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By Tom Field andEric Nolen-Weathington

Table of Contents

Introduction by Tom Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Part One: Made in Maine—Soup and Nuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Part Two: Law and Spirit—An Artist’s Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Part Three: Breaking In... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Part Four: ...And Breaking Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Part Five: Jungles of Green and Concrete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Part Six: Picking up the Gauntlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Part Seven: Re-Birth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Modern Masters Volume Seventeen:

LEE WEEKS

MODERN MASTERS: You and I go back a lot of years,and we’ve talked a lot of comics and a lot of creatorsover the years. When you hear a term like “masters,”what kind of names go through your head?

LEE WEEKS: In comics, specifically, the usual suspects—names like Kirby, Kubert, Caniff. We’re all learning fromthese guys; they are our teachers. Foster, Raymond, AlexToth. And some of the more modern comics guys, modernbeing relative, but certainly John Buscema, Neal Adams,and others—Gene Colan, Frank Miller, of course. I thinkthere are others,really—I try notto say I know“this is the bestguy,” but prob-ably a half adozen or so Iwould say sharea very specialresonance.

MM: Give mea sense ofwhen you firststarted payingattention tocomics and whothe comicsartists were?

LEE: I paidattention early onbecause I wantedto do everythingmy older brothersdid, and they liked comics, so I picked it up by osmosis.It was really two interests: comics and drawing. Backfurther than I can remember, apparently my dad wouldstick crayons in my hand. And a little later than that, Iremember the Kirby and Ditko conversations betweenmy brothers.

MM: Context, here: We’re talking 1960s. You and I bothgrew up in Maine, and comics were just a huge part of theculture. It’s just what kids read, and you certainly had olderbrothers, so you had tons of comics around the house.

LEE: And there were lots of neighborhood kids. We hadfive boys in our family, yet we would not be considered abig family at that time. There were lots of kids that readcomics. We used to get ours at Curtis’ Pharmacy on WaterStreet in downtown Hallowell. On Tuesday there wouldbe a race after school to get to there. With the old news-stand distribution system, you couldn’t always be sure howmany copies of a comic would make it to your store.

MM: It just occurs to me that you had more brothers inyour house than any of us had channels on our TV at that

time. [Lee laughs] Socomics really wereour culture. That’swhat we did.

LEE: In fact, Ivividly rememberthe cable mandrilling throughthe window sillto bring the firstcable into thehouse, where wegot as many as,what, eight orten channels?

MM: So comicbooks werealways in yourhouse. Were theyMarvels, DCs,the typical stuffthat most of usread at the time?

LEE: There seemed to be boxes and boxes of every kindof comic book, and I enjoyed them all: war comics, mys-tery comics, even Richie Rich comics and Gold Key StarTrek comics. It just seems there was a plethora of genresavailable. And I loved all the variety. But certainly theones that seemed to have a higher value to my olderbrothers, and so to me, were the Marvel and DC titles.

MM: Were you guys serious collectors?

LEE: I wasn’t at first, but my two oldest brothers,

Part 1: Made in Maine—Soup and Nuts

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Malcolm and Eric, were. The middlebrother, Mark, he probably read them sec-ond-hand, more like myself, and then mylittle brother, Dean, picked them up, too. Iremember Eric’s collection more thanMalcolm’s. Mal’s actually gotten back intoit the last couple years. Eric had a prettysubstantial collection but sold it in themid-’70s for a song to a guy with a mailorder business. He got nowhere near whatthey were worth, but he needed to buybooks for school, so he sold his collection.He had some vintage comics, and theywere bagged. He used to get his suppliesfrom that same guy, so I think that’s whyhe thought to sell him the books.

MM: Did they go and find these, or didthey buy them off the stands?

LEE: Bought off the stands. [laughs]Malcolm’s first book off the stands wasSpider-Man #24. At one point Eric wantedto go back and get Amazing Fantasy #15.No, no, no, excuse me. It’s the otherway around, I’m getting themmixed up. He traded one of hiscopies of Amazing Fantasy #15for a new copy of Superman.

MM: Oh, my. Didn’t oneof your brothers have threecopies of Amazing Fantasy#15, the first appearance ofSpider-Man?

LEE: I think so. That’swhat I understand.

MM: One gottraded away, justtraded for someroutine comic book.Didn’t another oneend up, like, in ascrapbook?

LEE: One was burnedby Dad. I don’t know ifit was the Seduction of theInnocent effect or what, but I thinkthere were a lot of comics burned backthen. I used to think it was pretty uniqueto us, but I’ve heard of others since.

MM: Wow. Can you talk about some ofthe characters you saw? You remember the

Fantastic Four, you remember Spider-Man.What sort of impression did these stories,these characters, leave on you?

LEE: Just huge. I mean, they were justtremendous stories, especially

for an entry-level youngchild to read. Wonderfulmorality plays with verysimple yet multi-dimen-sional characters, sim-ply executed. Clear-cutthemes, as in Spider-Man, “With great power

must also come greatresponsibility.” You know,I haven’t really driftedback and thought of this

stuff a lot, but I rememberlots of energy... andgoodness.

MM: If I were to askyou memorablecomic stories fromyour youth, whatwould they be?

LEE: Spidey #33and FF #51. Spidey

#33 was “The Final Chapter.” Just agreat story—still is. Some others, I’m

not sure how much I’m remembering fromearly childhood, or if it’s more from re-read-ing them as an older teenager. I can tell youone of the first comics I felt was distinctlymy own, and not a second-hand comic, was

Previous Page: “Priorto recently finding thisdrawing of CaptainAmerica done in 1967 atage 4, my earliest surviv-ing drawing was fromabout 1972.”Above: “Hallowell,Maine, or as I sometimescall it, ‘Mayberry North.’The building at the farleft is Boynton’s, andabout eight doors or sodown used to be Curtis’Pharmacy, where webought all our comicsgrowing up.”Left: “A pencil portraitof Dad drawn as aMother’s Day present in1983 at age 20.”

Captain America ™ and ©2008Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Fantastic Four #112, which is actual-ly a little bit later. I think that’s, like,

’70 or ’71, if I remember?

MM: You’re exactly right.

LEE: A very stark image of the Thing andthe Incredible Hulk facing off on a blackcover. I had plenty more comics that weregiven to me, but this was the one where Ireally was staking my own claim. That wasJohn Buscema’s first run on FF, and his fig-ures were just amazing. I also rememberthe death of Gwen Stacy. And the SinisterSix story. I may even have that. Thatwould have been the reprint, obviously.That was, what, ’63, ’64?

MM: Yeah, but I think it got reprintedaround 1969.

