Bob Budiansky On The Legacy Of Jim Lee’s X-Men Trading Card Art

I love that one! Any others?

One was really a little offbeat character from X-Factor named Strong Guy. I don’t even know if he’s around anymore, but he’s this huge bulky guy. He was a happy-go-lucky, free spirit guy. [On] that particular card, Jim Lee drew him on what looked like a tropical island with palm trees, with Polaris, another member of X-Factor who’s tiny compared to Strong Guy, perched on his bicep. She’s a parrot almost, but she’s Polaris, and she looks terrific in that scene, and there’s this tropical background. The whimsical nature of it, the juxtaposition of those two characters really made that card for me.

Perhaps more traditionally among the villains, Magneto is my favorite card because he just exudes power, just the way you want Magneto to look in any particular situation. [See Jim Lee’s work above, from “X-Men (1991), #1”] If you had to pick one single representative image, this is it. You don’t even see his face. He’s a couple of eyes beneath the helmet, but his body language and what’s going on around him, the metal objects are whirling around him… makes the perfect Magneto image. I like that. 

There’s a character named Mojo who’s like a fat, blob-ish character […] and Jim brought the correct level of menace and insanity to his expression. It really drew me in as a very compelling image of that particular character. Those are among the ones that stand out for me.

I’m glad you brought up Paul, because one of my next questions was about Paul’s work. He used some interesting methods, and I was hoping you could talk about them!

The method he was using wasn’t that unusual, [but] perhaps the media that he wound up using was unusual. The method he was using was something called Blue Line Coloring. At that time, before computer coloring came along (which was much more sophisticated than the coloring of that era and the comic books that I grew up with), comic books were limited to a very … they had a very limited palette. 

If you know of comic books pre-computer age, you could look at the little dots on them, and there’s different shades of red and blue and yellow. It’s very limited. When it came to higher-end projects, which were coming online more and more in the ’80s, and then the ’90s, this new process […] called Blue Line Coloring came along. 

I love that one! Any others?

One was really a little offbeat character from X-Factor named Strong Guy. I don’t even know if he’s around anymore, but he’s this huge bulky guy. He was a happy-go-lucky, free spirit guy. [On] that particular card, Jim Lee drew him on what looked like a tropical island with palm trees, with Polaris, another member of X-Factor who’s tiny compared to Strong Guy, perched on his bicep. She’s a parrot almost, but she’s Polaris, and she looks terrific in that scene, and there’s this tropical background. The whimsical nature of it, the juxtaposition of those two characters really made that card for me.

Perhaps more traditionally among the villains, Magneto is my favorite card because he just exudes power, just the way you want Magneto to look in any particular situation. [See Jim Lee’s work above, from “X-Men (1991), #1”] If you had to pick one single representative image, this is it. You don’t even see his face. He’s a couple of eyes beneath the helmet, but his body language and what’s going on around him, the metal objects are whirling around him… makes the perfect Magneto image. I like that. 

There’s a character named Mojo who’s like a fat, blob-ish character […] and Jim brought the correct level of menace and insanity to his expression. It really drew me in as a very compelling image of that particular character. Those are among the ones that stand out for me.

I’m glad you brought up Paul, because one of my next questions was about Paul’s work. He used some interesting methods, and I was hoping you could talk about them!

The method he was using wasn’t that unusual, [but] perhaps the media that he wound up using was unusual. The method he was using was something called Blue Line Coloring. At that time, before computer coloring came along (which was much more sophisticated than the coloring of that era and the comic books that I grew up with), comic books were limited to a very … they had a very limited palette. 

If you know of comic books pre-computer age, you could look at the little dots on them, and there’s different shades of red and blue and yellow. It’s very limited. When it came to higher-end projects, which were coming online more and more in the ’80s, and then the ’90s, this new process […] called Blue Line Coloring came along.