Even If You’re Not an Artist, You Need to Watch Jim Lee Sketch

Streaming on Twitch, DC’s soft-spoken CCO inspires with his skill and humanity

Anyone who follows my social media presence knows that I have complicated feelings about art. I have always primarily identified myself as a writer, but I periodically find myself dabbling in sketch art despite limited natural aptitude for it — an activity that invariably ends in frustration given that my aspirations quickly outstrip my talent. So it’s with a mixture of reverence and masochism that I will often watch gifted technicians effortlessly spin off drawings and paintings that I could never hope to create. And yet that’s not why I’ve become (not-so-)mildly addicted to Jim Lee’s live streams on Twitch. Instead, I find that I like to watch his art videos simply because they make me feel better about the world I’m living in. Moreover, based on the reactions of my family, I’m pretty sure the feeling is contagious.

Unlocking The Fanboy Within
On my part at least, this sentiment is somewhat fueled by residual fandom of DC Comics’s Chief Creative Officer reaching all the way back to the 1990s. I do, in fact, own one of the several variant covers to Lee’s best-selling X-Men #1. And I enjoyed his runs on Superman and Bat-Man following his stint at Image. Nevertheless, I’ve never really followed individual comic artists with any particular fervor. And while my family and I have been attending comics conventions in our region for a little less than a decade, it’s been for a variety of reasons only loosely tied to the comics themselves.

My spouse, sometime sci-fi/fantasy author C. L. Schock, has typically attended for the purposes of market research, while my kids and I have focused on collecting swag ranging from posters to Funko Pops to LEGO mini-figures. Even on the occasions when we’ve met creators like George Perez, Ethan Van Sciver and Ron Frenz, it’s been to get comics signed or to buy existing art — not to observe their process. It was only a happy accident then that I should happen to stumble across Jim Lee’s Twitch stream — or more appropriately a YouTube compilation of his videos— a little less than two years ago.

Happy Little Muscles Instead of Happy Little Trees?

Lee’s videos are tutorials, ostensibly for would-be artists looking for tips on the respective crafts of penciling and inking comic art. However, they’re also much more than that. For starters, they’re usually filled with various technology-driven misadventures. The legendary artist, who is now in his 50s, often struggles with issues related to his cameras, his microphones and any number of other environmental factors. But rather than this being a distraction, these forgivable technical lapses enhance his charming demeanor; they help to humanize and ingratiate him to an audience that might otherwise be intimidated by his body of work.

Just about everything that Jim Lee does, in fact, works to this effect. Casual, self-effacing, soft-spoken, and candid, Lee doesn’t come across as a titan of his industry. He’s just Jim. He talks about his travels — completed and upcoming. He’ll chat with his wife or his kids if they happen to wander into the room during the streaming event. He reminisces about his experiences in the industry and his collaborations with other creators at DC Comics and elsewhere.

And though it’s often said that extremely talented people struggle to teach — as they’re used to being able to naturally perform at a high level — Lee is very much aware of the fact that his audience is largely made up of 18- and 20-year-olds looking to pick up the tricks of the trade. So he’ll often stop mid-sketch to flip his page over and demonstrate some technique of shaping or shading. As he explains, he interprets many complex aspects of anatomy by deconstructing them — the hand is a pentagon with its base at the wrist, the shoulder a valentine’s heart, the biceps and triceps islands of light in an ocean of shadows. (Note that he once illustrated the first of these principles — quite literally — by drawing a pentagon on the back of his own hand.)

A Little Something for Everyone

To be clear, Jim Lee isn’t Bob Ross — though I do walk away from watching his videos with a similar positive feeling. Whereas Ross’s focus was to create art that his audience could emulate even in real time, Lee sketches rapidly and at a high level of difficulty. So while my youngest child and I are routinely inspired to create our own art after viewing one of his live streams, we don’t really attempt to duplicate his results. And I think that’s okay because it’s not critical to our enjoyment of an experience that transcends the instructional. Just watching Jim Lee make art is a pleasure in its own right.

