the heat of the moment, creating these images, to finish it I think you need this enthusiasm and love for what you’re creating that kind of blinds you sometimes to the drawing’s shortcomings. And only months after you’ve finished something you gain perspective to see things that were probably over exaggerated or just plain wrong, poor composition and that’s when you go, “How could I have not seen this months ago?”

But there are other pieces where you’re doing something because some composition or some sort of expression or exaggeration is in vogue at the time. There was a period when really large manga eyes were pretty popular. I thought I was doing that and making it work and I thought, “Cool, I might actually use this style,” and then years later you look back on it and it just makes you cringe ”Oh, that was horrible, what was I thinking?”

But it’s a lot like looking back on your wardrobe from the ‘80s or the ‘70s, I don’t know how old you are but a lot of work is influenced by what’s going on at that time amongst other comic book artists, art from other things in pop culture and those things influence not only the way you draw the figures, the proportions, but also the costumes. And then of course years later you see it for what it is and it can be downright embarrassing.

PWCW: Obviously some of your work from WildStorm, which recently closed, is included in the book. How do you feel about the company's place in comic’s history?

JL: You know it’s interesting, a lot of what you accomplish in your lifetime either as an individual or as a company is determined by other people. I mean, you can do interview after interview and defend a point of view but more often than not, the collective kind of opinion will be the one viewed historically and taken as gospel.

When the news of WildStorm hit there were a lot of very kind sentiments that a broad spectrum of creators expressed. They went online and wrote about their experiences working at WildStorm more so than the comics we produced and the storylines, which a lot of the fans liked. It was really rewarding to me or touching to me to read a lot of these creators’ accounts of the time they spent working at WildStorm, working with the editors or myself and how positive that was. That’s what I carry away from it more than anything else.

I think at the end of the day, even all the comic book stories I work on, I don’t really so much look at the runs or the storylines and go, “Wow, we did a great job with this one,” or “This one turned out pretty good,” I really remember collaboration and working with the people and the creative camaraderie you get by working together and creating something bigger than the sum of it’s individual parts. I’m really looking at WildStorm in that same way. Not just in terms of the talent even, but all of the different editors and employees and staff that came and worked at WildStorm over the years, I mean we’ve had hundreds. A lot of them are life-long friends and that’s kind of what I carry away from it. So in that respect I don’t really see WildStorm ending because a lot of the people that are at WildStorm are going to make the move up to Burbank. We’re going to form part of a small nucleus team that’s devoted to digital publishing and a lot of the DC Entertainment business that we’re going to set up in Burbank.

PWCW: How did you and the editors decide on what would go in this book?

JL: Actually a lot of that came about because of the people at Titan Books. They put together the definitive list and then my assistant Eddy Choi did a lot of leg work in tracking down the digital files, the original art, a lot of the sketches. A lot of that stuff was never published before, it was pieces I did for friends and family. Eddy, being an über comics fan, knew where all the stuff was. I mean, he knows stuff better than I do actually. He’s the one who went through and did all the fact checking, the credits, the issue number, the storyline, the title and who I collaborated with.

PWCW: You've also got brand new art, both on the dust jacket, and in an all-new Legion of Super-Heroes story, written by Paul Levitz. What can we expect from the story and does it fit into current Legion canon?

JL: It can if you want it to. We expressly made a story where it’s more fantastical in nature. It’s the Miracle Machine and so it kind of takes the thoughts of whatever’s near it and makes it reality in their mind. That story came about with me and Paul just kind of talking about our favorite Legion stories and our favorite Legionnaires and we crafted that short story together and then he wrote it out after that. It’s really the chance to get to work with Paul, really the quintessential Legion writer. I was having a lot of fun drawing the characters but once Paul put the dialogue in, because we didn’t work full script on this issue, the characters really came to life.

PWCW: You were interviewed by journalist Bill Baker for the book. What kinds of things did you two talk about?

JL: I want to say we spent at least six to ten hours talking about all facets of my career. It was this gargantuan marathon of an interview from the days I broke into comics, all the way up through Marvel, Image and DC. It was a lot of stuff in there. Then they went in and edited what I think are the best and most pertinent parts and created the sort of running narrative that accompanies the imagery. The images are really categorized or grouped by characters so it doesn’t really follow a timeline of my career.

PWCW: What do you think you'd be doing if you hadn't become a professional artist? I know you were planning on medical school, do you think that’s what you would have done?

JL: I think that would have been the easiest path. And that’s not to say that becoming a doctor is easy, it’s a lot of work and a lot of dedication, but that’s certainly what I was gearing up to do. I took my MCATs and volunteered at hospitals and got my recommendations and all that so that would have been the easiest, almost convenient thing to do, follow through and apply to medical school. But I have a feeling that even if I’d gone that route I probably would have found some measure of dissatisfaction and tried my hand again at art or comics or publishing.

Certainly when the internet took off, I’m sure that’s something that probably would have really interested me. And not even from an artist standpoint but just from an entrepreneurial standpoint. Even from my days in high school and college I was really involved in publishing through the yearbook, to the newspaper to the Princeton Tiger Magazine in college. So there was already that interest definitely in regard to publishing. I have a feeling when the internet really broke the idea of creating some sort of internet fanzine or magazine devoted to comics or pop culture probably would have lured me away from saving people [laughs]. Medicine is awesome, I just think it’s something other people expected me to do and not something that was an inherent desire or passion of mine.

PWCW: What's the best thing to have come out of being a comic artist?

JL: The coolest part of my job is that, honestly, I don’t know what’s gonna happen the next day. From a book like this, to designing sneakers, to —I did an interview for Pottery Barn for Kids to help promote their Batman line of apparel and backpacks for kids that’s online now. I got in to draw comic books because I love the characters and I love drawing and telling stories with pictures and when I got into it I didn’t know exactly where I would end up in twenty years and I like that part of it.


The downside to becoming a doctor, I think, is it’s a very long process; four years of medical school, three years of internship, two years of residency, umpteen years of specialization and then finally you get to be what you have trained almost all your life for. And to me, what I loved about art, comic books and art in general, is that you don’t know where it’s going to take you. The journey is the experience, the journey is what you’re seeking.


When I got into it I thought maybe I’ll do directing, animation, who knows what I’ll do? And I loved it so much that I kept with it and then as comics kind of evolved and changed and became less of a niche, to now it’s become such a cornerstone of pop culture and geek culture. It’s really opened up all these incredible opportunities and doors to do things I never imagined I would be possible because of my art. It’s been great. I love the fact that I get something new to do almost every day and have new challenges. It’s been a great journey.