by Javier Perez
Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane gave WonderCon 2025 attendees insight into their work before establishing Image Comics and the infamous meeting at the Marvel Comics offices. At the duo’s “Two Legends” panel, comic fans heard about the start of Lee and McFarlane’s work in comics, their not-so-serious rivalry, and the famous morning meeting at Marvel to let their office know they would make their own path.
“We didn’t plan much for this panel but this will be a bit of an X. We will talk about where we started, where we came together at Image,” McFarlane explained to the comic fans piling into the Anaheim Convention Center’s Hall 100 to hear these two legends of the comic industry.
The panel started with a quick background of Lee’s childhood and how comic books weren’t taken seriously and seen as a childish hobby.
McFarlane started the conversation, saying, “So let me ask you a question because I ran into this when I was younger before I broke into comics. When people found out that you collected comic books, I mean I started collecting at 16.”
“Because you were a jock!” Lee said.
“Yes, I was a jock but when they found out you collected comic books they thought you were mentally arrested, right?” McFarlane asked.
Lee reassured the crowd, “That might be true. (Laughs.) Not you guys.”
“So my parents hated comic books, it was just an impediment but I remember back then you would go to the barber and they would have a pile of comics on the table to keep the kids busy. And I remember it was an issue of Tarzan fighting a cheetah and I tried to find that comic book but almost every 3rd comic he’s fighting a cheetah.” said Lee.
Retelling his earliest connection to comics, Lee continued, “But I remember that image and again, I didn’t have an allowance. My parents weren’t really fond of me reading comics,” “I would basically steal, beg, borrow. There were a bunch of other kids in the neighborhood that had comics. There was this one older kid who literally had a cardboard box, like a big box and all the comics were just piled in there. Not even bagged and boarded, just a pile of comics. And we’d go in and give him a nickel and grab a comic.”
McFarlane then took a moment to question why some fandoms were socially acceptable and why comics weren’t considered “cool” when he was younger.
“Let me also say what was odd. The people that would make fun of me with my comic collection at 16 or 17. They would go: ‘Oh Todd, you collect comics?’ and look each other side eye and roll their eyes.But then I would ask. What are you doing?‘Oh we are going to go to Star Wars and Indiana Jones and that James Bond movie where the car jumps off the cliff…’
“Like they could have their fantasy, that was perfectly okay because it was out in theaters and everyone was doing it but I couldn’t have my fantasy at that point so you have to sort of hide it from people,” laughed McFarlane.
“Yea, well James Bond didn’t wear his underwear outside of his pants so i think that’s a piece of it.” Lee quipped.
They continued on how back in those days, comics were a thing you had to hide and most people didn’t think much of them, especially Jim Lee’s parents.
“So yea, my comics would be in the closet, and I would come home every now and then from highschool and they were no longer in the closet. So I’d ask my mom ‘where are my comics?’ and she would point to the trash can” Lee told the crowd that gasped at the idea of something like that happening.
Todd was quick to join in “here is a story you never hear;‘Dad threw out all your sht”. Dad never does that, it’s always mom’. Millions and millions of dollars worth of cards, comics and video gone” McFarlane joked. “The GDP of this country would be much higher if you didn’t clean up sht”
Both speakers tried to impress on the audience the importance of encouraging young people to read comics.
“I’ve told this story before and when I repeat it back to my parents they don’t have any recollection of this moment that to me was very big. As a kid I loved to play baseball; I still play nowadays. At some point they asked if that doesn’t work out, what do you want to do? And I said ‘I want to be an artist’ and the thing that they did that they don’t really recall is that I said that and then 3 months later I got a drafting table underneath the Christmas tree” explained McFarlane.
“Basically I took it as if I had said I wanted to play baseball, they would have gotten me a glove. If I had wanted to be a drummer they would have got a drum set but I said I wanted to be an artist and they said ‘let’s get you something to draw on”. On that table, I drew every single page of Spiderman, Hulk, Batman on that table that they got me. I still have it today and they don’t know the impact that support had” said McFarlane.
Lee didn’t find much support from his parents to be a comic artist and one day it blew over.
“After I graduated from college we just had this really horrendous fight, we were screaming at each other and yelling, it was really brutal and I ultimately walked out of the house. I was 21 but we lived in the suburbs so after a couple blocks I asked myself ‘where the hell am I walking to?’ But my Dad ran out of the house for me and saw how much this meant to me” said Lee.
