The year 1986 was an annus mirabilis for American comic books. It's the year the public realized that comics were not just disposable entertainment for kids. This was largely due to the release of three important comics: Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen, both of which deconstruct the myth of the American superhero, as well as Art Spiegelman's Maus, whose graphic retelling of the Holocaust was the first comic book to ever win the Pulitzer Prize.
What's often overlooked in discussions about this pivotal year is the new crop of comic creators whose careers began in 1986. They would go on to completely reshape the industry. One such creator is St. Louis native Jim Lee, who remains one of the industry's biggest talents.
Lee is the world's best-selling comic-book artist, a record he established when he relaunched Marvel's X-Men franchise with a new No. 1 issue in September 1991. The book sold an estimated 8 million copies, a world record. Championing creator rights, he later co-founded Image Comics, which is now considered the "third pillar" of the mainstream comics industry (alongside DC and Marvel), before becoming the publisher of DC Comics, and the steward of some of the most recognizable superheroes in the world, including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
Yet, aside from the kids who religiously read Wizard magazine in the '90s looking for bios of their favorite creators, few St. Louisans realize Lee hails from the Gateway City. Even Sean Howe's meticulously researched book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, introduces Lee as "an excessively polite South Korean Ivy Leaguer," never once mentioning his Midwest roots. Though he was born in South Korea, Lee's life as a comic-reader-turned-artist and the foundation of his professional career all began here in St. Louis.
South Korea to St. Louis
Jim Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, on August 11, 1964. When he was five years old, his family moved to the United States due to increasing conflict between North and South Korea and relocated briefly to Ohio before permanently resettling in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield when Lee was nine.
After relocating to America, the whole family experienced a degree of culture shock. Lee had to learn English, which he did at first by watching Sesame Street and later reading comic books.
But it wasn't easy for Lee to get his hands on his first comic books.
"Comics were hard to find," Lee told St. Louis Magazine in 2010. "There was one place downtown that sold adult magazines, with a small area for comics. My parents took me there, and it was super embarrassing. All along the rows were images of naked girls. My parents were mortified, but we all just looked straight ahead," he recalled with a laugh.
Lee was enrolled in River Bend Elementary School in Chesterfield when he began constantly doodling his favorite fictional characters. By the time he enrolled in St. Louis Country Day School (now MICDS) in 1974, Lee identified as a comic-book lover and outsider.
"It was in St. Louis where my fandom and love for comic books and all things nerdy really took shape, which is to say that it all happened more or less in secret," he remembers. "I had a small group of like-minded friends, and we would spend our weekends playing [Dungeons and Dragons] or poker or just hanging out at the arcade at the mall."
As a relatively shy immigrant who was surrounded by what Lee describes as the "preppy, upper-class" atmosphere of Country Day, Lee invested more and more of his time in reading and drawing comics. "I remember spending inordinate amounts of time in my bedroom just drawing and creating my own characters," he says. "So my years in St. Louis were super formative in every way, especially as a time of both incubation and creative growth. All of which is funny to me now because everyone, especially my parents, saw my love of comics as a waste of time."
By fifth grade, Lee had become friends with fellow student and South Korean immigrant Brandon Choi. Through grade school, the two collaborated on comics that would play a significant role down the road. Even as a kid, Lee started to recognize his skill as an illustrator. "I submitted my first artwork to Marvel Comics back when I was like 12 years old, thinking I was actually going to get hired." Local legend has it that Lee was awarded the senior superlative "most likely to found a comic-book company." Though mostly accurate, Lee clarifies his classmates' prediction. "Well, all the 'most likely' predictions were meant in jest in some way, so I think the actual quote was that I was 'most likely' to start the next Zap Comix which was more subversive as a prediction." Though Lee didn't go the route of Robert Crumb's iconic '60s underground comic Zap, his classmates had no idea how correct their prediction would eventually become.
