Jim Lee

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Jim Lee (born August 11, 1964) is a Korean American comic book writer, editor, and publisher.

He is now the Co-Publisher and Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics.

Lee has been recognized for his contributions to his career, Inkpot Award, and three Wizard Fan Awards. He joined Marvel Comics in 1987 as an illustrator, designing titles such as Alpha Flight and The Punisher War Journal, before gaining attention for The Uncanny X-Men.

According to Guinness World Records, X-Men #1, Lee's 1991 spin-off series premiere that Lee penciled and co-wrote with Chris Claremont, remains the best-selling comic book of all time.

Lee and several other artists formed Image Comics in 1992 to publish their creator-owned publications, including WildC.A.T.S. and Gen.'s. Lee sold WildStorm in 1998 to DC Comics, where he continued to run it as a DC imprint until 2010, as well as illustrating profitable titles set in DC's main fictional universe, such as the year-long "Batman: Hush" and "Superman: For Tomorrow" storylines, as well as the New 52 runs of Justice League.

Lee was revealed as the new Co-Publisher of DC Comics with Dan DiDio on February 18, 2010, both replacing Paul Levitz and Steve Levitz.

He has worked as a designer or creative director on other DC products, such as action figures, video games, branded automobiles, and backpacks, in addition to drawing comics.

Lee has also created album covers and one of General Mills' most popular cereals for its 2014 Halloween collection, outside of the comics industry.

Early life

Jim Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, on August 11, 1964. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he lived a "typical middle-class childhood." Despite being born with a Korean name, Jim chose Jim when he became a naturalized citizen at age 12. Lee attended River Bend Elementary School in Chesterfield and later St. Louis Country Day School, where he drew posters for school plays. When he first arrived in the United States, he had to learn English, and Country Day's "preppy, upper-class" atmosphere made him seem as if he was a stranger. As a result, Lee's most popular characters were the X-Men for those rare occasions that his parents bought him comics. Lee believes he gained a lot as an artist by involving characters who were themselves disenfranchised, like Spider-Man or those with similar backgrounds, such as Superman, who was created by two Jewish men from Cleveland to lift their spirits during the Depression. In his senior year book, his classmates predicted that he'd found his own comic book business. Despite this, Lee was resigned to following his father's medical career, attending Princeton University to study psychology with the intention of becoming a medical doctor.

Personal life

Lee is married to Carla Michelle Lee. Lee wrote "I LOVE CARLA" on the cracked windshield of a car into which Batman jumps in 2012, when Carla was pregnant. They had nine children as of November 2016, ranging from 2 to 23 years old.

Lee purchased two pages of Jack Kirby concept art, which Kirby had created for a film version of Roger Zelazny's book Lord of Light, as part of the cover story to smuggle Americans out of Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis. Lee purchased the artwork at a Sotheby's auction by Barry Geller, the film's producer who was selling it to raise funds for his child's college tuition. The CIA operation that saved the Americans stayed classified for another 17 years, and Lee had no idea of the pages' historic importance until he sold them to pay his son's college tuition (with Kirby's permission). Both Lee and Geller became aware of the true story behind the artwork years later, as did the majority of the country. Four of Lee's children were due to college in August 2013, but he and Carla decided to auction off the works in order to pay for their education.

Lee loves traveling and learning new languages outside of fan conventions. He speaks some German in addition to English and Italian. He also likes scuba diving on occasion.

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Comics career

Lee spent 1986, as he was about to graduate, an art class that reignited his love of drawing and culminated in his rediscovery of comics, triggering a revival of comics, thanks in part to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen, which sparked a revival of the American comics industry. After obtaining his psychology degree, he decided to postpone applying to medical school and gained his parents' empathetic support by allotting themselves one year to succeed, promising that if he did not break into the comic book business at that time. He sent samples to several publishers but no such luck was achieved. When Lee befriended St. Louis comics artists Don Secrease and Rick Burchett, they convinced him he had to show his portfolio to editors in person, prompting Lee to attend a New York comics convention, where he met editor Archie Goodwin. Lee was welcomed by Goodwin to Marvel Comics, where the aspiring artist's first assignment by editor Carl Potts, who recruited him to pencil Alpha Flight, segueing from 1989 to Punisher: War Journal, Robert Munch. Frank Miller, David Ross, Kevin Nowlan, and Whilce Portacio, as well as Japanese manga, inspired Lee's work on the Punisher: War Journal.

