One of the featured guests at this year’s Emerald City Comic Con was the legendary artist and current DC Comics publisher and creative director. Jim lee. On the final day of the convention, Lee took to the main stage of the Sheraton Ballroom for a moderatorless spotlight panel featuring Lee drawing and handing out sketches, and talking about his life and career, including a in-depth examination of its recent appearance on Sesame Street.

Lee sketched on stage for a few minutes before kicking off, thanking people for coming. The artist said he felt a little anxious to come back in person after so much free time, and he thanked the crowd for helping him relax. Throughout the discussion, Lee plugged in his Twitch stream, which he started during the pandemic as a way to stay in touch with fans back home.

Lee briefly covered his story for the two newcomers to the crowd who didn’t know who he was, from Marvel to Image to DC. Going back in time, Lee spoke of his birth in Seoul, South Korea, and how his family moved to Ohio after his father, who was a doctor, found a job in the United States in due to a shortage of health professionals. He spoke of being sent home by a teacher on the first day of school because he could not speak English, and said he learned English from comics, which he entered in Superman after watching the Max Fleischer cartoons in Korean as a child.

In addition to the comics, Lee said that Sesame Street Also inspired him to learn English (especially since his parents kept throwing out his comic book collection). His parents let him watch this show as much as he wanted, so being invited to help introduce Ji-Young, the new Asian-American Muppet, to the show earlier this year was very meaningful for Lee. He said his mother had also learned English from Sesame Street, and that his parents were as proud of him for appearing on this show than they ever were in his career, even though they still wanted him to be a doctor.

A member of the audience asked how Lee met his longtime inker Scott williams. Lee joked that Williams is the person who has been with him the longest in his life, as they have worked together since 1987. While Portacio was Lee’s inker on his first Marvel comic, an issue of Alpha Flight (# 51), and Lee talked about calling Portacio and having a three hour conversation with him. Portacio invited Lee to San Diego Comic Con that year to hang out with him and Scott Williams, and Lee described his own job at the time as “good enough to get hired,” but nothing special. He said he had been a huge fan of Williams before they met, and after his pencil improved, Williams inked a number of Punisher’s War Diary that he drew, how Lee felt his work finally had the look he had always wanted it to look like. Once he started working on Strange X-Men, Lee asked Williams to ink it, and after the editors liked their work, they continued to work together. He described Williams and colorist Alex sinclair as being like family to him, and said there was “no stress” in their collaboration.

Another fan asked what Muppets Lee encountered while working on Sesame Street. Along with new Muppet Ji-Young, Lee said he met Elmo, Abby Cadabby, human actor Alan and Big Bird, who gave him a feather from their bodies. He said taking part in the series was only his second acting gig, after what he described as a terrible appearance from an episode of Bob, the Bob newhart sitcom where Newhart played a comic book artist. He spoke of performing in the stage without rehearsing beforehand, and that the thousands of pieces of tape on the stage floor immediately shook him. His only sentence was “Hey, how are you?”, And he said that was the only thing they trusted him.

At Sesame StreetLee said he memorized his own lines but not those of his fellow actors, which he achieved the night before the shoot meant he would have no idea when to say his lines. His wife helped him learn dialogue while he worked on an illustration for the show, which he said was harder than expected. Lee finished the illustrations for the show at 5 a.m., with the producers picking him up at 8 a.m.

Lee revealed he didn’t complete the art earlier because, before flying out of LA to the East Coast to appear on the show, he tested positive at home for COVID. His wife tested negative, and subsequently the two hours he allegedly spent driving in the car looking for further home tests to confirm his diagnosis. After four more home tests, Lee came back negative, and he eventually learned from the test makers that the specific batch of tests he initially used had been found to give false positive results.

Lee described the rehearsals with the puppeteers, who move around the floor on carts, and how different it was when they put the Muppets on their hands. Lee said if you look closely you can see him reading the lines from the puppeteer teleprompers, which are on the floor. Asked to sing on the show, Lee said he was a terrible singer, whom he accuses of being hit by a truck as a child in Korea. He joked that this was a Daredevil-like situation where being hit by this truck made him lose his ability to sing but gain the ability to draw very well..