LEE: Yeah, that’s the one I remember,giant-sized or something. I was struck byan effect I didn’t see in any of the othercomic books that I was reading, at leastnone of the super-hero books, which is thedouble-lighting that Ditko did, the edgelighting on Spider-Man; that made animpression on me back then.

MM: Well, that’s what I was going to askyou. When did you make the connectionbetween these stories you really enjoyed andthis drawing activity you really enjoyed?

LEE: It seems like I was always copyingthem, always trying to recreate thoseimages. We used to do this thing with Silly

Putty, where you’d press the Silly Puttydown on a newspaper strip, or even a comicbook, and it’d come up with a mirror imagethat you could then stretch and morph.And I was always drawing. A friend of mine,when we were, oh, gosh, in kindergarten,were sitting at the table, trading drawings ofthe Thing back and forth while my olderbrother was doing an oil painting copy ofAvengers #4, the “Cap Lives” cover.

MM: Now, you actually did narrative sto-rylines back when you were a kid, as well.I’ve seen some of these.

LEE: In the third grade, I actually did myfirst original material. Well, probably notthat original, but certainly my first pub-lished. I was a publisher in the third grade.I did some strips on copy paper so thatthey could be folded into a book, and mymiddle brother, Mark—I’m the fourth offive—took them to his school. He wouldhave been in junior high school when Iwas in third grade, and he ran off a bunchof copies on one of those old crank-oper-ated blue-ink mimeograph machine, and Isold them to schoolmates for three centsapiece... sold a few dozen, I think.

MM: Wow. So you had your own littleshop going, there.

LEE: Yeah, but I would have been nailedfor copyright infringement on a couple, asone was an Underdog strip. Another storywas of two guys running a track race,beginning at the starting line, followed by

Above: A Spider-Man fig-ure from Spider-Man:Death & Destiny, writtenand penciled by Lee.Next Page:When Lee’solder brother, Eric, pre-sented him with his firsthardcover sketchbook forChristmas in 1974, Leeset out at once to fill itup, starting with a CaptainMarvel story and soonafter an Iron Man story.

Captain Marvel ™ and ©2008DC Comics. Electro, Iron Man,Spider-Man ™ and ©2008Marvel Characters, Inc.

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MM: What made you make the leap that you did whenyou went off to the Portland School of Art and startedyour formal art education?

LEE: I pretty much knew I was going to goto art school after the accident. I hada sense this is what I’m supposedto do. I was happy about it,and though it would beanother 20 years before Ibegan walking with Him,I felt like God had sparedme, and I had a sense—albeit a vague one—there was a purpose. Ithink about halfwaythrough my senioryear of high school Imade the decision togo to Portland. I puttogether a portfolio,mostly a bunch ofunfinished drawings.Specifically I remem-ber sketching the pot-bellied coal stovefrom our kitchen anda few other thingsjust to have some-thing other thancomic pages and por-traits in my portfolio.

MM: Did you go offto Portland with a sensethat you were going togo there and get a formaleducation, but a commercialcareer in comics is really what you hadin mind?

LEE: No question, Tom, long-term I wanted the comicscareer. I didn’t know when it was going to happen. I wastrying to chase the dream, but be responsible, too, and Iknew there were jobs to be had in graphic design, andyou could make a living doing that. Honestly, there aremany questions that I should have asked, and I didn’t.

And I’m not sure anybody around me was equipped tohelp me if I had asked.

MM: What was your experience like when you got there?

LEE: Oh, it was incredible. As much asI loved growing up in my tiny town

of Hallowell, we had very limited experi-ences in terms of cultural diversity.

Completely rich in character forwhat it was, but all of it within aparticular bandwidth on the dial.Portland was an avant gardeschool with its share of esotericcharacters. It was the biggestcultural shift in my life to thatpoint, and there were thingsgoing on at home that made ittough. Again, I don’t rememberthere being anybody aroundme to sit me aside and say,“This is what to expect.”There wasn’t on-campushousing. For the first cou-ple months, I tried livingall by myself, but I didn’tlike that at all. I thought itwould be the greatest,being by myself. I thinkgrowing up with four broth-ers and all these friendsaround, being suddenlyalone was not easy. Thenaround November, therewere three guys that lost afourth roommate. They werelooking for somebody to takethat fourth spot, and asked me,

so I jumped at it. That ended uphaving its own craziness, but still, there was a lot of fun.

MM: This had to be an eye-opening experience justartistically, everything you were exposed to, from yourroommates to your educators. What was it like?

LEE: I couldn’t make sense of it at first, very honestly. Thefocus was entirely abstract, which I knew nothing about. I

Part 2: Law and Spirit—An Artist’s Education

Previous Page: 1983self-portrait in charcoaldone from the mirror, atage 20.Below: Cover pencilsfor Stan Lee Meets theThing, complete withKirby Krackle. “Finally, Iget to work with StanLee. This cover is a complete ape of FF #51,with Stan playing all thenon-Thing roles. I suggested the covercopy, ‘This Stan, ThisMonster’.”

Fantastic Four, Thing ™ and©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

had some drawing chops for a kid my age,but in class after class, there was no interestin the classical or academic approach—noanatomy, proportion, etc. I didn’t know whatto make of it. I remember one day in partic-ular in life drawing, I was nailing this figure,and the teacher just kind of walked by, andthe person next to me was working from thesame figure and drawing something that, noexaggeration, looked like a crumpled upbrown paper bag. There was nothing in it toeven remotely suggest he was drawing ahuman. And she walked past me andstopped at his paper bag drawing and said,“Oh, my, this is marvelous.” She fawned overit, and I became confused, like everyone wasin on the joke except me. I hid my interestin comics for the most part. A couple of myroommates were kind of into it, but that wasabout it, at least for the first semester.

The idea behind the school was thefirst two years was what they called thefoundation program: two years ofbasically unlearning everythingyou knew. Instead ofbeing focused on repre-sentational ideas, ideasof making somethinglook like something,they wanted to tear thatall down, so we wouldfocus on the abstractprinciples that go intomaking any picturework, whether it’s a pho-tograph, a drawing,whatever it is... a sculp-ture. And it’s true, whatmakes a picture work areits underlying abstractprinciples, not so muchthe subject matter. But,I’m not sure I agree withthe approach that wipesout all classical instruc-tion during that period.It should incorporateboth. Although I greatlyappreciate it now, I cer-tainly didn’t understandit at 19... not initially.