It’s not without its drama either. I wouldn’t call his style impressionistic, and yet I would often — in the early days of following his stream — find myself wondering how, with perhaps just 5 or 10 minutes left on a project, it was going to round out into a finished sketch with his usual level of quality. And then he’d surprise me by dabbing a piece of tissue paper in ink and rendering a dramatic backdrop in 30 seconds of work. Or he’d grab a whiteout pen and — with just a handful of precise strokes — wrestle a clearly defined image from out of the dark background he’d spent the last quarter hour saturating with marker. In some ways, I suppose you can credit his use of multiple media on a single project — a pencil, a pen, a Sharpie marker, a whiteout pen, tissue paper, a credit card (yes, a credit card dabbed with whiteout, to create flecks of “Kirby crackle”) — as one of the reasons why there can be so many twists and turns on the way to the outcome.

Owing to his numerous production and travel commitments, Lee’s posting schedule can have its ups and downs as well. But I don’t know that I’d consider his streaming events “appointment television” anyhow. Many sessions can last a couple of hours and cover more than one project. So it’s not unusual for my family to watch them in pieces over multiple occasions after they drop to YouTube. That eliminates the opportunity to participate in the conversations associated with the live stream — as the artist will often respond to comments bubbling up in the moderated chat — but it suits our purposes and allows us to enjoy on an on-demand basis.

Visiting with an Old Friend

Something about Lee’s demeanor and delivery combined with the seeming ease with which he draws makes each video feel like you’re checking in with an old friend. That’s marvelously refreshing at a time when the posts showing up in my social media don’t feel particularly social. So I highly recommend that you give one of Lee’s live streams or videos a try. I guarantee you’ll learn something — be it about his technique, his ongoing projects, his career or simply his daily life. And that’s the kind of reality TV I can’t get enough of — since Jim Lee seems to be one guy who is genuinely here for the right reasons.

The Iron Man Legacy Story No One Is Talking About (**With Spoilers**)

As the Mandarin makes news, Far from Home may have quietly set up Armor Wars.

While the end of Robert Downey Jr.’s tenure as the golden avenger may have been bittersweet, his run wasn’t short in terms of screen time. Featured in his own movie trilogy, five Avengers films — yeah, let’s be honest, Captain America Civil War was an Avengers film — and Spider-Man Homecoming, Downey spent a decade embodying this most iconic of MCU characters. But curiously, these multiple appearances only scratched the surface of the Iron Man mythos and rogues gallery.

Villains like Baron Zemo, Ultron, and Thanos are more generally considered Avengers foes in the comic source material. And though Iron Monger, Whiplash, and Killian Aldrich have specifically menaced Tony Stark in the comics, I don’t know that most fans would typically rank them among his most prominent or deadly rivals. So the notable absence of several other major Iron Man villains and their associated plot lines would appear to leave a hole in the fabric of Marvel’s cinematic universe. But with Kevin Feige’s recent announcement of a Phase 4 Shang-Chi movie that will introduce The Mandarin — the real Mandarin, not the impostor played by Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3 — to the MCU, it’s become evident that some of these loose threads may yet get tied off in unexpected ways. And with that idea in mind, we should all reflect on the implications for Peter Parker in the wake of the events of Spider-Man Far from Home.

When Marvel Studios originally framed Far from Home as an epilogue to Phase 3, I’m sure that no one could have imagined the extent to which the Spider-Man sequel would revolve around Tony Stark’s legacy. The emotional notes were somewhat predictable, but the tangible effects of Tony’s death were not. In many ways, the MCU version of Mysterio represented the embodiment of all of Tony’s faults — the sins of the father come crashing down on his spiritual son and would-be successor. But it didn’t end there. Tony would go a step further by handing off a literal physical legacy — a mcguffin with the potential to re-shape the rest of Peter’s life— in the form of the E.D.I.T.H. technology. And it’s in the fallout of this bequeathing that we may yet see an adaptation of one of the most famous of Iron Man stories played out as a Spider-Man sequel.

