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
When I do my best work, the stories tend to be pretty emotionally-charged.
When I'm doing the Justice League stuff, my point of view is always coming through Buddy. And he's a dad, and there's stuff about his life that I relate to with my life, and I can also take the abilities of animals, which a lot of people don't know about me.
When you're a kid, you're not as corrupted by the world at large. You're not corrupted by prejudices. You're much more open-minded. Much more interested in the world around you. 'Sweet Tooth' is about the world returning to that kind of place.
When I approached 'Animal Man,' I approached it as if it wasn't a reboot, as if the Grant Morrison and Jamie Delano stuff happened. I mean, as much as I could make it all make sense, it still all happened.
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.
A lot of cinematic influences on 'Descender' - Kubrick for sure. '2001: A Space Odyssey' is my favorite movie. It has been since I was 12. I just love that film.
There's a lot of mystery just inherent in the story of 'Descender.' There's sort of a central mystery that runs throughout it.
There's been Hollywood interest in a lot of the stuff that I've done, but 'Descender''s felt different right from the start for whatever reason. I don't know if that's because a lot of my other stuff's a little more idiosyncratic, and 'Descender' has a bit more of a high concept to it.
You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative.
You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know?
'Animal Man' and 'Swamp Thing' have so many commonalities in tone and mood.
Specifically, in Canada, the First Nations are often overlooked in pop culture or in general, and when things are reported about our First Nations, it's often negative things - about the hardships they face and what-not.