Lewis began his career in comics as an editor, first atMarvel Music, a short-lived imprint ofMarvel Comics that focused on branded releases of comics featuring, among others,Alice Cooper andThe Rolling Stones, then atMotown Machineworks, a company that released comics throughImage with the partial aim of producing movie vehicles for black stars.[3] In the late 1990s, Lewis wrote a part of the Image seriesBulletproof Monk, which was later adapted into aBulletproof Monkfilm of the same name]], as well as some stories forAllstar Arena,[4][5] a publisher of sports comic books aimed for release in stadiums. One of these stories,The Mailman, a sci-fi comic starringUtah Jazz power forwardKarl Malone, marked the first published collaboration between Lewis and John Paul Leon.
According to Leon, before publication,The Winter Men has been developing for over a decade. In a 2006 interview, he stated,
Brett Lewis and I first began developing this project about five years ago. It began years before then when Brett had the idea of doing a Russian-basedSuperman story. This was probably 1993 or so.[6]
The series had a turbulent publishing history, first announced as an 8-issue limited series forDC Comics'Vertigo imprint,[7] then moved underWildstorm while being cut to six and, eventually, five issues. The series concluded with a 40-page special two years after issue #5.[8]