I remember some-thing finally clickingwhile working on an

assignment for my two-dimensional designclass. I was looking at some comics onenight, and trying to make a connection,looking at some “Kirby Krackle,” which isthat wonderful cosmic effect with all thedots Jack used so often so well. I was look-ing at the Kirby Krackle and it kind ofopened me up a bit. “Oh, I think I kind ofget it. Look at these varying shapes andspaces, and repeating forms. That’s reallywhat he’s doing.” And it’s just another thingthat makes Kirby so great, among manyother things: His drawings work so beauti-fully abstractly. Turn a page upside-downand, without even knowing what’s goingon, there’s all this excitement on the page.

So, I was doing an abstract assignment.It was just some repeating forms and vari-ous sizes and shapes and trying to createtension and stuff—working out the “fig-ure/ground relationship,” and I thought

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Kirby. The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking ofa Negative Zone kind of thing or something. And itcame out great. And no one knew! Here’s this totallyabstract thing, and they had no idea a funny bookunlocked the mystery of it for me.

Later on, I did a big 2-D design assignment in colorwhere we had to fill up a 16" x 12" frame with little half-inch squares of this special colored paper, and create asense of planes and depth, using just the squares, playingwith hue, value, and chroma. We were to just explore,really. And then there’d be a group critique. The critiquesintimidated me that first semester. A piece would go upon the wall, and the students and the teachers would talkabout it... and I would be lost. They would be talkingabout man’s struggle against nature, the inner workings ofthe psyche present in the work... all this stuff they werereading into it. I thought everybody got it and I didn’tknow anything, because they would find all these hiddenmeanings and psychological aspects to these simple littlethings, and I was clueless. I thought, “Oh, man, I don’tknow what’s going on. I have no clue.” That is, until theday when my assignment with the little squares of colorwas put up for group critique, and everyone started find-ing all the same lofty things in my assignment, amazingideas and insights that I supposedly had put in this piece.

I was stunned at first. I looked around. “They’re talkingabout—that’s mine, right?” And just like that, a big, giantlight bulb turned on over my head, and I can’t tell youhow much this helped me the rest of the way. I just putmy hand up on my forehead and with relief and a smile Ithought, “Ohhhh, now I get it. It’s just a bunch of hooey.”I realized much of it—though not all—was just gob-bledy-gook. It really didn’t have anything to do withanything. So Kirby helped me over the abstract humpand then this other thing relaxed me a bit.

MM: You spent a year there. What ultimately made youchoose not to go back, and what do you feel you cameaway from the school with?

LEE: Several things, but here are two key things: the sec-ond semester, I remember I really wanted to do somecomic art. I started working on stuff. I started incorporat-ing a little of it in some of my assignments, partly beingsilly because I was fried from all the hours. First semester Ihad a design teacher named Joe Guertin. In the bathroomof one of the buildings, there was graffiti everywhere—philosophical meanderings of every flavor. During an all-nighter one night, I added my work to the wall in theform of a comic book cover featuring Joe as our hero,

And, if I’m not mistaken, he used a mechanical blue pen-cil. He was working on pages, so we were watching him.Also, there’s a name of someone else there who I endedup working with years later. I don’t know if it was thisshow or the next show. Al Williamson.

MM: Al Williamson was there. I think it was the last dayof the show, and Howard Chaykin was going to be talk-ing about American Flagg, and we went up to the room,and I remember him being kind of—y’know, he had areputation of being sort of like aHarlan Ellison, so you wantedto be careful around him. Youdidn’t want to say somethingstupid and get called on it.

LEE: Right, right.

MM: In that room, and therewere two older guys that weresort of sitting on the other side,and nobody was talking tothem. One of them was FredFredericks, and the other was AlWilliamson. And, to me, any-way—

LEE: You’re telling me FredFredericks was there, too?! Oh,man. I didn’t know that. Well, Iprobably knew it back then, butdidn’t know who he was.

MM: I didn’t know who he was,but I knew of Al Williamson.And I did know I wasn’t evensupposed to be in the sameroom with him, I was so intimi-dated. Because this was EC AlWilliamson.

LEE: I probably didn’t evenknow that, at the time. I think Iwas aware of some of his StarWars work, but I don’t knowhow familiar I was with him, yet.

MM: You spoke with AlWilliamson, and Bruce and Ididn’t. We were so intimidated.[laughter]

LEE: Oh, I do remember that.

MM: But the irony is, within thatdecade, what were you doing?You were working with him.

LEE: Boy, that’s weird, isn’t it? Oh, my goodness.

MM: By 1983 you’re working, you’re taking some class-es, drawing constantly, always working on samples,ideas, your own strips, and then going to shows andmeeting professionals. We went to Portland when BobLayton was there on a signing tour. We went back toBoston a time or two and you met with some other peo-ple. That’s just sort of my memory of it, from the out-side, it was just all this sort of preparatory work, how to

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Part 3: Breaking In...

MM: How did you make the transition into drawingprofessionally? Marvel had you do that inventory Visionstory that, as I recall, they gave to lots of peoplebecause it was challenging.

LEE: Yes, I don’t think it was lots, but there were a hand-ful of people it was given to, and actually that was rightafter the school year at the Kubert School. I went toMarvel and showed Mark Gruenwald samples. I hadredone a couple of Nick Fury pages from a BruceCanwell idea I had originallydrawn before going off toschool. I redrew a scene Ihad done a year or so earlier,and took those pages in asmy samples. And, really, theyweren’t that good. It wasn’tthe best stuff I had done atthe time, but I rememberGruenwald thought I wasready and gave me the six-page Vision story—a story Iwould still find difficult todraw today, because theaction pretty much all takesplace inside a plane, in aconfined area, and therewere difficult storytellingchallenges: a lot of panelsand a very confined setting. Ihad a hard time finishing thepages as I was just burnt outfrom the very intense schoolyear. I did finish and tookthem in, and Grueny said,y’know, “This guy’s ready.”He took me around andintroduced me to a few othereditors. All I had to do waspush a little bit and I wouldhave been working then, but instead I disappeared for ayear. There were a few things going on, but the gist was,for the only time in my life, I was having a hard timedrawing—getting past the blank white page.

MM: Okay. What happened? I sort of remember then yougoing to work at 7-11. I don’t know if it was immediate,

but I remember you being in Rockaway or Dover, NewJersey, in the area, and working, and sort of getting backinto drawing, but nothing really taking off until the fol-lowing summer.

LEE: Right. In fact, I think I tried something else thatdidn’t work out. I was running, really. I was really justrunning from myself and God—a theme of much of myold life. Eventually, I met a person by chance, quote-unquote—I don’t believe in chance—at a gas station,

who was looking for a job,and I pointed him to all the“help wanted” signs. A cou-ple months later, I was work-ing for him at the little 7-11.It seems like such a smalland quaint experience, but itreally was one of the mostimportant years of my life. Itwas a nice break, a nicebreather—call it a silhouettein my life up to that point.

