Tripwire Reviews IDW’s Jim Lee DC Legends Artifact Edition

The Master Of Dramatic Superheroes

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows casts his eye over IDW’s Jim Lee DC Legends Artifact Edition…

Jim Lee DC Legends Artifact Edition
Artist: Jim Lee
IDW Publishing

Jim Lee is a modern comics phenomena. Beginning his career at Marvel on books like Alpha Flight and Punisher: War Journal, he soon ascended to fairly giddy heights thanks to being picked as penciller on the company’s multi-million selling X-Men book. He formed Wildstorm as part of Image in the early nineties and then was tempted back to Marvel with the less than successful Heroes Reborn reboot. Then he went back to Wildstorm and DC bought the company in the late nineties. In 2010, he was made Co-Publisher and his star has risen ever since.

This book which covers his DC and Wildstorm work is as beautiful as any of IDW’s Artifact and Artist’s Editions. It is split into sections: Wldstorm, Batman, Superman and DC Universe. We get pages of his art as well as covers and promo images reproduced here.

Editor Scott Dunbier has done a great job of sourcing pages for this book. Of course it may have helped that he was an editor at Wildstorm in the 1990s.

Lee is a slightly frustrating artist. He does have a very good sense of composition with single images and he does understand storytelling. But sometimes when other people ink his work, they take the subtlety out of his lines. It is when he experiments more with his style that we see an artist pushing himself a little more. Examples of this are images like the Deathblow #9 cover and the All-Star Batman and Robin #8 convention variant which shows off a more European approach to his art.

Looking through this book, despite what people may think of Lee as an artist, it is obvious that he came along at exactly the right time in comics. His work at its best is dynamic and visually bold. He has been lucky in that he has got the opportunity to draw DC’s most iconic figures and this book captures his DC career with the larger format showcasing his art to great effect. Of course as publisher of that company now, it cements his position as one of the most influential figures in modern mainstream comics.

So for fans of Jim Lee or modern superhero art, Jim Lee DC Legends Artifact Edition is the perfect book.

JOEL MEADOWS

Jim Lee DC Legends Artifact Edition is available to order from IDW direct