Lee did not immediately go into comics and opted instead to follow in his father's footsteps and study medicine. He enrolled at Princeton University where he would earn a bachelor's degree in psychology. An elective art class during his senior year reignited his passion for illustration. This was in 1986, just before Lee happened across the groundbreaking Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, rekindling his desire to become a professional illustrator.
After graduating, Lee returned to St. Louis and made a deal with his reluctant parents: He would take a gap year before medical school and try to break into the comic industry. He put in at least eight hours a day drawing.
During the late '80s, St. Louis had a much smaller comic community. "At the time, I think there were only two dedicated comic-book shops in St. Louis," Lee says. Still, determined to make his dream a reality, Lee soon met a few local, professional comic artists. "I remember discovering in the Yellow Pages one day that there was finally a comic-book shop in Kirkwood, which was the first dedicated comic store that I remembered opening up in St. Louis. I would drive there as much as I could from west county, where we lived. It was at this tiny hole-in-the-wall store [that] I met artists like Rick Burchett, Don Secrease and Paul Daly — all of whom were working professionals already in the comics industry."
These initial contacts were crucial for Lee. "They ended up being super helpful and influential in every way possible, because I really knew nothing about the industry, and there was no way to learn it unless you knew someone who was already working in the business," he explains. "In fact, my very first professional, paying gig was doing finished inks/art over the pencil breakdowns of Don Secrease."
Veteran artist Secrease helped Lee publish his first book, Samurai Santa. Lee was diffident as he introduced himself: His bio self-portrait only illustrates the top of his head. Yet, both Burchett and Secrease saw potential in the young artist and encouraged Lee to begin showing his portfolio to editors. Burchett elaborates, "[Lee's] work was very accomplished. His drawing skills were assured, and it was easy to see they would continue to grow. The main thing, though, was his visual storytelling, a skill he hadn't been taught that he picked up on his own. It's the hardest and most crucial element in comic art. I suggested, rather strongly, that he attend a large con and show [his work] to as many editors as possible."
Lee gathered his nerve and headed to New York.
A Marvel Mutant Milestone
Landing in New York City, Lee had a mission to make a name for himself as an artist — and fast. His gap year was winding down. He attended the small 1986 Comic Con at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan and had the luck of showing his portfolio to one of Marvel's best-loved editors, Archie Goodwin, who immediately recognized the talent that Burchett and Secrease had noticed back in St. Louis. Goodwin put the 22-year-old in touch with editor Carl Potts.
With Potts and writer Bill Mantlo, Lee would go on to illustrate his first work with Marvel Comics: the B-list series Alpha Flight.
This meant that Lee didn't have to go to medical school. "I moved back into my parents' home in St. Louis, which I am sure they were thrilled about," Lee jokes. "That said, I got my break into Marvel Comics by the end of November that same year. The very early days of my career were spent in my childhood bedroom where I had set up a small drafting table right next to my bed. I would literally roll out of bed and start drawing as soon as I woke up."
Lee's early pencils in Alpha Flight conform to what amounts to a Marvel house style. His first official issue as penciler, Alpha Flight No. 51, hit newsstands on June 30, 1987. Ultimately, he had what amounted to an apprenticeship at Marvel Comics. Lee was able to figure out what worked and what didn't on the 11 issues he eventually penciled for Alpha Flight, and a letter column from Alpha Flight No. 58 revealed for the first time that Lee was a native St. Louisan.
Reflecting on his drive as a developing artist, Lee remembers: "Back then, I was obsessed with the act of drawing; it was an overwhelming passion that consumed my every minute. So much so that I had all sorts of physical issues with pinched nerves in my back and swollen knuckles in my drawing hand. The sheer act of sitting and drawing for 10-plus hours a day was not an easy transition to adjust to."
By 1988, Potts had a much better vehicle for Lee's talent, a second ongoing series called Punisher War Journal, starring the gun-toting vigilante Punisher, which was quickly becoming one of Marvel's hottest properties.
