Brett Lewis

Not much is known about Lewis as he only ever gave one interview.[1][3] In 1996, he was editorial director of Motown Machineworks,[4] a company which released comics through Image with the partial aim of producing movie vehicles for black stars. In 1998, Lewis worked with a different packager, Flypaper Press, on the Image series Bulletproof Monk only to be denied onscreen credit in the resultant eponymous movie.

For a while Lewis was an editor at Marvel Music, an imprint focused on branded releases of comics featuring Alice Cooper, The Rolling Stones and others, though it seems none of the projects he worked on were released, or maybe even completed. In the late 90s he was active in Allstar Arena,[5][6] a publisher of sports comic books for release in stadiums – before creating The Winter Men he and Leon collaborated on The Mailman, a sci-fi comic starring Utah Jazz power forward Karl Malone.

Lewis and John Paul Leon met as students at New York's School of Visual Arts, where Lewis — himself an artist at the time — studied under Walter Simonson and planned to draw an iteration of the comic himself.[3] In a 2006 interview Leon stated,

Brett Lewis and I first began developing this project about five years ago. Actually it really began years before then, when Brett had the idea of doing a Russian based Superman story. This was probably 1993 or so.[7]

The book was intended to be published by Vertigo as an eight-issue limited series in collaboration with colorist Dave Stewart and letterer John Workman.[8][9] A two-page sample of the upcoming miniseries appeared in the April 2003 promotional pamphlet Vertigo X Anniversary Preview; neither Stewart nor Workman were credited in that excerpt, and both the colors and letters would change when the pages later appeared in the series proper. By the time issue #1 appeared in August 2005, the series had become part of the short-lived WildStorm Signature Series line of creator-owned works, although Vertigo senior editor Will Dennis shared an editing credit with WildStorm's Alex Sinclair on issues #1 and #2, suggesting that the switchover came a good ways into production.[8]

After the six-month delay and a change of editor (to Scott Dunbier), issue #4 (April 2006)'s cover stated that the book was now a six-issue miniseries. Issue #5 (October 2006)'s solicitation announced that there will be eight issues again,[10] although the actual issue included the message that this was the last regular issue and the story would be completed in The Winter Special, announced for 2007 but actually released two years after #5, on December 31, 2008 as an oversized 40 page special.[11]

• Brett Lewis' Twitter