MM: Well, that’s interesting.What recharged you, whatrebuilt you so that, in themiddle of 1985, you couldstart aggressively pursuingyour career goals and havingsome success?

LEE: I read a couple ofbooks that were helpful. Iwas in a pretty low place,and I read a couple ofbooks, and this friendshipbuilt up with my friend andmanager, Dean Cohen, anda lot of conversations aboutGod and just purpose in life,and our being here for a rea-

son. I remember reading a book by a guy who was asales trainer and considered a top motivational speaker. Iwas struck by the first two or three pages where hetalked about the most important thing in his life, whichis his personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Thatimpacted me—obviously, as I still remember it.

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MM: So talk about 1985. What got youback into drawing? What did you focuson, and what was your big break?

LEE: You’ll probably be able to help withthe timeline. After not drawing for months,I got the itch while working in the store. Ijust started drawing with felt pens, ball-point pens, and stuff, on brown paper bagsfor people at the 7-11, and later graduatedto cocktail napkins at diners. And I gotexcited about drawing again. It still waswhat I wanted to do, and I believed it waswhat I was supposed to be doing. And, ifI’m not mistaken, I think I contacted youabout it. Does that sound right?

MM: It does, because I was freshly out ofschool at the time and looking around forwriting opportunities, and it seemed natu-ral—“Let’s put some samples together, acomplete package.” There were lots ofoptions out there. Eclipse Comics had justpicked up or revived some of the titles thatPacific was doing, as anthologies, and it justseemed a natural. Anthologies, we can cre-

ate anthology stuff. We came upwith some science fiction andhorror ideas for Eclipse. I knowwe also thought a Conan storywould be a good idea, becauseMarvel was publishing the SavageSword of Conan. They were usingnew creators, and they were look-ing for opportunities for new cre-ators. And so we came up with aConan story. And we would be atmy parents’ house, and you werethe only one who had the temeri-ty to get on the phone and call upthe editor, Larry Hama, to askabout submitting a story. [laughs]

LEE: Oh, I totally forgot aboutthat.

MM: Do you remember his reac-tion?

LEE: I think I shared with himwhat had happened withGruenwald. And, without goingall into it, he just told me I wasn’tready. And I thought it was kindof funny that he could tell me Iwasn’t ready when I was up in

Maine and he had never seen any of mydrawings.

MM: And around that time we were doingthe Eclipse stuff. Did you draw the entirestory and then did we send in the entirepackage, like, pen-ciled and scripted,or did we send in aproposal?

LEE: For Conan?

MM: No, no, no,for the Eclipsepiece that we did,“Friends Don’t LetFriends DriveDrunk.”

LEE: Oh. What Iremember is takingyour story—I wasconvinced it wouldshow a lack of con-fidence to pencil,ink, and letter the

Previous Page andLeft: Lee’s first work forMarvel, a Vision six-pagetry-out story. “The lateMark Gruenwald gaveme this paying assign-ment, calling it the ‘earnwhile you learn’ plan.The story was titled,‘Double Vision,’ and wasgiven to a few artistswho Marvel thoughtwere just about ready.However, I was on theverge of burnout.Shortly after drawingthis, I put the pencildown for severalmonths... the only suchperiod in my life.”Below: Napkin sketch ofDracula and an eye.

Vision ™ and ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

MM: The New Wave.

LEE: The New Wave, there we go. I did thatfor over a year, a year-and-a-half? And afew other things.

MM: What was the premise with NewWave? The writer was Mindy Newell, butwas that a property that was created byEclipse, or was it created by Mindy?

LEE: I think it was Mindy’s, but I’m notpositive.

MM: And it was young teen super-heroes,typical stuff of the day?

LEE: Yeah, but I don’t remember a lot of it.

MM: What are your impressions of yourwork at the time?

LEE: I certainly learned a lot. It was hard.Working from full scripts was not easy forme. There were a lot of characters, a lot ofcross balloons, trying to make it all workso that the word balloons didn’t cross up. I

remember it being kind of hard. But I alsoremember certain moments where thingswould click in my drawing. That waswhere I became more comfortable with mydrawing, especially of interiors and per-spective. I didn’t have to really think aboutit and be as conscious of it. I actually cansay there was a particular page where itseemed all of a sudden I was able to movepieces of furniture around, draw them atany angle, have objects with different van-ishing points all look like they’re on thesame flat plane. It’s not an easy thing tomaster. I gained a comfortability withmany of the fundamentals I had learnedbut hadn’t yet mastered. And it was reallyjust from drawing pages every day. That’sall it was. It’s a muscle memory thing, andeach time you see that you do somethingwrong, you do it a little less wrong thenext time. I spoke with someone recentlyabout Chuck Jones, I thinkit’s a Chuck Jones quote,that everybody has

Previous Page: Roughand finished inks for thepayoff page in, “FriendsDon’t Let Friends DriveDrunk,” written by TomField. “Professionallyspeaking, this job is stillat the very top of all myexperiences, and not justfor the obvious reason ofit being my first real gig.It was pretty special tobreak in working with myfriend—doing a storythat we generated.”

Left: A page from the bi-weekly (!) Eclipse series,New Wave, and a sketchof one of the book’scharacters, Dot.

All characters ™ and ©2008respective owners.

Part 4: ...AndBreaking Out

MM: Where did Daredevil come from? Because I don’tremember that ever being a character that you talkedabout a whole lot, or expressed a whole lot of interest in.

LEE: Totally from the Frank Miller run inthe mid-’80s, just coming out of the lowperiod when I wasn’t drawing. When Iworked at the 7-11 we would tear thecovers off the magazines for returns,back in the old days of newsstand distri-bution, and that was when Frank’s “BornAgain” storyline was coming out. I sorelated to that story. And still do, evenmore profoundly so in some ways today.

People call these things funnybooks, but that story really had animpact on me. And I fell in love withthe character, with his struggle to dothe right thing. It really meant some-thing to him to do the right thing,and there’s a great moment when he’sholding Karen Page as she is goingthrough heroin withdrawal, and he’sthinking about all the stuff that he’slost, running through it all—job,money, relationships, etc.—but ulti-mately says, “I’ve lost nothing.” Heends up realizing he lost all fearwhen he lost all hope. Though Idon’t agree with that particular line,certainly life, though lived throughthe material, is beyond material. It’ssomething much deeper than that.

MM: Well, talk about what goesaround, comes around, didn’t youultimately end up drawing a coverfor a Born Again trade paperback?

LEE: No, that was actually thefinal four issues of Daredevil that Idrew, #297 to #300. It’s a sort ofsequel to, although I wouldn’t inany way try to suggest that itbelongs on the same bookshelf as,Born Again. I am in awe of whatFrank and Dave Mazzucchelli did.

