SCOTT WILLIAMS: INKER -- JIM LEE: PENCILLER: WICKED TAG TEAM FOR THE AGES & PAGES.
PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on the inking over pencils prowess, majesty, and badassery that is the cover art to "X-MEN" Vol. 2 #5. February, 1992. Marvel Comics. Artwork by Jim Lee & Scott Williams.
SYFY: "Your partnership with Jim is how I think most fans identify you. Your partnership has created so many killer comics memories. But if we're being honest, Scott, you probably could have picked an easier penciler to ink all the time. Jim's detailed art can't be easy to ink!"
SCOTT WILLIAMS: "No one held a gun to my head. I could have walked away at any time! (Laughs) I think it went both ways and I think Jim would probably say the same thing. I had a pretty established inking style when Jim got into the business, and he liked it and he kind of ran with it. He kind of penciled to my strengths. There was a lot of things that he would put in the pencils, which weren't really native to his style, but sort of fit the type of line and the type of look that I was looking for. So when you go back and look at some of the early pencils that he did, you'll find a lot of my line work in his pencils because he would anticipate that that's what I was going to do anyway. So he put it in there.
I think as time has gone by, his style has sort of cemented itself within, and the type of work that I think he wants to see has kind of been fairly cemented. So I've actually adapted. I've adopted some of the things that he does. I've tried. When he inks himself and we've all seen it [on his social media], it's really energetic. It's way more organic. He's not quite as fussy as I am. Um, he's not quite as OCD on line work as I am. When I think of stuff, I tend to rein it in, it's just sort of who I am as an inker, but as far as borrowing things, I have learned to… it's not about letting things go, it's about allowing happy accidents to happen more, and to be mindful of the fact that just because something is very precise does not make it better.
If you can put some information down quickly, spontaneously and kind of have it, have a little bit of that extra bounce that comes with that moment of creation, go with it. And so that's some of the things that I've kind of pulled from Jim. That ability to not be quite so anal about it. It's still in there. It's still part of who I am as an artist. I'll never be quite as spontaneous as he is, but that's definitely something that I've kind of mindfully tried to pay attention to what he's doing and adopt aspects of it."
-- SYFY, "MASTER INKER SCOTT WILLIAMS ON INKING JIM LEE & X-MEN DEADLINE WOES," by Mike Avila, c. October 2020
Resolution at 1377x2048 & 1280x1989.
Source: https://grantscomics.com/products/x-men-5-wolverine-jim-lee-11x17-framed-original-art-print-poster-marvel-comics.
Source #2: www.borg.com/2021/02/27/jim-lees-x-men-the-1-bestselling-comic-of-all-time-arrives-in-a-giant-artists-edition.