Icons: The DC Comics and WildStorm Art of Jim Lee

Annunciato circa un anno fa, il volume Icons: The DC Comics and WildStorm Art of Jim Lee è stato a lungo vittima di costanti rinvii. Altrettanto costantemente monitorati dai fan della Legione: in quelle pagine infatti, oltre a una cospicua galleria di illustrazioni del penciler di origini coreane, era prevista anche la presenza di una storiella inedita del team futuribile, sceneggiata per l’occasione dall’iperattivo Paul Levitz.

Incredibile ma vero, pare che il tomo, edito da Titan Books, abbia finalmente fatto il suo debutto sugli scaffali dei bookstores internazionali. Ne ha dato notizia lo stesso Lee, dal palco della conferenza a lui dedicata durante lo scorso New York Comic Con (fonte: Comic Book Resources):

A special edition of Jim Lee’s new art book, “ICONS: The DC Comics and Wildstorm Art of Jim Lee” premiered at New York Comic-Con, and the popular creatorwas more than happy to show it off and discuss it with fans during his spotlight panel. The book is late, he explained, because it took him so long to finish the Legion of Super Heroes story that is included in it.

L’attento Legion Omnicom ha inoltre scremato dalla rete altri quotes a tema da parte dell’attuale Co-Publisher DC, recentemente intervistato da MTV Splash Page…

MTV: When you went through the book, remembering some of these characters and your work with them, were there any that made you think, “Hey, I want to work with that character again.”

LEE: Sure, there’s a whole section where I did Legion of Superheroes. I loved the fact that when Dave Cockrum worked on those books — and actually on X-Men as well — he just sat down and created costumes, and wouldn’t even necessarily know who those characters were. He just kind of created these looks. I’ve always been inspired by that kind of notion, so I just kind of sat down and just started sketching costumes and seeing what worked and what didn’t work, and it was all very rough draft stuff. None of that stuff was thought out — it was just kind of spur-of-the-moment, you know? Going with the moment?

And I liked how a lot of them turned out, so it just got me excited by the idea of actually working on these costumes. The Legion has gone through all these eras where they all had major fashion changes in the styles of costumes that they’ve had, and that’s always been part of their lore, I guess. So the idea of working on that and redefining them for the 30th Century was something that was very appealing to me.

…e da Publishers Weekly:

PWCW: You’ve also got brand new art, both on the dust jacket, and in an all-new Legion of Super-Heroes story, written by Paul Levitz. What can we expect from the story and does it fit into current Legion canon?

JL: It can if you want it to. We expressly made a story where it’s more fantastical in nature. It’s the Miracle Machine and so it kind of takes the thoughts of whatever’s near it and makes it reality in their mind. That story came about with me and Paul just kind of talking about our favorite Legion stories and our favorite Legionnaires and we crafted that short story together and then he wrote it out after that. It’s really the chance to get to work with Paul, really the quintessential Legion writer. I was having a lot of fun drawing the characters but once Paul put the dialogue in, because we didn’t work full script on this issue, the characters really came to life.

Collage delle variant cover legionarie disegnate da Jim Lee (clicca per ingrandire)

Non ho ancora avuto il volume tra le mani, ma da fan del lavoro di Lee non posso che attenderlo con ansia. Aspettatevi a suo tempo, come mia abitudine, un’approfondita recensione, se non altro relativa alla sezione con Superboy e soci. E, chissà, magari anche una gallery.
Nel frattempo, concludo cogliendo l’occasione per mostrare l’altra recente fatica Legion-related dell’artista di “WildC.A.T.S.” e “Batman: Hush”, e cioè il collage finale delle variant cover che egli ha realizzato per i primi sei numeri del “volume six”: tutte le copertine, infatti, sono componibili in un unico grande poster che, anche grazie all’utilizzo di loghi vintage, ripercorre idealmente la carriera editoriale della Legione Silver Age. Per osservare come si deve il patchwork, cliccate sull’immagine in alto per ingrandirla.