With Punisher War Journal, Lee's finished art soon moved away from the Marvel house style, and he began to cater his pencils to the book's high-energy, '80s-action-movie aesthetic. It was with the Punisher series that Lee began defining a signature style. He began to garner the attention of the whole industry, with many professionals wondering who this "new Lee-guy" was (no relation to Marvel's most recognizable Lee, the late Stan Lee). Punisher War Journal No. 4 marked the beginning of Lee's longest-lasting artistic collaboration with inker Scott Williams.
Lee and Williams are among the most famous pencil/inker teams in mainstream comics. Williams' thin, precise ink work perfectly amplified Lee's pencil depictions of hyper-masculine battles or sexy pinups, resulting in a perfect mix of action and intrigue.
"[Williams] brings a slickness and lushness to my pencils that comes closest to the way I see the work in my mind's eye when I sit down and put pencil to paper. Scott Williams has been my main inker for the past three decades and is really my partner in all the visual work we do," Lee says.
In Punisher War Journal issues No. 7 and 8, Lee draws guest-star Wolverine, Marvel's most popular X-Men character. Punisher and Wolverine's showdown excited Marvel, and by 1989, the stars aligned for Lee when X-editor Bob Harras asked him to fill in for regular artist Marc Silvestri on Uncanny X-Men No. 248. Lee hit the ground running. The very first panel features what would become one of Lee's signature character poses: Wolverine leaping directly off the page at the viewer. Lee was not going to miss this opportunity to make a lasting impression on countless new readers.
By 1989, the X-Men franchise was already the best-selling ongoing comic series of its day. Originally created in 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the series followed a group of teenage, outcast mutants in a School for Gifted Youngsters. Yet, unlike the elaborate origin of most superheroes, the X-Men were simply born different. Thus, the "Mutant Metaphor" was born, and the X-Men were superhero stand-ins for minorities and outcasts. This was impactful for Lee:
"My favorite characters growing up were the X-Men. I didn't really think about it till later, but The X-Men is about gifted, different kids shunned by the society they're trying to protect. At Country Day, it was a preppy, upper-class life, and I was the first generation of my family to do something like that. Some of that [experience] has benefited me as an artist when [I'm] drawing characters that are disenfranchised."
The X-Men was not initially a best-selling book for Marvel. In fact, by 1970, it was canceled due to poor sales. In 1975 though, Marvel reintroduced the mutants with an all-new international cast of characters in Giant-Size X-Men No. 1 and had a hit on their hands. The series officially relaunched, and its new writer, Chris Claremont, would craft the ultimate superhero soap opera for the next 15 years. Claremont's legendary run with Uncanny X-Men would end on a spectacular high note with his collaboration with Lee.
Still considered some of his definitive work, Lee filled in for Uncanny X-Men issues 256 to 258 for the story "Acts of Vengeance," where he redesigned the character Psylocke. Next, he co-created the popular Cajun X-Man Gambit, stylizing his trademark jacket (the cape of the '90s). With issue 267 Lee joined Uncanny X-Men as the regular series artist. Working as co-plotter with Claremont and with Williams along for inks, Lee's issues moved the already popular series into an unprecedented sales stratosphere with storylines like the crossover event "X-tinction Agenda."
As his name recognition grew, Lee moved from his childhood bedroom in St. Louis to San Diego in 1989, where he formed his own art studio, Homage Studios, with his inker, Williams, and artist Whilce Portacio.
In the introduction for the Artist Edition: Jim Lee's X-Men, Williams writes: "Jim and I agreed [that] to do this the right way, we should form a studio. It was mutually decided that creating comics together in the same space would elicit inspiration and friendly competition to push one another artistically. Thus was born Homage Studios. It didn't take long for the studio environment to bear fruit."
