Comic book superstar Jim Lee took time out of his busy day to give Prodigeek the details of his many projects from his art on All-Star Batman and Wildcats to running Wildstorm to his work on the upcoming DC MMO video game. Come back tomorrow for the second part of Lee’s first Prodigeek interview. Here’s part one.

Click here for part two.

Prodigeek - How’s All-Star Batman and Robin going?

Jim Lee - It’s going really well. I’m working on All-Star Batman and Robin #9, finishing that up. Frank’s been writing great scripts. It’ll make for a great trade. It’s a big story. Much bigger than either of us originally envisioned it to be. But the great thing is taking the time to explore the world that he’s created. We’re doing a lot of cool stuff with a lot of characters, not just Batman. Not just Robin and Gotham. There’s Black Canary and the Joker, Green Lantern, Justice League. It’s a world bigger than just Batman.

Prodigeek - What attracted you to working on All-Star Batman, especially after your run on the regular Batman title?

Jim Lee - Oh it was definitely the chance to work with Frank Miller. He’s the guy that got me into comics. I was a fan through his work. I’ve always admired everything he’s done, not just the early era of old Batman stuff, but the stuff he did for Dark Horse, Sin City, 300. I think he’s one of the all-time great talents and you just cannot pass up opportunities like that.

Prodigeek - How do you feel your work on Hush influenced your All-Star Batman?

Jim Lee - Well there’s some similarities. There’s only so much you can change. Part of your style becomes part of you, like your handwriting or your signature. But definitely All-Star Batman and Robin, to me, is bigger and more over the top, if that’s even possible. It’s more expressionistic than the world in Hush. I think that ties into how I think Frank sees his own work. He’s into very big and bold shapes - big, bold images and iconic graphic elements delivering a lot of punch. So if you look, for example, at how I drew Gotham City in ASBR versus Hush, Gotham City is more mystical looking in ASBR. It’s almost unbelievable in terms of its height and constructions and the shapes of the buildings, but it’s meant to illicit more of a fantastical, lyrical sort of quality. And when you get to Batman, he’s a stark contrast. You’ve got Batman, he’s scruffier and dirtier and just a meaner type of character in ASBR than he is in Hush. They couldn’t be further part in that respect.

Prodigeek - What’s the collaboration been like between you and Frank Miller?

Jim Lee - Oh it’s been a blast. He’s an artist. He knows how to write for artists so the images he’s giving are awesome. Just a lot of room to just stroke myself. And then the storytelling. I’m learning a lot just from looking and thinking about how he breaks down sequences. The instructions are fairly clear in the scripts so there’s never a point where I go, like man what do you think he means by this, how do I draw this. If anything the first image that comes to mind is the one that I go wow, this is the way Frank would do it. Then I have to think well how would I do it. I mean that’s how monster of a fan of Frank’s work. I read the scripts. I only see how he would interpret it and draw it out.

Prodigeek - And how long do you plan to stay on the title?

Jim Lee - Hopefully till we’re done. It’s going to run more than 12 issues. I don’t want to jinx it. It is a bigger story than I originally envisioned and it would not surprise me at all if we went past 12. Assuming I’m on issue 9, I think we have a ways to go.

Prodigeek - What’s the status of Wildcats?

Jim Lee - I just got the script for #2 a week and a half ago. And so when I have down time I will be working on that. But even then I want to get more than one issue done, then put it out and then wait another year essentially. So I think the goal will be to get a bunch of them stock piled and then come back out firing on all cylinders. I still want to do [Wildcats] as does [writer Grant Morrison]. We both took on a lot of work and fell behind on a lot of different things, but I know he wants to see it through and so do I. So it’s going to be a really fun journey. I mean # 2 is incredibly bizarre, interesting, and cool. I mean, it’s obviously Grant. It’s going to be a lot of fun drawing that.

Prodigeek - And how are you feeling the scheduling and lateness on the title?

Jim Lee - I think last year I definitely hit a wall - a lot of personal stuff going on that really impeded and prevented me from focusing on drawing. That’s really the bottom line. It wasn’t Frank’s fault. It was clearly on my shoulders. A lot of that personal stuff has been resolved and is getting resolved so I can find the time to get back to work. It’s great to be able to do that.

Prodigeek - How are you feeling about things at Wildstorm?

