If you’ve read a comic in the last 20+ years, you should already know Jim Lee. As an artist, he defined the look of the X-Men in the early ’90s. His X-Men #1 (written by Chris Claremont) is still the best-selling comic book of all time, having racked up 8 million copies in print. He parlayed that into becoming one of the founders of Image Comics, his portion of which was known as WildStorm and which published titles like Astro City, Planetary, Gen13, The Authority, WildC.A.T.s, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. After a successful run producing several Marvel comics – including Captain America, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, and The Avengers – he sold WildStorm to DC Comics. He recently became the co-publisher of DC, the top creative job in the entire company.
Throughout all this, Jim kept drawing. His recent runs on Superman and Batman became instant classics, as has his work on All-Star Batman and Robin with Frank Miller. On top of all that, he serves as the executive creative director of the upcoming DC Universe Online MMO. He also got married last year, merging his family with his wife’s to join together a total of seven kids in their home. He’s a busy man.
I first met Jim back in WildStorm’s heyday. He and Drew Bittner had come up with a collectible card game, and they needed a professional game designer to help them develop it. I signed on, and the WildStorms CCG went on to entertain a lot of people and make the company a good chunk of change.
I’ve kept in touch with Jim and many other members of the WildStorm crew, mostly catching up at conventions. A couple years ago, I sat next to him at a comic convention and watched him sign his works for a huge line of adoring fans. He treated every one of them with utter class and respect. He makes a better rock star than most rock stars.
In that vein, he took the time to read Amortals for me, and he wrote this blurb:
[This is the last bit in this series of posts about the blurbs I collected for Amortals. I started it to say thanks to all the friends who were kind enough to help me out by telling people about my book. I hope I managed that, and I hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride.]“Matt Forbeck takes the plausible and pulls out all the stops in this mind-blowing, high-concept thriller. It doesn’t get any better than this … especially in the near future!”
– Jim Lee