By 1991, Marvel gave Lee and Claremont a new ongoing X-Men series that they could promote with an issue No. 1. Up to the challenge, Lee penciled four interlocking covers, with a roster of X-Men characters, all with redesigned costumes. The first cover of X-Men No. 1, featuring Wolverine, debuted on August 16. Each subsequent week, another X-Men No. 1 cover hit the stands, culminating in the fifth and final foldout cover, which collected all four covers as one poster image. Lee's full cover image is one of the most iconic in the history of comics, with each X-Man standing in the ultimate action-figure pose in an epic standoff against series antagonist Magneto. When the sales numbers were finalized, goosed by the purchase of the multiple covers, X-Men No. 1 was the best-selling single-issue comic book of all time, with a staggering 8 million copies sold.
"It was certainly the culmination of the dream," Lee says, "I think any comic-book fan would [view it that way] in terms of going from being a fan to a pro to then working on your favorite comic-book franchise to then setting a record for number of copies sold. The fact that we are deep in a '90s nostalgic swing today makes it feel even more unreal."
X-Men No. 1's massive success ultimately fueled some major shake ups at Marvel. Years of Claremont plots and Lee's exciting new signature costumes would have a huge impact on the character designs and direction of X-Men: The Animated Series, which premiered to wide critical acclaim in 1992. This gave an early glimmer to the multimedia crossover appeal of superheroes. Claremont unceremoniously left X-Men after the third issue, ending his legendary 15-year run as writer on the franchise due to a dispute with editorial. And Lee, now Marvel's definitive superstar artist, left the best-selling series after issue 11. Not only did Lee leave Marvel's best-selling book but, to the shock of many in the industry, he left Marvel to start his own company.
A New Image
On December 17, 1991, Lee along with Marvel's other two top artists, Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld, had a fiery meeting at Marvel's corporate headquarters in New York, where they announced they would be leaving Marvel to start their own company. McFarlane (perhaps best known to non-comic readers in St. Louis as the owner of Mark McGwire's record-breaking 70th home-run baseball) and Liefeld had both kicked off a speculator boom in comics by launching new No. 1 books. McFarlane launched a new Spider-Man No. 1 in August 1990 and Liefeld launched X-Force a year later. With Lee's multi-cover X-Men No. 1, the three artists sold more than 14 million comic books combined. Despite their sales success, McFarlane and Liefeld were becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of control they had over the series they had been illustrating.
Just as Lee co-created the popular X-Men character Gambit, McFarlane co-created the Spider-Man villain Venom, and Liefeld co-created New Mutants stars Cable and Deadpool. All of these characters quickly became breakout stars. But it was Marvel that owned the creative and financial rights to the intellectual property. While the artists collected royalties from the comics, they saw merchandise of their characters begin to bring in major profits with little input or gains for the creators. The final straw for McFarlane was when a T-shirt using his iconic Spider-Man No. 1 cover hit the market, and no one at Marvel bothered to offer him one.
McFarlane and Liefeld were already considered firebrands at Marvel. Marvel leaders felt they could afford to lose these two uncontrollable artists if they retained their biggest superstar, Jim Lee. And Lee was known for his affable attitude at the company and had a good working relationship with X-Men editor Bob Harras. There was no reason to think Lee would want to leave Marvel. As McFarlane explains in Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, "Jim was the company man. They felt they would have won the war if they lost us and kept Jim. Jim ended up being the cornerstone piece [for the new company]."
Despite his affable nature, Lee did develop some misgivings. One of the final reasons to jump ship was when Marvel failed to pay for an extra plane ticket for Lee's then-pregnant wife, Angie, to fly to New York with him for a comic auction. He had made the company millions of dollars. The least they could do was spring for an extra plane ticket. Plus, the idea of reshaping the comic industry invigorated Lee.
In a 1992 interview with Wizard he explained, "I think that if we're successful, we will change the way business is done. I think if we're a viable company, and we survive, I don't see why we wouldn't serve as a very attractive alternative to working for Marvel and DC."
On February 17, 1992, Barron's broke the news that Lee, Liefeld and McFarlane, along with four other popular Marvel artists (Eric Larson, Marc Silvestri, Jim Valentino and Whilce Portacio), would be leaving Marvel to start Image Comics. The news caused Marvel's stock to drop $11 per share. The mass resignation was colloquially referred to as the X-Odus, as four of the seven Image founders were best known for their work on X-Men books. Each of the seven founders would own 100 percent of their work and have their own imprint within Image Comics. Lee's was called WildStorm.
