Jim is best known for his work on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Lawson created the Rat King and also co-created the series Planet Racers with Peter Laird. He is also the writer/artist of the black-and white-comic series Paleo: Tales of the Late Cretaceous. For more than 20 years he was a writer and artist of TMNT comics.
In 2013 Lawson launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new project, a graphic novel series called Dragonfly.
Lawson was also a participant in the 1988 drafting of the Creators' Bill of Rights.
Recently Lawson launched a Kickstarter campaign for his independent graphic novel and trade paperback, Dragonfly and Hellride.