Lee acted in for regular illustrator Marc Silvestri on Uncanny X-Men #248 and did another guest appearance on "Acts of Vengeance" in 1989, later becoming the series's continuing artist with issue #267, following Silvestri's departure. During his time on Uncanny, Lee first worked with inker Scott Williams, who would later become a long-time collaborator. During his time as a writer on the title, Lee co-created the character Gambit with long-time X-Men writer Chris Claremont.

Lee's art quickly rose in the eyes of enthusiastic followers, giving him more creative control of the franchise. Lee helped launch X-Men Volume 2 in 1991 as both the artist and as co-writer with Claremont. X-Men Vol. According to a public proclamation by Guinness World Records at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, 2 #1 is still the best-selling comic book of all time, with sales of over 8.1 million copies and nearly $7 million. The figures were released in part by a series of different variant covers, four of which feature different characters from the book's side by side and a fifth, gatefold cover of the combined image, with large numbers of customers and speculators purchasing multiple copies in order to purchase a complete set of the covers. For the series, Lee created new character uniforms, including those worn by Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Betsy Braddock, and Storm. Omega Red was also created by the artist. The X-Men's style of rendering were later used for the television series X-Men: The Animated Series. Taran Killam, an actor and comedian who started writing for The Illegitimates, has cited X-Men No. 1 as the book that sparked his interest in comics.

In the documentary film The Comic Book Greats, Stan Lee interviewed Lee.

Enticed by the prospect of more control over his own work, Lee accepted the invitation to join six other artists who broke away from Marvel to create Image Comics, which would feature their creator-owned titles. Lee's collection of titles appeared in the same shared universe before being christened WildStorm Productions by Lee and co-wrote Lee's debuting WildC.A.T.s, Lee pencilled and co-wrote, as well as other Lee's subsequent titles in the same universe. Stormwatch, Deathblow, and Gen13 were among Lee's other major series of the first years of Wildstorm, for which he created characters, co-plotted, or created art.

Lee and his colleague, Valiant Comics publisher Steve Massarsky, produced Deathmate, a Valiant-Image Comics crossover miniseries, in which the Valiant characters will interact with those of WildStorm and Lee's co-image partner, Rob Liefeld. The miniseries will consist of four "center books" (each one denoted by a color rather than an issue number), two each produced by the respective companies, as well as a prologue and epilogue. Deathmate Black was born out of this storm, with Lee himself contributing to the story. He illustrated the covers for the book, the Deathmate Tourbook and the Prologue book, as well as contributing to the prologue's interior inks.

WildStorm would expand its range to include other ongoing titles whose creative work was handled by other writers and artists, some of which were spinoffs of the earlier titles or properties owned by other designers, such as Whilce Portacio's Wetworks. Lee later extended his comics line, releasing two WildStorm, Homage, and Cliffhanger imprints as an imprint of the US comics industry, as well as two other unidentified creators.

In 1996, Lee and Rob Liefeld, another Marvel-illustrator-turned-Image-founder, returned to Marvel to assist in the revival of several classic characters; the initiative was called Heroes Reborn. Although Liefeld reworked Captain America and The Avengers, Lee plotted Iron Man and illustrated Fantastic Four issues #1–6. Lee's studio took over Liefeld's two titles halfway through the year, finishing all four series. According to Lee, Marvel planned to keep the Heroes Reborn line in effect indefinitely, but under the condition that Lee would obtain at least one of them himself, which he refused to do. Rather, he accepted an invitation to reimagine and relaunch three main Marvel Universe titles: Defenders, Doctor Strange, and Nick Fury. Despite being set to debut in December 1997, these three relaunches never made landfall.

Lee returned to WildStorm, where he will debut titles including The Authority and Planetary, as well as Alan Moore's imprint, America's Best Comics. Lee himself created and illustrated Divine Right: The Adventures of Max Faraday, in which an internet slacker inadvertently manages to access the universe's secrets, and is transported into a mystical fantasy world.