Despite the industry buzz about Image, fan reactions were initially mixed. Older fans predicted that Image was doomed before any of its books even hit the shelves. The anti-Image sentiment created an underdog reputation and ultimately a generational divide since younger fans embraced the new lines of creator-owned books. Liefeld's Youngblood was the first Image title to hit comic shops in April of 1992, followed by McFarlane's Spawn and Larson's Savage Dragon. Lee's WildC.A.T.s, was the fourth Image release, hitting shelves in August 1992.
For WildC.A.T.s, Lee enlisted the help of his longtime childhood friend from St. Louis, Brandon Choi, to co-plot the book. In the introduction, Lee explains his relationship with Choi: "We've known each other since the fifth grade, and it's no exaggeration to anyone who knows us that we are more like brothers. We managed to waste hours of our childhoods in our parents' kitchens, cooking up our own heroes and villains."
Way back in 1986, when Lee was shopping his portfolio around at Marvel, it was the comic Wild Boys that he co-created with Choi that got him noticed. Lee and Choi reworked Wild Boys into the more refined Image series WildC.A.T.s. which follows a covert action team's battle against an alien race. In the first year of Image's launch, the debut issues of Liefeld's Youngblood, McFarlane's Spawn and Lee's WildC.A.T.s all exceeded sales of over a million copies. Lee saw a quick return as well, with WildC.A.T.s producing as short-lived cartoon, toy-line and trading-card series.
WildC.A.T.s also served as a launchpad for Lee's interconnected superhero universe under his WildStorm imprint. Choi again collaborated with Lee on the teen superhero series Gen 13. Lee and Choi later created special ops anti-hero Deathblow and introduced the United Nations-managed super-team Stormwatch.
The largest criticism lobbied at Image was that their work was all style over substance. Those early issues might have initially sold millions due to their stylized pin-ups on every page, but by the late '90s a lack of cohesive direction resulted in thousands of unsold issues lining back-issue boxes throughout the country. In retrospect, the early Image issues are best viewed as a perfect encapsulation of their time (Gen 13 literally had a character named Grunge). They defined a period in comic history, and their prevalence among back-issue boxes make "1990s Image comics" one the of the most visually recognizable artifacts of the art form. Of course, Image survived the bust and still maintains its reputation as one of the premier comic publishers, releasing critically acclaimed series such as Brian K. Vaughan's Saga and Robert Kirkman's zombie franchise juggernaut The Walking Dead.
Image is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Lee reflects: "I think the primary driving force was our need to control the work we created, and to prove that we, the talent, were as important to the success of these stories as the characters themselves. I think Image Comics proved that point."
The DC Pinnacle and Beyond
Lee was faced with a hard decision in the late '90s: what to do next. The comics industry was collapsing; Marvel had declared bankruptcy, and infighting at Image had resulted in the dismissal of company cofounder Rob Liefeld.
Lee explains: "The comics industry was reeling from overproduction and over-speculation, and the business model was shifting from a periodical-based model to one that was being increasingly driven by books, which required a lot more capital and storage to create and manage."
Lee reached out to DC comics and sold it his WildStorm line of characters. "I didn't have the infrastructure or the resources to make that shift [to books], so that's when I entered into talks with Paul Levitz — then DC's publisher — to see if a deal could be had. They would get additional, fresh concepts and characters from WildStorm, and [WildStorm] in return would benefit from DC's deep organizational depth, expertise and resources. ... This was back in 1998, so I have been with DC [for] 24 years and running now. It proved the right decision."
After a few years of getting WildStorm running at DC, the weight of managing his former Image imprint was lifted. Now, Lee was able to refocus his career on illustrating comics, and he was diving into DC's famed roster for the first time.
