« Home | How the heroes may have evolved, but today devolve... » | Jerusalem dealer makes special contributions to ID... » | Actor who played Kang in Marvel films convicted fo... » | New Czech comic pays tribute to Soviet-era superhe... » | Earliest versions of Mickey & Minnie Mouse will be... » | 411Mania's awkward takes on Dark Knight Returns, a... » | USA Today admits the Marvel movie craze is over, b... » | Polygon sees politicized titles as "best" of the year » | If superhero fare is escapist, the Good Men Projec... » | Tim Sale was reportedly colorblind » 

Thursday, December 21, 2023 

The ironies about Jim Lee

Big Think interviewed veteran artist Lee about his life and career, and there's something pretty ironic to ponder when you consider his political positions. First:
For many superheroes, there was a cataclysmic event that changed the course of their lives. For example, Victor Stone was injured by an interdimensional portal, Hal Jordan received a power ring from a dying alien, and Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed in front of him.
Straight out of the gate, they made a most unfortunate goof - Vic Stone/Cyborg was mauled by an alien that came through the portal, during an experiment his scientist dad was running. The senior Stone took to rebuilding Vic to save his life, but as a machine. Wow, these sure are some historians working at these MSM sites, and Lee clearly didn't see fit to make sure they'd get their facts straight.
As Lee grew up, he found out that there was another reason for his parents’ sternness and obsession with him following a traditional career path. “My parents fled North Korea when they were very young,” he says. “They grew up in a very destructive, crazy time. Their dream was to come to a safer, better country and provide a better life for their kids. I wish they had told me this when I was a kid because I didn’t know that was the plan! I just knew they were very aggressive in terms of how they wanted me to find true success.”
What's really bewildering is how somebody whom you'd think would understand communism grew up to be quite the leftist himself, and I recall he was one of the reasons the artist Gabe Eltaeb quit working for DC, over the LGBT ideology they were forcing upon the Superman franchise, and more specifically, upon the fairly new Son of Kal-El character who probably first appeared nearly a decade ago. Even earlier, Lee made clear all he cared about was diversity pandering, without any genuine interest in organic merit. As for crazy, destructive times, has he considered that of recent, that's exactly the problem? Yet no chance he'll ever address things from a modern perspective. That's surely quite the irony when it comes to subjects like these. And then, in the Big Think interview, Lee even parroted the "immigrant" propaganda the left's been hijacking the Man of Steel with:
Moving to America from South Korea was tough for Lee. He didn’t speak the language, he felt like an outsider at school, and a future he didn’t want had already been laid out for him. But he did find solace in the comic book world’s most famous alien.

“Superman was an immigrant,” Lee says. “He’s the ultimate immigrant. The last immigrant from a dead planet. I think I instantly glommed onto that as something that brought me into American culture and provided sanctuary. I understood this idea of putting on eyeglasses and being a different person because I think that’s what I was doing when I was going to school. I had my American side, and then when I was home, I had my Korean side.”
I just don't comprehend how Supes is an immigrant and not a refugee. If a volcanic island in the south Pacific sank into the ocean, would the residents evacuated not be refugees? Again, somebody totally misses the boat here, and blatantly exploited Siegel and Shuster's creations for his own leftist agenda. What's got to be ironic about this is how a dozen years ago, DC caused quite a stink with a story where Superman shed his USA citizenship, all for the sake of political agendas that've become considerably worse ever since. For somebody claiming the Big Blue Boy Scout's an immigrant, how weird Lee didn't seem to have any issue with that earlier embarrassment, published at the time Dan DiDio was the main EIC/publisher, and Lee was one of the leading deputies. Why, even Starfire of the New Teen Titans wasn't so much an immigrant as she was a refugee from a cruel alien empire in the Vegan galaxy that snatched her away from her royal parents and enslaved her, after her evil sister Blackfire betrayed their home planet. Near the end of the interview:
Incredibly, it only took four months out of his 12-month countdown for him to get noticed, which he did by showing his work off to editors at a comic book convention. This landed him his first job at Marvel in 1987, where he had the opportunity to put his own stamp on titles such as the Uncanny X-Men and The Punisher. To this day, he still holds the Guinness World Record for best-selling single edition comic (over 8 million copies) with X-Men #1 (1991), for which he was the penciler and co-writer.
And here, they fail to acknowledge the premiere issue of sans-adjective X-Men had tons of copies left over, selling as much as it did on store-level only, with not many customers actually buying it. IIRC, it was one of the earliest takes of the concept of variant covers, with 4 different parts put together to form a larger picture. And look where all that triviality brought the industry to nowadays. Something Lee doesn't seem interested in admitting became a serious problem, to say nothing short of a farce.

Lee's a sad case of somebody who doesn't have the courage to defend the better interests of the classic creations at DC, or even Marvel, and has long made clear he's a huge disappointment from an ideological perspective.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

About me

  • I'm Avi Green
  • From Jerusalem, Israel
  • I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best.
My profile

Archives

Links

  • avigreen2002@yahoo.com
  • Fansites I Created

  • Hawkfan
  • The Greatest Thing on Earth!
  • The Outer Observatory
  • Earth's Mightiest Heroines
  • The Co-Stars Primer
  • Realtime Website Traffic

    Comic book websites (open menu)

    Comic book weblogs (open menu)

    Writers and Artists (open menu)

    Video commentators (open menu)

    Miscellanous links (open menu)

  • W3 Counter stats
  • Bio Link page
  • blog directory Bloggeries Blog Directory View My Stats Blog Directory & Search engine eXTReMe Tracker Locations of visitors to this page   Flag Counter Free Hit Counters
    Free Web Counter

    This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

    make money online blogger templates

Older Posts Newer Posts

The Four Color Media Monitor is powered by Blogspot and Gecko & Fly.
No part of the content or the blog may be reproduced without prior written permission.
Join the Google Adsense program and learn how to make money online.