Dave’s work was so beautiful and beautifully simple. Ourbook, Fall of the Kingpin, was a sequel in that it dealt withsome things from the Born Again storyline, turning thetables on the Kingpin.

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Above: Wraparoundcover art for theDaredevil: Fall of theKingpin trade paperbackcollection.Next Page: Pencils forpage 6 of Daredevil #284,Lee’s first issue. “It wason Daredevil that I beganto learn how to penciltighter. Really, it was justa matter of settling downa little bit.”

Daredevil and all related charac-ters ™ and ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

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It’s sometimes confused with Born Again.The Fall of the Kingpin trade cover is one ofmy favorite covers, one I had a lot of fundoing. At the time it seemed much of thethinking in editorial was formulaic. Findsomething that works, and just do it thatone way. There was a time when there wasa rule that all panels had to be separatedby quarter-inch gutters, stuff like that.Sometimes people find something thatworks for one reason, and they makedogma out of it, which chokes the spiritout of the thing. The spirit of a rule shouldalways trump the letter of it.

When I did the wraparound cover forthat Daredevil trade, I put all the charactersexcept for Kingpin on the back cover. EvenDaredevil was moved to the back. The onlything on the front cover was a giant redDD, this trickle of glass that came downthrough the middle of the DD, and Kingpinlaying flat on his back in an elliptical spot-light. Everything else was black. Thoughunconsciously, that idea of the tricklingglass trailing from above came from that

Eisner story, Gerhard Schnobble, “If a ManCould Fly.” I turned it in knowing they weregoing to say, “Switch it. Make the backcover the front cover, and the front coverthe back cover,” because I didn’t haveDaredevil on the front. I didn’t have themajor players, the guys that sell the book,on the front. But, we had an assistant at thetime who ran cover for me, he actuallysnuck it through, because he thought thesame thing, he also believed they wouldswitch it. The cover was dramatic the waythat it was, but it was kind of out of thenorm for what they were doing at the time.And, sure enough, after the cover was fin-ished and the galley was hanging on thewall the editor-in-chief said, “Nice cover,but it should have been reversed.” We wereright. They would have switched it.

Jim Shooter had been there for sixmonths, I think, when I first got there, sixor seven months—long enough for him togive me one of my all-time favorite memo-ries. He put together a seminar for theyoung artists, whoever wanted to go, really,

but specifically for young guys just starting out. JohnBuscema came in and did a chalk talk thing. I sat in aroom with maybe 20 other artists at a long table, and Ilistened to John Buscema for two or three hours. I specif-ically remember meeting Javier Saltares that day. It wasphenomenal. Just fantastic. I still have some note paper Iwas scribbling and sketching on when I was there thatday. That would have been late ’86 or early ’87.

MM: So let’s talk about your Daredevil experience. Whathappened after you sat there that night, and drew thosesketches, and sort of felt inspired?

LEE: I just committed to go afterwhat it was I wanted to do the nexttime I went in, which was going tobe Daredevil. Two or three weekslater, I was delivering a job and get-ting a new assignment, and I went toRalph Macchio’s office, who at thetime was editing Daredevil and Dr.Strange. He offered a back-up storyfor the latter book, which I took, thewhole time Daredevil being on mymind. We had a pleasant meeting. Ihung out with he and Mike Heisler,his assistant at the time. And as Iturned to leave, I got one foot oneither side of the threshold, and I—itwas almost like asking a girl out on adate; I was nervous. I knew if I left Iwould feel very defeated, like I didn’tdo what I set out to do. So I glancedback at Ralph, and in the most casualtone I could muster, I said, “By theway, Ralph, if you ever have need fora Daredevil fill-in, I would gladly takea hit out on your worst enemy forthe chance to do it.” I think that isalmost verbatim what I said. And Iwas going to just let it hang for asecond and then say goodbye againand leave, but before I finished mysentence, he and Mike kind oflooked at each other, “Oh, why did-n’t we think of that?” I think theyactually said that. At the time, JohnRomita, Jr. had taken on a specialproject, something that was takinghim away from Daredevil a little bit. Icould have walked out and missedthat opportunity. Instead, I learned abig lesson: You don’t know until youask. I went home with a script andwas more excited than I’d ever been

drawing comics. I was so excited to be doing this onefill-in. And I was going to get a chance to work with AlWilliamson. Beat that.

MM: Do you remember what issue that was?

LEE: My first issue was #284. Matt Murdock had amne-sia. He was walking around wearing a New OrleansSaints baseball cap, hanging out in Hell’s Kitchen was ayoung black girl named Nyla. So, he was out of costumea lot. In fact, I think for the first couple of issues, when Idrew the Daredevil costume, it was actually Bullseyewearing the costume.

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MM: You left Daredevil and signed on with Dark Horseto do that Predator/Magnus, but, really, the early part ofthe ’90s was a lot about you just sinking your teeth intovarious special projects. Is that fair to say?

LEE: Yeah, the entire decade was special projects, jump-ing around. On the one hand, it makes it hard for theever-changing fan base to figure out who you are. Peoplethink you’re either the new guy coming in, or a really oldguy just coming back. But I kind of liked it that way. Ijust wanted to do the stuff that excited me. Actually, I’dnever heard ofMagnus before Itook on that job.

MM: Oh, you didn’tremember that from theGold Key comics whenwe were kids?

LEE: No. I had no memory ofit whatsoever. I mean, I mayhave seen it. I sawso many comics,growing up. Myfirst memory ofMagnus, however,was when I didthat job. The orig-inal concept wasactuallyMagnus/Terminator.That’s what theywere trying to getdone, but weren’table to work outall the licensing,so having a frame-work for a story—or maybe theyredid the wholestory—they endedup doingPredator/Magnusinstead.

MM: Your memo-ries of the work?

LEE: Leading up to that project, I always felt like the pagesrarely came out just as I’d like them to. If out of 22 pages, Icould get one or two pages to the point I could say, “Yeah!That’s what I’m trying to do,” that would make the job asuccess for me. If that happened once or twice an issue, Iwas thrilled. I had an idea of what I was trying to do, butdidn’t have the mastery over the skills to pull it off consis-tently—still don’t, but much less so then. By the time I gotto Daredevil #300, I started to have more, “yeah” pages.Possibly that was a function of drawing under such dead-line pressure that I worked faster and got more of a flow.With Predator/Magnus, I was given the time to do it, andconsequently it was the first job where, page in and page

out, I was hittingmy marks moreconsistently. I wasalso exploring a lot

of things that I’d notdrawn much of before—

futuristic settings, the tallspires, the cities—yet trying to

give it a more grounded feel thanmaybe it had had in the past inMagnus, Robot Fighter.

