Jim Lee

I can’t tell you. It’s an interesting one though. An actor expressed interest in something and it’s a pretty well known actor. So it seems pretty good if they follow through on their interest.

I actually am not completely clear on that. The cartoon itself was done back in 1994. Then Funimation either purchased the company or the library, I’m not sure. I think there just wasn’t a market for DVDs until recently, that whole market exploded so they’re putting everything on DVD.

It’s great for me because all I had were these really old, decomposing VHS copies of the episodes. Now it’s all on DVD for me.

I actually am pretty happy with the cartoon. I think maybe Eric expected it to be a very direct interpretation of his comic book. Essentially the cartoons were geared for six to eight year old kids. If you read the comic book WildCATS you’ll find that 90 percent of it you can’t really put on TV. That said the cartoon is a hokier version of the comic book and I enjoyed it. I was involved in producing it. I went over animation storyboards, one of the producers wanted me to go do the voice casting. So it was a fun learning experience. We used that knowledge when we produced the Gen 13 direct to video which is closer to what the content is in the comic books. It didn’t pull in the ratings it needed to, but at the same time I watch it with the same fondness I have when I watch old episodes of Speed Racer and Jonny Quest.

Oh, absolutely. It’s not an opportunity that a lot of creators get. Even though it didn’t end up being this gigantic commercial success it still was a fun, interesting and challenging experience. The budget they had for the cartoon was nothing like the Batman animated series so you can see what you get for the dollars you spend. For what the budget was I was pretty happy with it.

After that experience we said we wanted more control over this, so we ended up financing the Gen 13 movie ourselves. We sunk in 1.6 million dollars to produce that.

Also with the cartoon even though I was involved in the aspects I’ve mentioned, it’s a far cry from working on it day to day. There’s no way I can review every storyboard and every framed piece of animation. You just do your best in the time you have to give some people some input and response. Besides I’m most concerned about what happens to the comic books. If someone goes and makes a big budget movie it’s not my 60 or 80 or 100 million dollars that they’re spending to produce it. So it’s up to them and if they end up making a crappy movie hopefully it doesn’t hurt or damage what I’m doing in the pages of a comic book. Generally it doesn’t. So I look at them as two very different things. I’m not producing a comic book in the hopes of someone making a terrific movie based on it. If it happens then it’s a fun experience whether it’s successful or not. That’s the only sane type of approach I can make with this. Even with putting up the budget money myself and making the big decision.

Exactly. With Alan Moore it’s the same thing. He’s written all these great graphic novels and comic book series. I’m pretty sure he hated every movie adaptation that’s ever been made.

Frank’s scripts are a breeze to work from. I’ve worked with a number of high profile writers and with Frank being an artist himself, he gives you everything you need. It’s to the point and very descriptive so it reads a lot like the actual printed comic book. He writes in fairly terse, clipped sentences. He’s a student of the history of comics so he knows the stuff inside and out. He’s dropping references to [Dick] Sprang and [Carmine] Infantino. I know that stuff but not as intimately as he does. It’s great to actually go back in time and find these treasures then dust it off and reinterpret it for a new audience.

To be honest I would have done Little Lulu with Frank. There was a time where he wasn’t doing a lot of work for DC and he had his own characters. I wanted to work with him because he’s one of my heroes creatively but to work on Batman on top of that is kickass.

He usually responds right after I email him the page. But the back and forth really has happened whenever we’re in town at the same time. We went to a con together and basically hung out for four nights in a row. We would go out and talk about the upcoming issue and the issues after that. I think he was writing the script as we were talking because phrases we talked about showed up on the printed scripts. One of the first discussions we had about All Star Batman and Robin and before he even committed to being part of the project he was in Austin filming Sin City. They just produced a rough cut so he invited me down check it out at [Robert] Rodriguez’s film studio down there. So that was really a cool thing but during the day he did that stuff but at the night we’d hook up and have dinner and go out and just talk comics. Talk Batman, talk characters we’ve liked and how we would visualize Gotham City and Batman. That’s when he said “I really want to do something kind of different. I don’t want to just retread the same ground. I’ve got this take on Robin I’ve been meaning to do.” That’s how this project really came to be. It wasn’t originally going to be a Robin project. Now it’s Batman through the eyes of Robin so it’s very cool.

