Industry legend Chris Claremont is best known for his epic sixteen-year run on Uncanny X-Men. Claremont’ s focus on the themes of prejudice and tolerance struck at the hearts of comics fans, and he built an unparalleled following during the next three decades. Under his pen, the X-Men franchise spawned a vast array of spin-offs, many of them written by Claremont himself. His other credits include Iron Fist, Ms. Marvel, Power Man and Spider-Woman. Claremont has returned to the X-Men universe in New Exiles, GeNext, X-Men Forever, Chaos War: X-Men and Nightcrawler.
Jim Lee is perhaps today’ s hottest comic-book artist. Since the late ’ 80s, his work for Marvel, DC and Image — the company he helped found — has set trends that survive to this day. After honing his skills with memorable runs on Alpha Flight and Punisher War Journal, Lee rose to prominence on Uncanny X-Men. Lee then revamped the mutant team’ s look and helped launch the second X-Men series, whose first issue remains one of the best-selling comic books of all time. In 1992, he and other artists formed Image Comics. Lee’ s group of titles, published under the Wildstorm Productions imprint, included the mega-popular WildC. A. T. s, Stormwatch and Gen13. Under Wildstorm’ s sub-imprint Homage Comics, he published Kurt Busiek’ s Astro City and Strangers in Paradise, both of which became major fan favorites. Lee returned to Marvel in 1996, relaunching Fantastic Four as part of the “ Heroes Reborn” event. Subsequently selling Wildstorm to DC Comics, Lee went on to pencil Batman, Superman and WildC. A. T. s. Later, as DC Comics’ co-publisher, he helped revamp and reconceptualize the company’ s entire lineup.