Lee left Image Comics and sold WildStorm to DC Comics in late 1998, allowing him to concentrate once more on art after he felt his position as publisher and growing family demands interfered with his role as an artist. For the first issue of Batman: Gotham Knights, he wrote a "Batman Black and White" backup story. Jeph Loeb, a writer, collaborated on a 12-issue Batman run in 2003. "Hell" became a huge success in terms of sales. Ubisoft also released Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu, a side-scrolling beat 'em up video game whose titular villain was created by Lee, in a year that was the game's main draw.

Lee illustrated "For Tomorrow," a 12-issue story in Superman by writer Brian Azzarello, in 2004.

Lee joined Frank Miller in 2005 on All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, a series marred by delays, including a one-year gap between the fourth and fifth issues. Lee himself was completely responsible for the delays, claiming that his time with the DC Universe Online video game was the cause, not Miller's scripts, which had been ongoing for some time. Miller's discussion, pacing, and portrayal of the characters sparked mixed feedback, although Lee's art was lauded, and the book received record-breaking sales. A total of ten issues of the series were published on September 24, 2015. Lee speculated in September 2015 that we might return to the book to bring it to an end with Miller's original ending, but no one was ever published.

Lee continued to work WildStorm as editor, often working on both DC and WildStorm properties simultaneously. Lee returned to WildC.A.T.s. with Grant Morrison as the author, but only one issue of the series's fourth volume was published in September 2006.

Lee created artwork for the album booklet for Daughtry's 2009 album Leave This Town. Lee will be included in the concept art for the DC Comics online game DC Universe Online in February 2006. Lee was appointed Executive Creative Director of the forthcoming game in 2008, which was not expected to be announced in 2009. DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson named Lee and Dan DiDio co-Publishers of DC Comics in February 2010. This did not indicate a step away from the creative side of comics, as his Co-Publishing positions gave him more creative control in the entire DC line and encouraged him to illustrate titles, according to Lee. In September 2010, DC revealed that the WildStorm imprint would be discontinued.

In September 2011, DC Comics introduced The New 52, in which the publisher scrapped all of its superhero titles and relaunched 52 new series with No. 67. It's been 1 issues, wiping out the bulk of the then-current continuity. The relaunch's chief creative officer, Lee and writer Geoff Johns, were the developers of the DC Comics' Chief Creative Officer, as the result of a new Justice League book and illustration by Johns and Lee, respectively. The series's first story arc was a new origin of the Justice League, which portrayed the return of DC's key superheroes to the team. Lee's illustration for issue No. 2's back cover. The 12 drew widespread notice for their depiction of Superman and Wonder Woman in a passionate embrace, a copy that Lee said was inspired by Gustav Klimt's painting The Kiss and Alfred Eisenstaedt's 1945 photograph V-J Day in Times Square, a newspaper published in New York.

Lee and Dan DiDio participated in the making of "Heroic Proportions," an episode of the Syfy reality television competition series Face Off, in which special effects makeup artists compete to produce the best makeup according to each episode's theme. Lee and DiDio challenged the contestants to create a new hero, with six DC Comics artists on hand to help them develop their concepts. In Justice League Dark #16 (March 2013), which was released January 30, 2013, featured Infernal Core by Anthony Kosar's character. As the second episode of the fourth season, the episode premiered on January 22, 2013.

In October 2012, DC Entertainment and Kia Motors America formed We Can Be Heroes, a charity dedicated to combating hunger in the Horn of Africa. The initiative calls for the production of eight Justice League-inspired cars, on whose designs Lee collaborated. Each vehicle is tied thematically to a Justice League member, the first of which was a Batman-themed Kia Optima. In February 2013, Lee's art was incorporated in a Superman-themed version.

In 2013, Lee produced a new version of the Mortal Kombat character Scorpion for use in the DC fighting video game Insight: Gods Among Us.

On May 4, 2013, DC released a Free Comic Book Day sneak peek of Superman Unchained, an ongoing series written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Lee, which was released on June 12, 2013 and was meant to coincide with the film Man of Steel, which opened two days later.

