Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.83: Jim Lee

No.83: Jim Lee

Lee began his career working at Marvel back in 1987 drawing books like Alpha Flight and The Punisher War Journal. Words: Joel Meadows…

photo by Luigi Novi

Lee is the classic American success story, an immigrant from South Korea who came to the US as a child and studied medicine at Princeton University, resigning himself to a career as a doctor. It was his work on the multi-million selling X-Men #1 in 1991 at the House of ideas which really drew people’s attention to him.

The success of X-Men gave Lee the clout to form Image Comics in 1992 with other former Marvel artists like Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen and Jim Valentino.

Six years later, Lee sold his Image imprint Wildstorm to DC, which was run at that company until it was wrapped up in 2010.

During this time, Lee turned his attentions to drawing DC’s most iconic characters like Batman, Superman and Justice League. In 2010 Lee was announced as DC’s co-publisher with Dan Didio. He is currently the company’s Chief Creative Officer.

Lee is a classic comic artist who channels the likes of John Byrne and Neal Adams with a fine eye for composition and a dynamic use of figurework. As someone presently at the top of DC, he doesn’t often draw himself these days but the time will come when he leaves the company and will likely return to his art.

Lee was arguably the superstar superhero artist of the 1990s and his work did cast a huge shadow over mainstream comics.

JM

Read the first seventeen entries so far here too

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.84: Denys Cowan

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.85: Ross Andru

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.86: Paul Gustavson

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.87: George Evans

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.88: Michael Golden

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.89: Matt Baker

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.90: Todd McFarlane

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.91: Fiona Staples

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.92: Carl Barks

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.93: Carmine Infantino

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.94: Alan Davis

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.95: CC Beck

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.96: Syd Shores

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.97: Bob Fujitani

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.98: Tim Sale

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.99: Jim Aparo

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.100

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.101