Jeff Lemire
Jeff Lemire
Jeff Lemireis a Canadian cartoonist. He is the author of titles including the Essex County Trilogy, Sweet Tooth, The Nobody, and Animal Man. Lemire is known for his moody, humanistic stories and sketchy, cinematic, black-and-white art. As of early 2016, Lemire writes All-New Hawkeye, Extraordinary X-Men, Moon Knight and Old Man Logan for Marvel, Descender and Plutona for Image, and Bloodshot Reborn for Valiant...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth21 March 1976
CountryCanada
I feel like if you really know the ending right from the beginning, you can add so many subtleties and little things later that will pay off and be more consistent and more rewarding for the reader.
I feel like there are comic book artists who are comic book artists, and then there's comic book artists who are cartoonists.
I can't really write anything without knowing the ending. I don't know how people do that. Even with my superhero stuff, I have to know at least where I want to take the characters and what the ending of my story with them will be. I just can't structure stories or character arcs and stuff without knowing the endpoint.
I enjoyed my time at DC. Dan Didio, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee were great to me, and I'm very grateful for the opportunities they gave me. Having said that, I think it's important to try new things and work with new people to keep myself fresh.
'Hawkeye' is much more intimate than any of the superhero works I've done before.
There are so many versions of Batman that I love so much from different artists that I had to almost stop trying to draw those versions and get past that and just draw the Jeff Lemire version of Batman eventually.
There are so many books I love for different reasons. For superhero stuff, I always go back to Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' or his 'Swamp Thing' run. Those are my two favorites, and there are indie books that I really love, like Eddie Campbell's 'Alec' books and 'From Hell.'
I write and draw from the gut. I often don't know what my stories are about until they're done.
When I was offered 'Hawkeye,' it was very intimidating at first because that book is so loved and so successful, commercially and critically. The worst thing you could do is try to imitate what they did because, in the end, you're just going to get a watered-down version of what they did.
We want to take our time with 'Descender' and let the story unfold at its own pace. But we have carefully planned each world and worked to give each its own look and feel. And each of the 9 core worlds will play a role in the series.
There are certain things in 'Descender' that I've dealt with in the past. I think you can see a direct parallel with Sweet Tooth in TIM-21.
I would love to learn archery. Unfortunately I'm too busy writing and drawing ten thousand comics a month. Maybe one day!
When I first seriously decided to become a cartoonist would have been '99/2000, right before 9/11. I've been writing and illustrating stories in the world post-9/11 since then, watching the world change around me.
I don't play video games because I know that if I ever started, I'd never be able to maintain a career again.