Guest Steviekick Report post Posted July 28, 2003 =====wizarduniverse.com===== Monday, July 28 FULL PLATE 5 Questions With...Jim Lee Life is good for Jim Lee these days. His Batman title with Jeph Loeb continues to battle for the top sales spot in comics every month. Upon conclusion of his groundbreaking “Hush” storyline, he’ll team with writer Brian Azzarello for a stint on Superman in March 2004. After that? A run on Batman and Robin, which could be a new launch or miniseries, remains a possibility. Oh, did we forget running the day-to-day operations of his WildStorm imprint for DC. Even with this massive workload, Lee managed to contribute to Wizard Entertainment publishing history, creating an exclusive six-page Batman comic for Wizard #0 that fits seamlessly in between Batman #616 and #617. Amazingly, Lee squeezed in a few minutes to talk to us. What’s your favorite work of own? My stock answer used to be nothing, but let me try to give you an answer…over the years, and it’s been 14 years that I’ve been in the business, I feel I’ve produced maybe three or four images I’m pretty pleased with. X-Men #268 cover, that’s the Captain America Black Widow, there’s an X-Men wanted poster image, it has Wolverine, Cable and Archangel, and I think was more technically proficient than anything else I was doing at the time. There’s a shot of Namor sitting on a big sea shell with the crown jewels on display. I was real happy with how that turned out, more in terms of his gesture, the power and emotion conveyed through the gesture. There are images where you draw Wolverine with his claws jumping out at you, people get a visceral sort of thing out of it, but it can be very stock or generic looking in some respects. I’m thinking of images that I think were better than what I normally produce. Every now and then I do surprise myself and produce something that I think, ‘Wow, I don’t know how that happened.’ I’m fortunate that over 14 years, I’ve been able to point to a couple of images that are something that I didn’t think I can do. The one where Batman’s choking the Joker, I was pretty happy with the Batman part. When I look at my stuff, and I generally don’t after I’ve drawn it, because I only see the mistakes, I only see either the shortcuts or the incorrect perspective or anatomy out of joint, that’s just how I approach a lot of my drawing, looking for the flaws and improving and fixing them. So it’s weird when kids are like, ‘I love your X-Men stuff,’ and you hear this from other artists, they go, ‘The work I’m doing now is the best of my career,’ and you go, ‘What, are you nuts?’ And I know that I’m nuts, but I can’t help it! What’s your favorite work not your own? The book that grabbed me and made me love comics was Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s the “Death of Phoenix” storyline. For a 15-year-old kid, that was like Shakespeare and “Brave New World” rolled into one. It was fantastic. And then later, when I kind of got disenchanted with the direction of comic books, I would say it was Dark Knight Returns. It hit me just at the right age, I was 20 or 21, and had kind of given up on comics as being just for kids, and that book showed me the potential of what comics could be, that we shouldn’t be limited to 22 pages of bad newsprint with four-color process and coloring. It wasn’t just the story, it wasn’t just the sophistication of the story, it was the format, the care, the love, the sophistication of the entire package. You’re known for drawing kickass fight scenes. Have you been in a lot of fights for reference? No, I’ve only been in one fight my whole life, and that was when I was in third or fourth grade over some Army men that we were fighting for. It was a fight with my best friend, and we hit one another, and that was it. It wasn’t to the death! Because if you’re gonna fight, you have to fight to the death, otherwise you let the lawyers handle it. Now that “Hush” is coming to an end, what are your thoughts, looking back on the whole experience? I’m getting anxious, because I know it’s going to end, I know that there’s a lot of stuff that we have to wrap up by the end, so it’s going to involve a lot of drawing. I’m most concerned that the quality of the last issues will match what we’ve produced so far, there’s a danger of really burning out. But I’m looking forward to it ending, and I’m really looking forward for it all being compiled. I haven’t had a real chance to catch my breath and look back on it all. Actually, I don’t like to look back on my work, but at some point, it would be nice to have the whole collected edition on my shelf and go like, ‘Well, that was a great project to work on, with a great creative team.’ How did Superman come about? The funny thing is, we did commit to doing more Batman, we still are going to do more Batman, that’s something I talk about all the time. I’ve always wanted to work with Brian Azzarello, and it originally started out as a sort of miniseries that wouldn’t necessarily focus on Superman. But then it evolved like, ‘Hey, if we’re doing a project that involves Superman, why are we skirting around the bush? Let’s do Superman.’ And I think there might have been some feeling that Brian wouldn’t be receptive to doing Superman, that we’d have to go from the angle of a villain or some other character to do a Superman project. But he was gung-ho for doing Superman. So it became a run on Superman. And I always feel like if you’re going to do a run, you should do at least six, nine issues. And it just worked out for my schedule that it would be easier to do these 12 with Brian, rather than doing a mini with Brian and then possibly doing a run on the regular title down the line. Bottom line, I wanted to do a long run on Superman in the future, and then I had this other project with Brian that involved Superman, so why do six issues of this with Brian and then come back and do 12 more issues of Superman? Because when you say “in the future,” this would probably be after Batman, so you’re talking about two or three years later. It just made more sense for me to consolidate and say, Brian, let’s do Superman, let’s do 12 issues, and let’s do it now. This is a whole different kind of beast because it’s sort of an overhaul of the whole Superman line, so there are a lot more moving parts, a lot more people involved, so it’s a little more chaotic. But fun chaotic! It’s exciting. You get a sense that big things are going to come out of it. For an exclusive, original Batman written and drawn by the team supreme Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, get the monumental Wizard #0 - on sale July 30th! --Wizard Staff Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Steviekick Report post Posted July 28, 2003 ugh...sorry about the typo...could some mod change Loen to Loeb? thanx Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest starvenger Report post Posted July 28, 2003 Wait, I don't see anything about Loeb doing Supes. Is he doing a project with Tim Sale for that? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Steviekick Report post Posted July 29, 2003 sorry for messing up the headline. I meant Azzarello. Actually i don't know what i meant. Bygones. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Joe Report post Posted July 31, 2003 yep, it's Azzarello and Lee doing Superman...I haven't bought a Superman coming book in eight years but when their run starts in march 2004, I'll be buying... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest starvenger Report post Posted July 31, 2003 OK, so it's Azzarello and Lee on Superman, Chuck Austen on Action Comics and Greg Rucka on Adventures of Superman? Nice... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