He was in there a little bit with Hush. I think if I were a younger fan I’d probably be a little less interested. But having been in the business now since about 1987, there’s a certain nostalgia you have for sidekicks and younger characters that you almost don’t have when you’re 15, 16 or 17 because they might be too close to your age. It might be even nerdier, if that‘s possible, to identify with them because you‘re trying to escape from identifying yourself with young kid characters. For a time it’s kind of uncool to be into the sidekicks of characters. It’s cooler to aspire to be Batman. But now I’ve got kids of my own so it’s a way of looking at Batman through the eyes of a 12 year old kid. It’s an interesting filter to put on.

I would definitely have to say, from Frank’s point of view, that yes there’s some of that in there. The dialogue between the two is very, I won’t say deconstructionist, but he is definitely updating their interaction. They’re very frank with each other and there’s obviously a fondness and nostalgia for the relationship between the hero and the sidekick but at the same time Frank is poking fun at it too. Exposing it for some of the hilarity that it is. We’re grown men creating a story about guys that are superheroes. It is no accident that 99 percent of the people that work in the industry were fans of comics as kids. So it’s a way to go back and relive your childhood. I think what Frank does is that he takes that, updates it and makes it acceptable to read this stuff as an adult. He makes it feel exciting and interesting.

That’s funny because I noticed myself doing that years ago. I thought I was outgrowing comics. But I think it really was a shift away from looking at as something that is a collectible that you want to sell someday and more about something you want to keep on the bookshelf and reread.

1961?

Ugh!

I work mostly from full scripts so it’s less of a concern. The input I have is when I’m sitting there talking to Frank and we’re riffing about upcoming storylines and what’s been happening to characters. You’re throwing out visual bits and talking about how cool it would be to do this or that. I think the one thing that the trades do is allow the writers to take their time in telling the stories. That’s both good and bad. It’s good in that they’re given the time to do more conversational scenes. There used to be this formula in section based stories where you had the setup, you had your little bit of talking, then you have to have the characters fight and then you have this resolution. Now you’re seeing a whole bunch of comic book storylines with a lot more dialogue and interaction. The bad side of it is that sometimes you’re not getting the most edited down version of these stories. But I prefer reading the trade. I think I get a fuller experience. The idea of reading it every month just doesn’t fit into my lifestyle and it’s just a weird way to take in a story. It is like watching a movie ten minutes at a time every two hours. I think it’s great to have these come out as complete stories.

I did write Divine Rite. I always knew I wanted to write my own series and I know I will again. I think I’d just come to this realization that there’s only so much work you’re going to produce in your career or lifetime. There are a bunch of writers that I definitely want to work with and learn from so it would be a shame if I just wrote my own comics. It’d be great to work with these guys and try to produce something that people would basically read and reread for ages to come. I’ve been working with the writers that I think are the best in the business.

What you’re really experiencing is other ways of telling stories and pacing. For example in All-Star Batman and Robin, Frank has this whole scene where Batman is trying to convince Robin to join him in this crusade against crime and at the end Robin makes his decision. Then you turn the page and there’s just the Robin symbol. He hasn’t gotten his costume or his logo but he’s going to that iconic image in a full page spread. I would never have done that as an artist even if I was working from a loose Marvel style script or as a writer myself. It makes you realize how powerful that is. So you tuck it away and hopefully can access that somewhere down the road.

There will be a new Deathblow book coming out next year with a foreign writer working on it.

They look normal to me. The physical form is so exaggerated already so yes I draw large breasts. But I draw very large hands too. No one ever points out the large hands. All these characters are exaggerations of normal physiques so it’s not just limited to the mammary gland.

