47 Facts About Jim Lee

1.

Jim Lee is a Korean American comic-book artist, writer, editor, and publisher.

2.

Jim Lee is currently the President, Publisher and Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics.

3.

In recognition of his work, Lee has received a Harvey Award, Inkpot Award and three Wizard Fan Awards.

4.

Jim Lee entered the industry in 1987 as an artist for Marvel Comics, illustrating titles such as Alpha Flight and The Punisher War Journal, before gaining popularity on The Uncanny X-Men.

5.

On that book, Jim Lee worked with writer Chris Claremont, with whom he co-created the character Gambit.

6.

Jim Lee's style was later used for the designs of the X-Men: The Animated Series.

7.

On February 18,2010, Jim Lee was announced as the new Co-Publisher of DC Comics with Dan DiDio, both replacing Paul Levitz.

8.

Outside of the comics industry, Jim Lee has designed album covers, and one of General Mills' monster-themed cereals for its 2014 Halloween edition.

9.

Jim Lee was born on August 11,1964, in Seoul, South Korea.

10.

Jim Lee grew up in St Louis, Missouri, where he lived a "typical middle-class childhood".

11.

Jim Lee attended River Bend Elementary School in Chesterfield and later St Louis Country Day School, where he drew posters for school plays.

12.

Jim Lee says that he benefited as an artist by connecting with characters that were themselves disenfranchised, like Spider-Man, or who were born of such backgrounds, such as Superman, who was created by two Jewish men from Cleveland to lift their spirits during the Depression.

13.

Jim Lee's classmates predicted in his senior yearbook that he would found his own comic book company.

14.

In 1986, as he was preparing to graduate, Jim Lee took an art class that reignited his love of drawing, and led to his rediscovery of comics at a time when seminal works such as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen spurred a renaissance within the American comics industry.

15.

Jim Lee submitted samples to various publishers, but did not find success.

16.

When Jim Lee befriended St Louis-area comics artists Don Secrease and Rick Burchett, they convinced him he needed to show his portfolio to editors in person, prompting Jim Lee to attend a New York comics convention, where he met editor Archie Goodwin.

17.

In 1991, Jim Lee helped launch a second X-Men series simply called X-Men Volume 2, as both the artist and as co-writer with Claremont.

18.

Jim Lee designed new character uniforms for the series, including those worn by Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Betsy Braddock and Storm.

19.

Stan Jim Lee interviewed Jim Lee in the documentary series The Comic Book Greats.

20.

Wildstorm produced Deathmate Black, with Jim Lee himself contributing to the writing.

21.

Jim Lee illustrated the covers for that book, the Deathmate Tourbook and the prologue book, as well as contributing to the prologue's interior inks.

22.

Halfway through the project, Jim Lee's studio took over Liefeld's two titles, finishing all four series.

23.

Jim Lee returned to WildStorm, where he would publish series such as The Authority and Planetary, as well as Alan Moore's imprint, America's Best Comics.

24.

Jim Lee himself wrote and illustrated a 12-issue series called Divine Right: The Adventures of Max Faraday, in which an internet slacker inadvertently manages to download the secrets of the universe, and is thrown into a wild fantasy world.

25.

Jim Lee drew a "Batman Black and White" backup story for the first issue of Batman: Gotham Knights.

26.

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

27.

Jim Lee himself took full responsibility for the delays, explaining that his involvement with the DC Universe Online video game were the cause, and not Miller's scripts, which had been completed for some time.

28.

All-Star drew controversy for Miller's dialogue, pacing and depiction of the characters, garnering reviews that were mixed to negative, though Jim Lee's art was praised, and the book enjoyed excellent sales.

29.

In September 2015 Jim Lee indicated the possibility of returning to the book to conclude it with Miller's originally intended ending, but this series was never produced.

30.

Jim Lee continued to run WildStorm as editorial director, sometimes working on both DC and WildStorm properties simultaneously.

31.

Jim Lee provided artwork for the album booklet for Daughtry's 2009 album Leave This Town.

32.

In February 2006, it was announced that Jim Lee would be involved with the concept art for the DC Comics online game DC Universe Online.

33.

In 2008, Jim Lee was named the Executive Creative Director of the forthcoming game, which at that time was expected to be released in 2009.

34.

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

35.

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

36.

In 2013, Jim Lee was announced as a member of a newly formed advisory board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit organization founded in 1986 chartered to protect the First Amendment rights of the comics community.

37.

That same year, Jim Lee provided designs for a Batman action figure as part of the company's BlueLine Edition series, to be released at that year's San Diego Comic-Con.

38.

November 2015 saw the debut of the miniseries Batman: Europa, on which Jim Lee collaborated with writers Brian Azzarello and Matteo Casali and artist Giuseppe Camuncoli.

39.

The book, which was inspired by Jim Lee's time living in Italy, was originally announced by DC in 2004, and intended to feature Jim Lee's painted art over Camuncoli's layouts, but after a series of delays, it was published with conventional artwork as a four-issue miniseries to positive reviews.

40.

In 2016, Jim Lee was the main artist on the one-shot Harley Quinn and the Suicide Squad April Fool's Special sharing art duties on that book with Sean Galloway.

41.

In late February 2020, following the departure of Co-Publisher Dan DiDio, Jim Lee became the sole Publisher of DC Comics.

42.

On November 25,2021, Jim Lee appeared alongside several other Asian and Pacific Islander celebrities, including actor Simu Liu, tennis player Naomi Osaka and Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, in the Thanksgiving Day television program See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special.

43.

When illustrating full page commissions or sketches, Jim Lee uses the drybrush technique in order to achieve greytone areas with an uneven texture, applying india ink to the paper and then rubbing it with a tissue, or by using a brush to fill in areas of black, and then using the brush to effect drybrush effects after it is nearly depleted of ink.

44.

Five years later after having come to regret working on the "Wildstorm Rising" crossover story arc that ran the previous year in the books of Jim Lee's creator-owned studio, WildStorm Productions, Windsor-Smith expressed a different assessment of Jim Lee in an interview with The Comics Journal.

45.

Jim Lee purchased the art at a Sotheby's auction via Barry Geller, the producer of the faux film, who was selling it to help pay for his child's college tuition.

46.

The CIA operation that rescued the Americans remained classified for another 17 years, and thus Jim Lee had no idea of the pages' historical significance, nor did Geller know their true monetary value when he sold them to help pay his son's college tuition.

47.

Outside of fan conventions, Jim Lee enjoys traveling and learning new languages.