“I basically told them I was going to take one year off and pursue it.” Lee continued.
McFarlane mentioned that after working 3 years in the industry, he got to draw the Hulk and it was big because his parents knew who that was and that gave him legitimacy.
“It was like because I was finally drawing a character they had heard off, I had finally made it. But I was ‘Dad, I’ve been doing this for years, I got married last year. How did you think we paid the bills?’ laughed McFarlane.
Jim Lee explained that he took his portafolio to comic book conventions and that in turn got him a meeting at the Marvel offices. He was hired on the spot and started with Alpha Flight, which then in turn led to working on The Punisher. As his career progressed his parents started to become so encouraging of his comic career that they almost made it a competition.
“I had moved out but I would come back home and they would ask me. ‘Jim, how come you aren’t number #1 in Wizard magazine? This Todd MacFarlane guy is #1 and you are #3’ Goddamn I cannot make you guys happy” Lee exclaimed.
“I will say I never felt in competition artistically with Jim because I’ve always conceded that Jim is a better artist than I am. He draws the body 10 times better than I do and I think part of my appeal was the dynamics and the graphics of it way more than the raw drawing” Todd mentioned.
“To announce this panel I posted a drawing, a recreation of your Spider Man #1 and it was so illuminating to me by deconstructing your style. You are more in the cartoonist Kirby lane and I’m more in the Niel Adams kind of lane trying to make realistic looking super heroes but what I got out of it is the energy that you put into the lines.” said Lee.
As both creators got further along their career they would talk to each other and other creators. on the phone for hours. Through these conversations they found out Erik Larsson and Rob Liefeld were coming out with their own books and the thought of doing all of these books together was the starting idea for Image comics. Not much later after that Rob and Todd were able to get Jim Valentino on board.
“The original intent of Image comic books at that point was 4 of us heading to New York and telling the heads at Marvel that we were quitting. And this is where to me is truly the foundation of why Image comic book is here 30 years later. By accident I end up being in the same room as Jim Lee” explained McFarlane.
“And Jim asked a simple question ‘Hey, Todd what are you doing here?’ and I tell him we have a meeting the next morning and I give him the rundown. For me, Jim saying ‘yes’ was the moment because we all looked like rebels. Jim was the consummate employee from my perspective and I thought if we come in with Jim Lee that will be the shockwave because if Jim can leave then anyone could leave” said Todd McFarlane.
“I joined because of you and might have sounded hesitant to join but I was in. I just needed to know more details so I could explain to my parents why I was leaving the top selling book to go do our own company” answered Lee. “But I felt confident in your vision of the company and I felt that if we all banded together we would have been stronger”
Then there was the addition of Whilce Portacio to the group and on the last night before the meeting by chance McFarlane happened to see Mark Silvestri at an art auction.
“I gave him the sales pitch and it was 1AM. I told him he had to let me know by 7:30 in the morning because we had an 8 o’clock meeting and to his word, Mark phoned me up at 7:30 and said ‘I am in’. We went into the meeting and basically said we were leaving
Now we didn’t ask for trademarks or copyrights and all those things that they said. From my recollection we just said ‘we are leaving, these are the reasons why and if it were me, I’d close the barn door because next week another 7 could be leaving” said McFarlane.
“But then the next day you said ‘Let’s go over to DC and tell them the same thing’ and in my head I’m thinking…I’ve never done any work for DC, I don’t know anyone at DC, maybe if this blows over I might need to work at DC” Lee joked. “Maybe someday I’ll run DC, who knows?.
McFarlane concluded the panel with the moment they knew Image was going to make it.
“There are moments in life that just get burned into your mind and I remember this like a movie. When we walked out of that meeting, the moment came when we walked into the elevator Tom DeFalco (Marvel editor in chief at the time) said as the elevator door closed ‘Hey, if it doesn’t work out you are welcome back’ and that burned me.” McFarLane continued
“And when that door closed I remember turning to Jim and saying ‘They think we are stupid and I knew that we weren’t stupid for two big reasons: we had Jim Lee on our team and my Dad had been in the printing business for 40 years and if there was one thing i could do was printing stuff but i took what he said as ‘if you fail’ not as ‘if it doesn’t work out’ and i just went ‘No’ until the day i die there will be an Image eye at least on one book and lucky with the momentum we are here 30 years later and the great pleasure i have with Image is that it will outlive us” continued McFarLane.