Another fan asked Lee about his work on Silence, especially how he interpreted the existing characters and developed Hush with Jeph loeb. Lee said the creation of Hush was a request for Paul Levitz, who asked him to add something new to the Batman toy box. He said that Loeb took the name “Hush” from a lullaby and that they performed with opera visuals. at the Phantom of the Opera, but once he became a surgeon, Lee started thinking about the bandages, which he jokingly removed from The Unknown Soldier and Negative Man. The trench coat was included because, Lee joked, “That’s my thing, trench coats.” He also talked about bringing Jason Todd into the story, which he said with Loeb on the fly while working on the show and incorporating elements of Robin into the Hush costume.

A member of the audience asked Lee to talk more about his parents and what they think about what he has done with his life. Lee said his parents left Korea “with a clear vision for what their life was going to be like” and had a clear path for him, so it was difficult for them to see him stray from it. He explained that neither of them knew what a cartoonist did before they started. He pointed out that they were happy with him as long as he was happy.

Asked about his influences, Lee described a time when a third-grade teacher caught him drawing the Marvel Nighthawk character during class. The professor snatched the drawing from her and crumpled it up before stopping, unfolding it and looking at it, and deciding to hang it on their bulletin board. Other influences Lee spoke of included an art teacher who suggested he pursue a career in art, even though he was uncomfortable in the fine art world. After graduating from college, Lee said he finally sat down and forced himself to draw inside pages. Archie goodwin and Carl Potts were also big influences after being discovered at a convention.

Discussing the founding of Image Comics, Lee said he felt that at the time, “the industry was going through a change without realizing that it was going through a change,” and that the root of the ‘Image was the role that the creator played in the successful boom in the industry. Image’s formation was all about the creative issues and pay issues the founders had with the Big 2, but also, Lee said, the way things were at Marvel and DC at the time made them such that they couldn’t adapt as quickly as they did. necessary to keep up with the overall comic book landscape, not only in terms of pay but also quality. Lee added that some of the changes resulting from Image’s formation are still evident in the industry today.

Lee said he visited Korea a handful of times as an adult. Her daughter goes to school there, which Lee joked about because of her love for K-Pop. After Lee’s parents moved to the United States, the rest of the family followed, so his daughter is the only member of his family in Korea at the moment, and he expects her to end up s ‘implant there.

When asked if there’s anything Marvel does that Lee really admires, including increased diversity among his characters, Lee said he’s definitely a fan of what other publishers do and that “a rising tide lifts all boats”. He said the performance is important as a reflection of the world we live in. Growing up, Lee said he was “used to being different” and didn’t expect content to be created for him, but that when he saw Asian portrayal in American media, it was embarrassing. He described how seeing the world through his children’s eyes in terms of characters, cosplay opportunities, and fandom was a gift. “It’s not about eradicating the past,” he added, “it’s about building on the past and expanding the universe.”

Speaking about his work on X-Men, Lee said he wanted to work on stories in the X Universe with elements that made a difference to him as a child. He specifically mentioned the Savage Land as an area he wanted to explore, as well as The Brood and the Shi’ar Empire. The only issue that wasn’t on her X-Men wishlist was Strange X-Men # 268, which he says happened because of a conversation with Chris Claremont. Lee joked that he had hoped to find out about Wolverine’s origin from the writer, and when Claremont asked him what he wanted to work on, related to X or whatever, Black Widow, Captain America and a story unfolding during WWII were things Lee listed. Claremont came up with the story of this issue based on their conversation, and Lee said Claremont had tried to get Bob harras to make it a two-part story but was shot.

With that, Lee gave the final sketch to a woman with a set of nail clippers (previous sketches had gone to people with a specific vaccination date and Taco Bell receipt), and the panel ended.

Missed one of our other ECCC ’21 covers? Find everything here!

Related