MM: What didyou use for refer-ence, there? Didyou have theValiant stuff thatwas out? Did yougo back and lookat some of theRuss Manningmaterial fromGold Key?

LEE: I’m sure Ilooked at it some,but not a lot. Asfar as my feel forthat kind ofworld, I thoughtmore like BladeRunner... andMoebius. That’swhat I remember

Part 5: Jungles of Green and Concrete

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most. I loved dirtying things up a little bit,especially as we would go from the higherparts, the penthouses where these Eliteslived, the hunters that were out trying tohunt the Predator, from there down intothe belly of the beast, the lower parts ofthe city, I really tried to show a lot ofchipped paint, rubble, rust, dust the deeperwe went.

MM: Is that the first major project thatyou penciled and inked?

LEE: Yeah, I think I inked just those firstcouple jobs, the job with you, the job withBruce Jones, some short stories. I penciledand inked my first issue of Justice and, Ithink, my last two or three issues of Justice.And a smattering of pages here and there,a short story here and there. Yeah, thiswould definitely have been the first bigthing that I penciled and inked.

MM: Did you go right from that to doingthe Predator/Tarzan series with WaltSimonson?

LEE: No, I don’t think so. I think that’swhere the bookshelf with Captain Americaand Ghost Rider comes in, and the Gambitmini-series, after which I did Tarzan.

MM: Oh, that’s right. There was a Gambitmini-series that Klaus Janson inked, right?

LEE: That’s right, written by HowardMackie, who also wrote the CaptainAmerica/Ghost Rider bookshelf.

MM: That was called Fear.

LEE: That’s right. And, actually, the Gambitmini-series may have come before Fear.They kind of blur together for me.

MM: Again, it’s part of this period where

Previous Page: Magnustrading card art. Thecards were stapled intoissues of the Predator vs.Magnus, Robot Fightermini-series.Above: Pages 12 and 13from Predator vs. Magnus,Robot Fighter #1.

Magnus, Robot Fighter ™ and©2008 Random House, Inc.Predator ™ and ©2008 20thCentury Fox Film Corp.

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don’t want to be known as the Predator guy.” I didn’twant to repeat myself. But we talked a little bit, and itcame down to if we could get a writer that I really want-ed to work with. When I said I’d love to work with WaltSimonson, Mike just said, “I’ll call you in 20.” and hungup. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang, I picked it up,and Mike is at the other end, saying, “It’s done.” And Ijust couldn’t think of a better guy to do that kind ofstory. It was a pretty cool concept, the idea of thePredators finding the opening to Pellucidar, which was

the world within the earth that Burroughs had createdwhere the dinosaurs never died out. Basically, thePredators have found their ultimate candy store—tro-phies all around. Word gets back to Tarzan of a slaugh-ter taking place in Pellucidar, so he and his crew makethe journey to investigate. It was a blast working withWalt. He was just an incredibly wonderful person.

MM: How had you known him? You hadn’t worked withhim, had you?

LEE: No, I didn’t know him.But, for my money, over thelast 30 years, the guy thathas most closely embodiedthat same sense of awe andadventure, without aping—certainly you wouldn’t lookat Walt’s artwork and say,“Oh, he draws like Kirby,”because he doesn’t, butthere’s a Kirby feel to it. Youcan see the Kirby influence,the dynamism, the power.I’ve always felt like Walt wasthe closest thing to Kirbywe’ve had in the last 30years—I mean, other thanJack, himself.

MM: Now, Tarzan, of course,guys like Foster, Hogarth,Kubert and Buscema haddrawn the character beforeyou. What sort of influencesdid you or did you not lookat and bear in mind as youworked on your ownapproach to the character?

LEE: I had the big treasuryeditions of the Tarzans JoeKubert did, which areincredible. Joe is going to be82 this year, and he’s proba-bly in one of the most pro-ductive periods of his life.But that Tarzan stuff was justso unbelievable for its sim-plicity, for how much he wasable to convey with the leastamount of lines. His influ-ence shows up in places inmy Tarzan. In other places,it’s harder to see.

But I was also just trying

LEE: I enjoyed it very much. Thereare some real fun moments. There’sa close-up panel where Tarzan, real-ly up against it, says, “My knifewon’t be enough this time, but agrenade might kill us all.” It’s a realKubert-esque kind of close-up. Ihave a giant blow-up of that panelhanging in my studio. And I did alot of delicate brushwork. A proj-ect like that is great for exploringthe human figure, for gainingunderstanding you can’t really getdrawing guys in costumes,because even with skintight cos-tumes, there are things you canget away with you can’t so muchwith a Tarzan-like character.

The way John Byrne would draw the X-Menfigures in his heyday, which I loved, wouldn’treally work for Tarzan. It has to be more natu-ralistic, more real-world anatomy and stuff.

Something I love about being a comic bookartist in general is you’re always learning some-thing about something, as long as there’s a vari-ety of jobs—another reason I like jumpingaround. With Tarzan, I drew my first DC-3transport plane. I think it had the longest com-mercial use of any plane, ever. It’s the one youalways think of when you think of old Tarzanmovies, with the two props on the wings and ahalf dozen windows down the side. I also drewmy first Ford tri-motor plane in Tarzan. Again,one of the fun things about jumping around.Years earlier, I had to draw a helicopter chasescene in an issue of Justice, and I had so muchfun investigating and learning about helicop-ters, military helicopters. And I made sure thatthese Russian-made Hind helicopters I choseto be the pursuers, the enemy, I made sure thehelicopter carrying all our characters was atransport that technically made sense—that itwas big enough for everyone to fit and fastenough to elude the Hind. And then a thirdhelicopter came to the transport’s rescue, andthat was an Apache AH64. That was the first

Below: Tarzan gets thedrop on his alien adversary. Tarzan vs.Predator #3, page 6.Right and Next Page:Rough sketch and finished inks for thecover of Hawkman #0.

Hawkman ™ and ©2008 DCComics. Tarzan ™ and ©2008ERB, Inc. Predator ™ and ©200820th Century Fox Film Corp.

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MM: There are two things that stand out for me in thatperiod. One would be the Thing black-&-white storythat you wrote and drew for Marvel, and the other wouldbe Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet, that you did with BruceCanwell. What do you remember about The Gauntlet?How it got pitched, and how yougot the momentum behind it.How did the project initiate?

LEE: Y’know, I always tellpeople I’ve gained more ofmy understanding of sto-rytelling from conver-sations with Brucethan just about anyother person. Inone of those con-versations it justcame up that Iwanted to dosomethingwith him.