Lee was appointed in 2013 as a member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit group founded in 1986 to safeguard the First Amendment rights of the comics community.

GM employed DC Comics to create new artwork for its monster-themed cereals in time for Halloween in 2014. The plans, which were announced on August 6, included a Boo Berry design by Lee, a Count Chocula concept by Terry Dodson, and a Franken-Berry layout by Dave Johnson. Lee described the process of creating a cartoon character, saying that drawing simpler characters is a lot more work and harder than creating something that's more complicated or has a lot of renderings. Every line counts and every distance between the eyes and the ears, and it's all extremely important."

The Multiversity: Mastermen, Grant Morrison's seventh issue of his The Multiversity Project, which Lee illustrated, was published in February 2015. Lee created plans for a Batman action figure in the company's BlueLine Edition series, which would be unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con that year. In 2016, Lee produced a Superman figure. On the debut of the miniseries Batman: Europa in November 2015, Lee collaborated with writers Brian Azzarello and Matteo Casali, as well as artist Giuseppe Camuncoli. The book, which was inspired by Lee's time in Italy, was originally released by DC in 2004 and was supposed to showcase Lee's painted art over Camuncoli's layouts, but it was delayed until a series of delays, but it was finally released with conventional artwork as a four-issue miniseries with positive feedback.

Lee was the principal artist on Harley Quinn and the Suicide Squad's Special Edition in 2016, and Sean Galloway shared art duties on the book with Sean Galloway. As part of the DC Rebirth relaunch, the first issue of eight issues of Lee and writer Rob Williams' new Suicide Squad collection was published in August, DC.

Marvel decided to capitalize on Lee's fame by releasing 29 of its books with covers reprinting Lee's artwork from its 1992 Series 1 X-Men trading cards in July 2017.

The Immortal Men, written by Lee and writer James Tynion IV, was part of DC's New Age of Heroes series in March 2018. Lee was named DC's CCO after losing his position as the publisher with Dan DiDio following Diane Nelson's departure and Geoff Johns' departure from his position as Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of DC Comics.

As part of DC's 80th anniversary of Batman, writer Tom King, and CW series actresses Nafessa Williams, Candice Patton, and Danielle Panabaker toured five U.S. military bases in Kuwait in May and June 2019.

On June 5, 2019, Lee and the fashion accessory brand HEX launched a Kickstarter campaign for two Batman-branded backpacks made specifically for comics artists and collectors. The former, the Jim Lee Artist Backpack, is available in several sizes and portfolios, including a 11" x 17" dedicated portfolio case, waterproof pockets for inks and paints, and map organizers for brushes and pens. The HEX x Jim Lee Collectors Backpack is also available in this series, including fleece-lined pockets for comics, a pocket for the Overstreet Price Guide, and an anti-theft zipper lock. The collectors version features batarang zipper pulls in comparison to Lee's Batman artwork on both backpacks.

Lee became DC Comics' sole publisher in late February 2020, following the departure of co-Publisher Dan DiDio. Lee began a 60-day sketch series in the wake of the pandemic's global coexistence. The project, which was carried out in collaboration with Washington and the BINC Foundation, saw the final sketch complete in July 2021. The drawing, which depicted Jason Todd, sold on eBay for $25,100, while the entire campaign raised over $800,000 for beleaguered comics shops.

In the Thanksgiving day television show See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special, Lee appeared alongside several other Asian and Pacific Islander celebrities, including actor Simu Liu, tennis player Naomi Osaka, and Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi. The program was billed as a commemoration of those communities, and it included the first Asian American Muppet, a seven-year-old Korean girl named Ji-Young. As part of the Sesame Workshop's "Coming Together" campaign, the special premiere appeared on HBO Max, PBSKids, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. It featured Lee's illustration of Ji-Young interacting with other Muppets.

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Awards

• 1990 Harvey Award for Best New Talent
• 1992 Inkpot Award
• 1996 Wizard Fan Award for Favorite Penciller
• 2002 Wizard Fan Award for Favorite Penciller for Batman
• 2003 Wizard Fan Award for Favorite Penciller