Jim Lee - Things are good. Very busy. We have more projects going on that I think in the entire history of the company. And that’s exciting, but at the same time it can be a little draining cause we’re jumping from meeting to meeting and conference call to conference call.

The stuff we’re doing with Heroes is really exciting and that’s got a huge fan base. Hottest show on TV and so we’re involved with that. There’s a lot of opportunities there. And now World of Warcraft is a huge huge game and we’re really excited to see how the comics come out. There’s a lot of horror lines. We have stuff going on with the Wildstorm Universe itself and things that, I think, are unprecedented and unique and novel. So you’ll see that kind of stuff happening so we have stuff cooking on every single front which is pretty exciting.

Prodigeek - How do you feel about Wildstorm under the DC banner almost nine years after? How do you think the comic industry looks at Wildstorm these days?

Jim Lee - I think it’s definitely different. You can’t have that kind of thing happen and not change. The thing is we used to have a whole assortment of books and lines and now I think one of the issues we have to sort of address is what does Wildstorm mean. Is it our Wildstorm universe or books. Is it these license books? Is it creator books that are in their own world? I think what we stand for is broader than that. And there’s a lot of stuff we’re doing visually that I can’t really discuss. We’re on the forefront of creating different media, new media. We’re pretty tech savvy here. And we’re pretty quick on our feet in terms of our ability to take on new projects from start to finish. So in that respect we fill a niche that didn’t exist at DC before so that’s kind of changed, some of our reasons for being I guess.

So we have a lot of new projects. A lot of what we do because we don’t have the staple heads like Superman and Batman. You’re as good as your last big comic book. And there’s a huge difference between a project like World of Warcraft or even Ex Machina. You get one or two of those a year and that makes a huge difference in the way you’re perceived. So when Black Dossier came out, I think people will be reminded of what we’re capable of doing. I’ve been around long enough to know it ebbs and flows. And right now I feel like we’re right at the crest, we’re beginning another big wave.

Prodigeek - And how’s the relation with DC?

Jim Lee - It’s good. I just got back from a retreat back East. DC has the infrastructure. they really understand and recognize new trends in the business and capitalize on that stuff. Introducing in a way the talent of people from TV and movies and literature and books into the world of comics. Who’d ever thought a comic book based on a TV show would be as big of a hit as Heroes is. And so the business has changed quite a bit so it’s exciting to be at the forefront. I think DC really is in that position because of everything that’s in the direct market. How aggressively, it’s always had a backlist trade paperback program. All that vision really has paid off in recent years. It’s really taken off for them.

Prodigeek - How have you been balancing your various hats in the comic industry?

Jim Lee - I think I have a healthy balance of sort of a tripod of things I’m responsible for. Wildstorm being one of them. My personal work with ASBR and then the DCMMO. The stuff that falls under Wildstorm, editorial I’m really off that team. They handle a lot of that stuff. I’m involved in meeting with creators and acquiring new projects for our line. But there’s a lot of stuff I do in terms of when we’re picking up licensees or projects like World of Warcraft or I’m involved in doing variant covers, taking creative meetings to sort of jam on ideas, ways to make their properties stand out in the marketplace, and some marketing stuff. So there’s a lot of stuff like that that goes on that you don’t see on paper.

And then the DCMMO takes up a lot of time: working on a lot of the materials, giving notes, drawing on my Cintiq, which is a computer that you can draw on the screen. So drawing comics actually is probably the most time consuming part of it. It’s a nice way to kind of retreat from the demands of all this other stuff I’m working on.

Prodigeek - How did you get involved in the World of Warcraft comic?

Jim Lee - I’m just a big fan of the game. I wanted to go after the license, partly for selfish reasons. I could get the license, I could draw these characters. And it’s a lot of fun. You know, when you’re a kid you draw what you like. If you just saw Star Wars, you’d go home and you’d draw a picture [of Star Wars]. For me, I like to draw a lot of the stuff I’m a fan of, in the case of World of Warcraft, or in situations where we’re picking up a movie license and we get to play around the concepts and the themes and break them down into comic book projects.

Prodigeek – Who’s your World of Warcraft character?

I have like a level 56 priest but I’ve just been kinda swamped with deadlines. But I played a Horde undead priest. I think as I start playing more on my own, I expect my character to become a shadow priest. It’s a lot of fun.

Check out Jim Lee’s work on All-Star Batman and Robin as well as all things Wildstorm. I believe he makes 25 cents for every single comic you buy.