He had a story I thought was exceptional. What a greatidea, that Robin would be put to a final test before Batmanwould allow him to become his full-fledged sidekick.

MM: And, just to clarify, we’re talking about DickGrayson here—the original Robin.

LEE: The original Robin, right. Obviously, you avoid put-ting a year to something like that, but Dick Grayson wasput through basically a test that consisted of a sophisticat-

ed game of hide-and-seek. I loved it. Whenyou can clearly pitch a concept in a couplesentences, the idea is strong. And one thingthat I think I’ve had a knack for is, when I’mreally excited by something, I can usually getother people excited about it, with the work.

But that was easy to pitch. They approved itpretty much immediately.

MM: How’d you work on that? Did Bruce sendyou a detailed plot? Did you work from a script?

LEE: I think it was a very detailed plot containingsome script. Actually, it was a pretty organic process.

There were lots of things that would come to mymind as I was drawing scenes, and I’d call up Bruce and

talk with him. But the skeleton, the spine of the storyidea was so strong that there existed a flexibility. Whenyour target is so clear it makes things easy and fun.

MM: How large of a story did you have atthat point?

LEE: It’s a 48-page bookshelf. It wasdone under the umbrella of theBatman Chronicles. It was very sat-

isfying working up the cover.I put some people that weknow into the book.There’s a bridge scene thatI had a lot of fun workingout, due in part to thebridge being based on theHill to Hill Bridge in thenext town over inBethlehem, Pennsylvania.It’s probably the most intel-ligent story I’ve ever

Part 6: Picking up the Gauntlet

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worked on—just really smart, in my opin-ion. And, from what I’ve heard through theyears from persons that have read it, thatseems to have been the general consensus,that it’s a really smart story.

MM: It has some resonance; it really has.

LEE: Yeah. And I’m always excited to tellpeople that although he’d been writingother things for years, that was Bruce’s firstpublished comic book. The jaws drop.“You’re kidding me! Why isn’t this guydoing regular stuff?” And I gotta tell you, it’sa mystery to me he didn’t take off. I thinksome editors missed the boat with Bruce.

MM: What do you remember about yourwork on it? I don’t remember even if youinked it.

LEE: I did ink it. I remember individualshots and pages. I believe that’s about thetime I had done some animated work on thestoryboards for the Superman cartoon, sothere was more of a streamlined, simplifiedapproach to my figures. It was less clutteredwith superfluous rendering and the like. Ifelt I was getting a real grasp on the Batmancharacter—things like keeping the facesopen and not having a lot of lines on thefaces—and I tried to be more graphic in theway I separated everything. I believe Tothwas on my mind a lot during that period.

MM: That was something I wondered,because we talked about influences youhad when you drew Daredevil, when youdrew Tarzan. When you did Batman—par-ticularly when you tried to do Batman inwhat would be sort of a period—what kindof influences were you channeling?

LEE: Hmm. Some of this is going to justbe a guess. Again, I was very influenced byMazzucchelli’s work. When I think of cer-tain specific pages that come to mind, Idon’t see them necessarily as being fromanybody else. I was coming into my ownway of doing things. But there were someplaces where there was some real Tothinfluence in the way that I arranged certainshots and scenes, the way that he usedblacks. I’m sure I may have even borroweda shot or two of his... the way he struc-tured a shot.

MM: I don’t remember you being thebiggest DC fan, so I’m not aware if youhad seen the Batman that a lot of peoplehad seen in the ’70s, whether it be theNeal Adams stuff, or, later, the MarshallRogers stuff.

LEE: Oh, I was familiar with Adams’Batman, you bet. But back in the early ’70s,there were a lot of DC comics in myhouse. I remember being in Curtis’Pharmacy when I was a kid looking at anissue of his Batman and seeing how strik-ingly different from all the other comics itwas. He was a big influence on me when Iwas trying to learn how to draw as a kid.

Previous Page: BatmanChronicles: The Gauntlet,page 5.Above : BatmanChronicles: The Gauntlet,page 25.

Batman, Robin ™ and ©2008DC Comics.

In fact, boy, I remember doing that head turn thing where Neal would really emphasize thebig neck muscle that comes from under the ear at the back corner of the jaw down to theneck hole at the clavicle—think Cap on the cover of Avengers #93. It’s called the sternomas-toid. That’s where I learned the name of that muscle, because he would do these great ster-nomastoids on these turned heads, with the awkward shaped mouth thatwas calling out, usually while the guy was waving his hand flatlythrough the air as if to say, “No way.”

MM: I remember you saying that The Gauntlet was one of theprojects that you enjoyed the most, for lots of reasons.When you got done with that, what did you want to goto next? That’s kind of a hard one to top.

LEE: I don’t think it’s any coincidence two of myfavorite projects were the first job with you, and thisone with Bruce. When we got into comics as fans,what did we do? We hung out with our friends,dreamed up adventures, and talked about these guys,and it was a lot of fun. So, to be able to work on thisstuff with your pals, it makes it special. Years later, Ithink it holds up. What was the question again?

MM: Well, what did you want to do next? What Iremember is that you pretty quickly decided youwant to start to write some of your own material, butI don’t know if that was an immediate transition. Idon’t know what you were thinking. When you gotdone with Gauntlet, what did you want to do next?

LEE: At that time, I wanted to at least have a tasteof doing everything. I was working on some ideas.But, again, that time is kind of a blur to me, so Idon’t know the exact chronology. I pitched a couplelittle things here and there. Sometime after that Idid the Thing story. It was 17 pages, I think. AndI’m trying to think of why I even hooked up withthose guys—Joe Andreani and—

MM: Hadn’t you been approached to do a backcover or a pin-up page or something? It seems like you hada piece in there an issue or two before your Thing story.

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Previous Page: “Page26 [of The Gauntlet] wasone where everythingseemed to fall into place.Left: “Duck Soupersreunited a couple sum-mers back at the LiberalCup in Hallowell, justacross the street fromwhere we all met nearly30 years ago. As far as weknow, Duck Soup wasthe first comic shop in allof Maine.” (L to R):Howard Downs, DavePeabody, Doug Thornsjo,Bruce Canwell, and TomField. Missing are Duds,Dean, Lam, and Walt.Below: A penciled panelfrom The Gauntlet.

Batman, Robin ™ and ©2008DC Comics.

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Romita’s Spider-Man, as a kid. I didn’t see aDitko until much later.

