Although Jim Lee graduated from Princeton University with a degree in medicine, he decided to try his hand at comic book art. His first publication was ‘Alpha Flight’, in 1986. Jim Lee’s most famous work is called ‘X-Men’. The first issue became the best-selling comic book of all time, selling over a million copies. Jim Lee’s company under Image, Wildstorm Productions, has also launched a number of successful titles, such as ‘Wild C.A.T.S.’, ‘Stormwatch’, ‘Deathblow’, ‘Union’, ‘Backlash’, ‘Team 7’ and ‘GEN13’.
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. X-Men #1, the 1991 spin-off series premiere that Lee penciled and co-wrote with Chris Claremont, remains the best-selling comic book of all time, according to Guinness World Records. His style was later used for the designs of 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. Upon DiDio’s departure from the company in February 2020, Lee became the sole Publisher of DC Comics.