Stark Contrast
The MCU incarnation of Tony Stark could be a haunted character, much as he is often portrayed in the comics. But that movie angst stemmed from a different source than the comics. As is shown particularly in Iron Man 3 and Avengers Age of Ultron, RDJ’s Stark struggled under the weight of responsibility for Earth’s protection after the “Battle of New York.” “Cursed with knowledge” of what lurked beyond the stars, this would be his obsession and the guiding force behind his development of the Iron Legion and Ultron. And that bent is unique to the Marvel cinematic universe.

In the comics, Stark could also be driven at times to mania and paranoia — but it wasn’t because he was failing to change the world enough. On the contrary, his worry stemmed from the potential for his inventions to escape his control — for his tech to fall into the wrong hands. In many ways, the cinematic Tony Stark could be imagined as the comic book variant’s worst nightmare — someone so eager to put his imprint on the world that he had failed to account for all possible consequences. It’s not surprising then that this theme, as represented in the famous “Armor Wars” story line, couldn’t be reconciled with the story arcs and characterization planned for Downey’s role. However, there may now be a clear path for it to play out in the life of a closely related hero also defined by his sense of responsibility.

Armor Wars is an interesting story arc in that it’s a globe-spanning tale that forces Iron Man to interact with a long list of similar armored characters inhabiting the Marvel universe: Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man, Mauler, The Beetle, and many more. In the 1987–1988 Armor Wars story — originally called “Stark Wars”— Tony learns that the villain known as Spymaster has stolen numerous weapon and armor designs from Stark Enterprises and has sold them to entities ranging from petty criminals to various domestic and foreign governments. Incensed by the idea that his technology is being used without his involvement or permission, Stark initially attempts to achieve a legal resolution but is rebuffed by the courts. At this point, he goes on a vigilante crusade against friend and foe alike to defeat and disable any armored character he believes to be using some aspect of his technology. In the midst of this crusade, Stark Enterprises and the Avengers both publicly break ties with Iron Man and the hero finds himself the subject of a worldwide manhunt — one that only ends when the Iron Man armor is seemingly destroyed by a nuclear missile attack.

While it’s not a perfect fit — and I’d fully expect Disney to take its usual liberties with the source material — I believe that Marvel Studios is well positioned to put Peter Parker through a very similar gauntlet. (Pun intended.) Let’s remember our hero’s circumstances at the end of Far from Home: he’s a fugitive on the run and in possession of technology coveted by every villain, villain group, and government in the world. Sound familiar?

First Name: Edith. Last Name: McGuffin.
Of course, some aspects of the Armor Wars would be more difficult to reconcile as part of what would essentially be an E.D.I.T.H. Wars story. Two of the biggest disappointments of the Iron Man sequels have to be the omission of Titanium Man and Crimson Dynamo, but pitting one or both of them against Spider-Man alone would be a mismatch. So unless Peter would manage to collect some allies — Prowler, perhaps? — they’d have to miss the cut once again in spite of their government’s logical interest in a key to Stark’s technology. That means the participants in this re-imagined Armor Wars would have to skew lower on the power scale — The Beetle, The Mauler and a few others who have conveniently sparred with Spider-Man in the comics.

Alternatively, Marvel could do what it has done in several previous films and blend two classic stories. As I’ve mentioned in a prior essay, many fans have long-anticipated the depiction of the Sinister Six in the MCU — and Otto Octavius has used satellites in his strategems in the past, so it’s not difficult to imagine him seeking access to E.D.I.T.H.

Ultimately, the most important elements are already in place — as you have an intensely responsible character who will have to fight to keep hold of a technology that will inevitably harm innocents if it falls into the wrong hands. In this way, Marvel and Disney could manage to have their cake and eat it too — as they will have spread Robert Downey Jr.’s movie appearances across the plot lines they wanted to prioritize while still managing to leave the door open to pillage Iron Man’s back catalog of plot lines for years following his departure. And that, more than anything Quentin Beck planned or accomplished, could be the most impressive feat of smoke in mirrors to come out of Phase 3’s final film.