Jim Lee

Jim Lee (이용철; born August 11, 1964) is a Korean-American comic-book artist, writer, editor, and publisher.

He is currently the President, Publisher and Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics.

In recognition of his work, Lee has received a Harvey Award, Inkpot Award and three Wizard Fan Awards.

Jim Lee was born on August 11, 1964, in Seoul, South Korea.

In a December 2023 interview, he describes his nostaglic memories of life in that country, where he first began drawing at a young age, using oil pastels with an art teacher who visited his home, and developing a love of Max Fleischer's 1940s animated Superman series.

His strongest memory of living in Seoul, however, was when, at the age of 4 or 5, he was hit by a small truck while crossing the street, later regaining consciousness in the hospital in the presence of his father, a doctor.

Lee says that the incident increased his parents' sense of protectiveness as he grew older, and summarizes his early years by saying, "Comics. Trauma. Art. That was the be-all, end-all of my childhood."

In the aftermath of the Korean War, Lee's parents desired a better, safer life for their family, and moved to the United States when Lee was in elementary school.

They lived in Warren, Ohio, and Youngstown, Ohio, before settling in St. Louis, Missouri, where Lee lived a "typical middle-class childhood".

Lee attended River Bend Elementary School in Chesterfield and later St. Louis Country Day School, where he drew posters for school plays.

Having had to learn English when he first came to the U.S. instilled in Lee with the sense of being an outsider, as did the "preppy, upper-class" atmosphere of Country Day.

As a result, on the rare occasions that his parents bought him comics, Lee's favorite characters were the X-Men, because they were outsiders themselves.

Lee says that he benefited as an artist by connecting with characters that were themselves disenfranchised, like Spider-Man, or who were born of such backgrounds, such as Superman, who was created by two Jewish men from Cleveland to lift their spirits during the Depression.

Lee also connected with Superman because like Lee, Superman was "the ultimate immigrant", which helped him assimilate into American culture, and provided him a sense of "sanctuary" from the pressues he felt as an immigrant who did not fit in, and the shame he felt as a Korean.

For this reason, Superman's practice of wearing eyeglasses in order to effect a disguise was something Lee sympathized with, as he felt that he exhibited an "American side" at school, and then his "Korean side" at home.

He developed a desire to one day work in comics between the ages of nine and twelve.

Though given a Korean name at birth, he chose the name Jim when he became a naturalized U.S. citizen at age 12.

Lee's classmates predicted in his senior yearbook that he would found his own comic book company.

Lee, however, was resigned to following his father's career in medicine, attending Princeton University to study psychology, with the intention of becoming a medical doctor.

This was largely influenced by the strict expectations of his parents, whom Lee said were "really aggressive in terms of how they wanted me to find true success," owing to views about security and fear of failure that Lee describes as being typical in Korean households.

In 1986, as he was preparing to graduate, Lee took an art class that reignited his love of drawing, and led to his rediscovery of comics at a time when seminal works such as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen spurred a renaissance within the American comics industry.

After obtaining his psychology degree, Lee, having grown to view a career in medicine to long escalator ride that he did not wish to make, decided to postpone applying to medical school for one year, in order to give himself time to break into comics.

When he laid out this plan to his parents, it led to a heated argument that prompted Lee to flee his house.

His father pursued him and reconciled with him, expressing understanding of his committment to his dreams.

Lee says that this influenced him to refrain from ever placing the same level of pressure on his own children.

Earning the reluctant blessing of his parents, Lee vowed that he would attend medical school if he did not break into the comic book industry in the gap year he alotted for himself.

He set up a small drafting table next to his bed, and would spend 8 to 10 hours each day drawing, to the point that he suffered from sore knuckles and a pinched nerve that required his father to give him a shoulder brace.

The samples that Lee initially submitted to various publishers did not find success.

He entered the industry in 1987 as an artist for Marvel Comics, illustrating titles such as Alpha Flight and The Punisher War Journal, before gaining popularity on The Uncanny X-Men.

On that book, Lee worked with writer Chris Claremont, with whom he co-created the character Gambit.

That led to a 1991 spinoff series on which Lee and Claremont were the initial creative team.

The debut issue, X-Men #1, that Lee penciled and co-wrote with Claremont, remains the best-selling comic book of all time, according to Guinness World Records.

Lee's style was later used for the designs of the X-Men: The Animated Series.

In 1992, Lee and several other artists formed their own publishing company, Image Comics, to publish their creator-owned titles, with Lee publishing titles such as WildC.A.T.s and Gen¹³ through his studio WildStorm Productions.

Finding that the role of publisher reduced the amount of time he was able to devote to illustration, Lee sold WildStorm in 1998 to DC Comics, where he continued to run it as a DC imprint until 2010, as well as illustrating successful titles set in DC's main fictional universe, such as the year-long "Batman: Hush" and "Superman: For Tomorrow" storylines, and books including Superman Unchained and the New 52 run of Justice League.

On February 18, 2010, Lee was announced as the new Co-Publisher of DC Comics with Dan DiDio, both replacing Paul Levitz.

Outside of the comics industry, Lee has also designed album covers, and one of General Mills' monster-themed cereals for its 2014 Halloween edition.

Since June 2018, he has also been the Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of DC Comics, replacing Geoff Johns.

Aside from illustrating comics, he has done work as a designer or creative director on other DC products, such as action figures, video games, branded automobiles and backpacks.

Upon DiDio's departure from the company in February 2020, Lee became the sole Publisher of DC Comics.