"Doing long runs on a comic book remains the most important way for creators to connect with fans," Lee says. "And I had been at DC at that point for like three years without working on any comic book on a regular basis. I was feeling a bit antsy — like I needed to get back into the game, so I started to talk to writer and friend Jeph Loeb about what we could work on together. I remember him replying that there's no bigger character than Batman ... let's do a Batman for the ages and touch on as many cool elements of the Batman mythos as possible and create a story that would both celebrate the world of Batman [and be] a gripping detective story."
Together Lee and Loeb created Batman: Hush.
"The fans showed up in a very big way," Lee says, "making Batman: Hush a perennial bestseller. Up to that point, I was still known primarily for my runs on The X-Men over at Marvel, and Batman: Hush really changed that perception. To this day, my runs on X-Men and Batman: Hush are the two most common runs fans bring to me to get autographed at signings."
Lee continued his illustration career at DC with Superman: For Tomorrow, written by Brian Azzarello in 2004. The following year, he returned to Batman for the hyper-intense All-Star Batman & Robin, for which he collaborated with one of his major influences, Frank Miller.
But Lee's career soon pivoted again: In 2010, he became co-publisher of DC comics alongside Dan DiDio.
Lee jumped into his role as publisher in a big way by completely relaunching the entire line of DC comic books in 2011 with the New 52.
"We wanted to think as boldly as possible but felt constrained by continuity and the decades of storytelling that had led us to that point in time, particularly around Superman's status quo and how it wasn't resonating with younger, newer fans," Lee says. "Once we started talking about a line-wide relaunch, you could see the continuity shackles come undone and the collective enthusiasm and passion for what would eventually become the New 52 emerge out of those early creative discussions."
Lee was responsible for illustrating the flagship New 52 title Justice League, which set a framework for Zack Snyder's later film adaptation. Lee's first foray into publishing DC Comics was a big success.
"It was an amazing moment, which then went on to define the first five years of my time as co-publisher, and the New 52 was a creative touchstone that drove every part of the organization to how our characters were represented in film, TV, animation, consumer products and games."
By 2020, Lee had taken the dual role as sole publisher and chief creative officer for DC.
"As publisher, it's all about keeping this venerable, iconic mythology alive and growing. To not have the mythos ossified in amber, so to speak," Lee says. "Given the prominence of superheroes in today's pop culture, it's vital that our universe represent and reflect the true diversity and interests of our fans all around the world. As chief creative officer, it's my role to be the liaison between publishing and all the ways our characters are brought to life in media and ensure that every production is steeped in authenticity and comics lore."
In a recent episode of Cartoonist Kayfabe, a popular comic-book YouTube series, host Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg discuss Lee's career, and posit that Lee's influence on the comic industry defined at least a decade of comic creators. This can be seen in the obvious influence Lee had on later superstar artists like Michael Turner and Jim Chung, and in his less obvious but equally important influence on indie artists like Bryan Lee O'Mally, creator of Scott Pilgrim. Though now his successful publishing career is arguably just as influential to his story as his world-renowned comic illustrations.
Recently, Lee's career landed him as the special guest on Sesame Street where he welcomed the first Korean American Muppet, Ji-Young, to the show.
"It was an incredible honor, and a moment where everything in my life came back around for me, full circle. Because when my family moved to the U.S. when I was just five — I didn't speak a lick of English, and I really learned the language from two primary touch points: one, reading comic books, and two, watching Sesame Street.
"Having these life-defining influences come together in a moment [that] also celebrated diversity and inclusion in today's polarizing times was a very emotional and powerful experience for me and definitely ranks as a career high point."
Lee's success is truly the best example of the American Dream. He's an immigrant whose talent and hard work helped define an American art form.
"I can safely say that every aspect of the industry has changed from the time I was reading and collecting comics as a kid growing up in St. Louis. Simply put — what used to be a passion that I literally hid in the closet has come to dominate the world of pop culture in such a big way ... to the point where it feels just unbelievable at times.
"It's truly the geeky inheriting the earth."
