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Jae Lee Gets Wired by Mike-oh

One more example of how Jae Lee's ink pen just oozes sex.

Jae Lee Illustrates for Wired Magazine. Last month, Wired Magazine ran an eight page article about Gizmondo, the flash-in-the-pan video game platform that soared to great heights apparently just to make their crash and burn all the more spectacular. Randall Sullivan tells the story about Bo Stefan Eriksson, former Gizmondo director and leader of the so-called Uppsala Mafia who had been among other things convicted of fraud, kidnapping and other crimes in Sweden. It's a story that you might expect to read about in the pages of an Ed Brubaker comic book. Which is perhaps the reason why Wired Magazine contracted the talents of dark and moody master comic book artist, Jae Lee, to illustrate this wild ride.

Jae Lee's distinctive artwork has been gracing the pages of comic books for years. His first work for Marvel was on a Wolverine short story which won him the regular art chores on Namor. His dark, heavily inked pages were perfect for the wet and mysterious world of the Prince of Atlantis and helped establish him as a breakout talent. Lee's art evolved into a unique style of drippy, hairy, spooling whisps of black that take the form of fantastic creature, heroes, machines, and landscapes. Lee creates a universe encased in wet leather and long spikes, hypodermic needles, and impossibly razor thin claws. Characters seem to be born out of the blackness, poured out of the ink bottle and brought to life with some form of dark art.

Some of Jae Lee's best work include mini-series he did for Marvel, such as Fantastic Four 1,2,3,4, The Inhumans, The Sentry, and Hulk & Thing: Hard Knocks as well as his own creator owned series, Hellshock. He is now working on a comic book version of Dark Tower with writer Stephen King. He has also illustrated novels before including a recent printing of Bram Stroker's Dracula.

Given Lee's popularity and success as an artist, I should not have been surprised to see his art gracing the pages of Wired Magazine. But happily surprised I was. It's another sign of comic book's growing influence on our culture. Thanks in part to the inspiring work of great creators like Jae Lee.

You can check out all of Jae Lee's Wired art and read the Randall Sullivan's story right here where story and art are included together as they were presented in Wired Magazine, October 2006.

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