Lewis began his career in comics as an editor, first at
Marvel Music, a short-lived imprint of
Marvel Comics that focused on branded releases of comics featuring, among others,
Alice Cooper and
The Rolling Stones, then at
Motown Machineworks, a company that released comics through
Image with the partial aim of producing movie vehicles for black stars.[3] In the late 1990s, Lewis wrote a part of the Image series Bulletproof Monk, which was later adapted into a
Bulletproof Monkfilm of the same name]], as well as some stories for
Allstar Arena,[4][5] a publisher of sports comic books aimed for release in stadiums. One of these stories, The Mailman, a sci-fi comic starring
Utah Jazz power forward
Karl Malone, marked the first published collaboration between Lewis and John Paul Leon.
According to Leon, prior to publication, The Winter Men has been in development for over a decade. In a 2006 interview, he 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.[6]
The series had a turbulent publishing history, first announced as an 8-issue limited series for
DC Comics'
Vertigo imprint,[7] then moved under
Wildstorm while being cut to six and, eventually, five issues. The series concluded with a 40-page special that came out two years after issue #5.[8]
"The Trouble with Bubbles" (in #18, 2001) collected in The Powerpuff Girls Classics: Picture Perfect (tpb, 140 pages,
IDW Publishing, 2014,
ISBN978-1-63140-017-9)
"Bless This Mess" (in #27, 2002) collected in The Powerpuff Girls Classics: Bless This Mess (tpb, 140 pages, IDW Publishing, 2015,
ISBN1-6314-0160-2)