We got the chance to talk with comic legend Jim Lee about the release of DC Universe Online. He also hints that lucky players may get the chance to have their characters featured in the new DCUO comic book!

Jim Lee is a legend in the world of comics. He's earned many titles throughout his career: artist for Marvel Comics, co-founder of Image Comics, founder of WildStorm and currently co-publisher of DC Comics. He's also the executive creative director for DC Universe Online, which just launched three weeks ago after five years in development.

Editor-in-Chief Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff got the chance to sit down with Lee to reflect on the game's release and why he enjoys interacting with players. Lee also hints that lucky players may get the opportunity to have their characters featured in the pages of the upcoming DC Universe Online Legends bi-weekly comic, which comes out in early February. While it's not a confirmed plan, he hopes to make it a reality.

Keep reading after the jump for the full interview, and check back with ZAM tomorrow for more DCUO news! (UPDATE: Game Director Chris Cao talked with us about DCUO's February content update. Check out the article for all the details.)

ZAM: You've been working on DC Universe Online for quite awhile. How does it feel to finally have the game live?

Jim Lee: The emotion didn't really hit me until days after the launch. I was following the Twitter feed, searching for DCUO and checking out different websites to see the excitement of the fans as they play this game. It's a different kind of game. It's an MMO. It's not just about building a great game that people take home to experience and enjoy, it's also the interactivity between the players and this thing you worked on for five years. It's the final part of this equation that you've been building for all this time. All these players from around the world are the last critical component that makes MMOs special. That's the special ingredient that makes MMOs unique and makes these kinds of games so much fun to play.

It's been amazing. Normally if I were just a player I would have been on 24/7 leveling up, but I actually didn't play much. I spent most of my free time scouring the web for reviews, feedback and insight. I was the proverbial fly on the wall and listened to the reactions of these gamers as they encountered various villains for the first time, accomplished their first feats and found their next cool bit of armor. I got very little sleep; probably the same amount of sleep I would have gotten if I was playing the game for hours every day. I'll find an hour or two a day to play, but the bulk of the time after that I'll be on the web browsing for anything about DC Universe Online.

ZAM: I follow you on Twitter and noticed that you interact with fans a lot. They'll ask questions and you'll get right back to them with a response. You'll answer the same questions over and over, but you seem really passionate about helping them out. Why do you feel it's important to talk to fans?

Lee: I'll tell you a couple interesting things that happened. I would just search for DCUO and would find people who didn't know who I was or didn't follow me, and they would post about their frustrations. Some were having difficulty logging in, others created a character and it disappeared, or their activation code was invalid. These were all common bugs that I read a lot about because I was looking for this information. Then I would hit them up randomly and send them a response. I think it helped to have that human contact and somebody listening to their woes and issues. The funny thing is that every single time the problem resolved itself naturally, but they gave me full credit like I solved some technical issue. Most of the stability issues were tied to such demand for the game and so many people trying to log in at the same time, and they have since been fixed.

It was great because things would naturally fix themselves. If these players were disgruntled before, they were equally as delighted and happy that things had been resolved and they jumped back into the game. It was fun to have that personal interaction with people as they were first encountering the game and helping with whatever frustrations they may have had. I think a frenzy builds up when something new like this appears on the scene and hits the gaming world by storm. There's this sense that you're missing out if someone is playing and you're not. People relaxed a little bit and gained perspective and they were back into it. It was a lot of fun doing that and I enjoyed it.

ZAM: Indeed. When I saw your Twitter feed around launch day, it almost felt as if you were a customer service representative.

Lee: I know the SOE people were slammed with all the different requests. Just being able to go out and troll around and find things I could help out with made a big impact. Especially if they're comic book fans. They'd say, “Whatever problems I had tonight completely made up for the fact that I got to communicate with you.” That's always a lot of fun because you never know if they're fans or not. It's been great to have that kind of feedback. There's a couple things I learned from reading up on these people's experiences. I found some solutions through what other people had experienced and passed it along. It was beneficial all around.

ZAM: Speaking of feedback, was there anything you heard that really surprised you?

Lee: This is going to sound completely disingenuous, but people were talking about stability issues and I had no problems playing the game. It wasn't just me. We have three PS3s. I was playing, our 10-year-old boy was playing, and our 5-year-old son as playing. We were all playing together with no problems whatsoever. But I think what happened was service got slammed that weekend and one of my son's characters disappeared. We left to go to dinner and came back and the character reappeared. Someone else was concerned that it happened to them, and I said, “Hey, give it a minute and it'll reappear.” Sure enough, the character showed up. I had a great first 3-4 days and didn't encounter any hiccups until later. They were fairly minor.

It's interesting to me to see everyone's got the same PS3 and same game, and some people had no issues and other people had log in issues. But at the same time what was common to all this was that everyone really wanted to play the game. It was very gratifying to see how quickly any issue they may have had turned into happiness with the game once they got in and some of the stability bugs were squashed.

Continued on Page 2.