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.
