It's one of comics' worst kept secrets that many indie cartoonists secretly harbor fantasy of helming mainstream superhero books. For most, it's little more than passing fancy, one-off opportunities to try their hand at iconic characters of their youth, before getting back their own creations.
For Canadian cartoonist Jeff Lemire, the work is every bit as vital as his most personal indie output. It's a combination that has led to one of the industries most fascinating careers of the past decade. Lemire, who made a name for himself with the deeply personal Top Shelf series, Essex County, has since become the extremely prolific author of numerous DC and Marvel series.
"I always assumed that my drawing and storytelling styles wouldn't be anything that Marvel and DC would be interested in," explains Lemire. "I grew up reading that stuff and always loved reading those comics. I respect the genre a lot, but I never tried to get work with them. It was never on my radar. I was very happy doing my independent comics and working a day job."
The artist's rise to prominence was a bit of a perfect storm. As Lemire honed his craft on indie titles, he caught the attention of superhero editors looking to explore new territory with established properties.
"I did Essex County and the critical success of those books got the attention of Bob Schreck, who was working at DC at the time," says Lemire. "Bob was looking for things at Vertigo that were a little different, so I wrote a graphic novel for them, and that led to Sweet Tooth and Sweet Tooth caught the attention of Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio at DC. One thing led to another."
Lemire has gone on to write several books for the big two, including Superboy, Green Arrow, Animal Man and Hawkeye. And this week at Comic Con, Marvel announced that he would be writing Extraordinary X-Men, the company's flagship X-Men book, an opportunity to try his hand at the difficult task of writing for a team.
"I haven't had a lot of success so far [with team books]," he explains. "The stuff I've had the most success with so far has been solo character titles like Animal Man, Green Arrow and Hawkeye, where I can drill down on one character and really tell one story. I've done a couple of team books with DC that were really mediocre. I tried, but they're tough."
The trick, Lemire says, is taking on a team one-by-one. "It comes down to approach it from character first and not plot first. In a lot of the team books it's like, 'they're fighting this guy and then they have to get here' and then you intersperse character moments. That's such a mistake. The whole book should a character moment and you should intersperse the action. The action is only good if it's revealing something about the characters."
Marvel let Lemire pick his team, and the artist began to piece together the puzzle. "When I took the X-Men job, I spent a week with each character and finding out what makes them work. I had all of these character arcs built. I completely reverse the process, and I think that'll show on the paper."
"I got old man Logan and teenage Jean Grey, which completely flips the dynamic," he says. "It's twisted into this father-daughter protective relationships. And then Storm is the leader of the team. Cyclops has always been the alpha, but circumstances that have been going on in the Marvel universe have taken him off the table for bit, which has allowed be to really let Storm take the reigns without competing with someone else for leadership. And then you have all of my favorite characters like Nightcrawler, Colossus, Magik and Iceman. It's a fun team."
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