Sure yeah, there’s a lot of repressed childhood stuff coming through [laughs]. But it was definitely not a conscious decision.

No, I don’t have that. Honestly. I don’t even have sketchbook material of clothed people. For the most part I was working so much that almost everything I did, even the costume design layouts and that kind of thing was done on the boards. I do have some sketchbooks but for the most part I prefer working on the actual piece of flat separate artboard.

I get no extra titillation value out of drawing a little extra circle that ends up as a breast. Maybe at age 13 but today the costumes are already skin tight. What more do you really need? In fact, I think the characters look better with their clothes on. Sometimes you do get the odd request. This fan comes up kind of breathing heavy asking if I could draw Catwoman naked. But that would just look like a woman naked, the only reason she looks like Catwoman is because of the costume.

Yeah, who would have thought that a book like that would have gained the critical success it had. It was one of those weird instances where Brian [K. Vaughan] pitched me three or four ideas and that one seemed the most interesting. I didn’t think it would create such a surge of popularity.

Vertigo does a lot of thought provoking, offbeat fare, non-superhero type thing. We produce a lot of titles like WildCATS and Astro City which are edgier superhero sort of stuff. They are superhero influenced which has a certain type of action and on top of that they’re more sophisticated, more adult themed or more thought provoking. Ex Machina is about a New York City mayor who used to be a superhero and the book is really more about the politics and all the issues that he has to deal with. It fits in neatly with a lot of the books that we’ve published before. I called Brian because I was a fan of his work on Y: The Last Man and Runaways. I said to him “What do you have that you‘re interested in doing?” He told me a couple of ideas and that that was the one I was drawn to so we gave him the freedom to go out and do it. Thankfully it worked out. I think we have a simpler pitch process than most companies and there are maybe three people here that can greenlight a comic book.

You’re dating yourself. Say you read it in a reprint.

No because the cool thing is I’ve really only done a year of Superman and Batman whereas I worked with Marvel for five years in total. There are a lot of characters that I would love to take a stab like the rest of the Justice League and The Legion of Superheroes.

I love the 70’s era Justice League. Those are probably my favorite DC books. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Atom, Green Lantern, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Red Tornado, that’s the roster.

With that costume with the yellow arrow on his forehead, that character is one of those things that you grow to appreciate later. He’s probably people’s least favorite Justice League member but he has to be there because the memory’s not complete without him.

He and I have worked for so long together that there is this complete comfort level because I know that whatever I give him he’s going to ink it flawlessly. I don’t even look at it until it comes out in print even though he’s two offices away. In the early days I would go over there and pore over the pages after they were inked and change things. But now it’s gotten to the point where I pretty much know what it’s going to look like when he inks it. I can almost previsualize it and he never fails to satisfy me. He adds something to the pencils that’s not just the ink lying on top. It’s unique. I honestly can’t produce work by myself that looks like our collaboration and neither can he. It really is two artists really combining to create one style.

Yes he is.

He’s no longer in the office but he still exclusive to Wildstorm/DC. He comes in every couple of weeks. He’s working on the Wetworks relaunch right now and a high profile DC project. He’s done like six issues of this Wetworks. I don’t know if they’re going to come out simultaneously. He hasn’t been on the stands yet because we’re waiting to have a backlog of issues for them to come out timely.

No, Scott really can only do one book. It actually takes him longer to ink a page than it does for me to pencil a page. When I’m up to full speed I can do two to two and a half pages a day. He can maybe do one and a half. It is because inking is so meticulous and it really is about pen control. There’s really no margin for being sloppy or messy unless you intend it to be that way.

I accidentally ended up at that site when I went to this site called Gizmodo. They had a shot of some girl with some pack and I clicked on it and I discovered this whole other site. I thought it was pretty cool. I saw some interviews you did with some pretty big names. So it’s actually pretty rarified company to be.