Jim Lee Hand-Delivered Sketches to Essential Workers on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, DC publisher and superstar comics artist Jim Lee drove around Southern California, giving out some sketches to fans who were stuck on the job working as essential workers amid the holidays and a global pandemic. Lee, whose sketches and original art are among some of the most sought-after and expensive of any comics artist currently working, put out a bat-signal (so to speak) to fans on social media before driving around to share some love on the night before Christmas. The replies were exactly as excited (and plentiful) as you might guess, although Lee — doing this seemingly in his own car and with his family — could only get so much work done in one night.

Lee seems to be moved by the crises going on in the world right now, having auctioned off dozens of original sketches to benefit charity near the start of the pandemic. The first images here are, as you might expect if you pay attention to Lee’s recent sketches, Batman-focused.

You can see some of the images below.

As the holiday season has rolled on, the pandemic has seen a resurgence. Presumably fueled by gatherings where people are with their family and loved ones, and thus feel safer and are less likely to socially distance, case counts and COVID-19 deaths are soaring everywhere, but Los Angeles County is one of the hardest-hit spots in the U.S. It is no surprise, then, that Lee has a lot of affection for medical professionals in his area, and that so many of them found themselves working through the holiday.

One of the images seen above — the Wonder Woman, which feels particularly timely given that Warner Bros. released Wonder Woman 1984 to theaters and HBO Max on Christmas — was actually drawn in the car while traveling from one fan to another. Each image is pretty timely to 2020, featuring heroes and villains wearing surgical masks.