LEE: As a kid, I did. Eric had almost all ofthem, actually—Malcolm, too. At one pointalmost every issue came through our houseup until whatever it was. I remember right upuntil the death of Gwen Stacy. I think I lostinterest after that. Maybe not quite at thedeath of Gwen, because I was buying someoff the stands right after that, too, when myfifth grade teacher would send me down tothe store during recess. When I was in fifthgrade, the same Mr. Small I mentioned earli-er became my teacher. He used to send me

on an errand to run his passbook through athis bank downtown while the other kidswere in recess, then he would give me aquarter, and I’d head over to Curtis’ and pickup a comic book. I can’t imagine—

MM: I’m thinking the same thing. Youcould never do that today. [laughter]

LEE: No teacher would get away withdoing that today. But that was littleHallowell, and it wasn’t a big deal, I guess.I mean, it was a big deal to me. I felt likesuch a big kid, “Wow, he’s giving me thisresponsibility.” I believe one of the firstissues I bought was the Punisher’s firstappearance [Amazing Spider-Man #129].Maybe a few before that.

MM: So here’s Lee Weeks, with greatpower comes great responsibility in acomic book at Curtis’. [laughter]

LEE: Yeah, right? That’s the only place Iknew to get comics back then. Actually, Iknew of a couple other places, but I could-n’t walk that far.

I remember those covers in the 20s.They’re still some of my favorite comicbook covers. Spidey and the Goblin,Spidey and the Torch, Spidey and theMolten Man. And then J. Jonah in the bigrobot thing with all the tentacles and hisface on the video screen.

MM: Yeah, I think that’s the Spider-Slayer.

LEE: The Spider-Slayer, okay. [laughs] But,oh, those were just tremendous, those wereso good. And the Annual, was it Annual #2?

MM: That’s the one with Dr. Strange. Thefirst one had the Sinister Six, all the villains.

LEE: Right, the Sinister Six in the first one.The second one had the cover, though,with the great Spidey figure and the close-up of the head, right? He used to do thatwonderful edge-lighting. I never saw thatin the other—I had never seen an ECbook. But of the stuff that I had seen, thatwas really unique, that beautiful edge light-ing done in yellow. So, Ditko was/is by farthe biggest influence on my Spidey. I alsodug Romita and Ross Andru, who was pret-ty underappreciated. And Gil Kane. GilKane inked by Romita—that was beautiful.

Below: Pencils for page15 of Spider-Man: Death& Destiny #2. “I’ve drawnmore than a few cemetery scenes overthe years.”Next Page: Spider-Man:Death & Destiny #2, page9 pencils.

Spider-Man and all related char-acters ™ and ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

MM: Talk a little bit about some of the work you’vedone this decade, because it’s been, again, special proj-ects spread throughout. Certainly Captain America was abig one, but there have been some others, as well.

LEE: I’ve had a couple of runs on Hulk, and there was the“Cap Lives Again” storyline I did with Dave Gibbons,among other things.Somewhere in there,back in the ’90s, whenMarvel was shuttingdown Daredevil sothey could restarthim under the MarvelKnights imprint, theyasked Dan Chichesterand myself to comeback and do thefinal issue ofthe firstvolume ofDaredevil.

MM: How did that feel for you, going back to Daredeviland working with Dan again after the intervening years?

LEE: I said no, at first. I didn’t want to repeat myself.Then Dan called, I think, once or twice, and he changedmy mind, which I’m happy for, and happy with the wayit came out. Robert Campanella inked it, and he did aterrific job. It was like coming back to an old friend. Tothis day, Daredevil is comfortably easy to draw. I justfeel like I know that person, both in and out of costume,pretty well. It was a lot of fun doing that job.

MM: What have been the most fun jobs you’ve workedon in recent years?

LEE: Boy, it’s so different now. A cou-ple days ago I put the finishing

touches on CaptainMarvel, and, in

many ways,that’s been an

incrediblysatisfyingproject,with afewbumpsin the

road.

Part 7: Re-Birth

Around the middle of it, we changed inkers.In most cases, the job on the board usuallybecomes my favorite. I really get into what itis I’m doing at the time. I loved doing theCaptain America stuff with Gibbons andPalmer. It was very, very intense. I keepcopies of all my pencils, and sometimes I goback and look at those. One of the thingsthat is most memorable to me was the prem-ise being that it’s an alternate history, analternate reality. It’s some kind of a differenttime stream where Cap is found floating inthe block of ice, à là Avengers #4, only, insteadof the Avengers finding him, he is pluckedfrom the freeze only to find himself on aNazi sub. He’s brought back to headquarters,which are in Manhattan, only Manhattan hasbeen Nazi-fied, which is revealed in a dou-ble-page spread—maybe the most ambitiousone I’ve ever tackled. It’s actually Manhattan,

but with some additions and changes. TheNazis had won World War II in this timestream and taken over the world, so we hadthings like the Albert Speer Dome, theReichstag building in this skyline shot. Ithrew in a nod to one of the prominentbuildings from the Fritz Lang Germanexpressionist movie, Metropolis, and a fewother things. But just creating this Nazi ver-sion of Manhattan, lots of zeppelins, dirigi-bles floating around—it was a real challenge

MM: You generally haven’t inked yourwork the past few years, have you?

LEE: Just some short stories here and there.I did some stuff for “Civil War,” a continu-ing short story run in Frontline, called“Sleeper Cell,” and I inked some if it, not allof it. Just some little things here and there.

Previous Page: AngrierHulk get, stronger Hulkget.Above: Two-page spreadfrom Daredevil #380.

Daredevil, Hulk ™ and ©2008Marvel Characters, Inc.

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wasn’t interested in religion, but I wanted to know aboutGod—if and who He was. I began an intensive journeythat lasted several months, began studying the Bible, ask-ing God to reveal Himself to me, which He did very evi-dently again and again. Finally, in February of 2002, Icommitted my life to the lordship of Yeshua Maschiach—Jesus Christ—the final public step taking place at a con-gregation in northern New Jersey made up of Jewish andnon-Jewish believers of Yeshua (Jesus) and led by a Jewishrabbi. These Jewish people have come to understand thatthe prophecies contained in their own Hebrew scrip-

tures—the Old Testament of the Bible—of a coming mes-siah were actually fulfilled by Jesus in the first century,that he was and is the ultimate Passover Lamb—the sin-less one dying in the place of sinners, giving Himself aspayment for the sins of the world, myself included.

From that night forward life changed forever.Priorities, how I thought, what I desired, everythingchanged, and continues to do so—in work, relationships,all of it. He healed my marriage and my whole family.There’s a scripture that says God will take away one’sstony heart and replace it with a soft one of flesh. He did

this for me. And realizing that Godactually wants us to find Him—thatwas huge for me. He desires that werepent of sin so that we can come toHim. All I know is I felt the realityof His love and forgiveness for thefirst time that Friday night in ’02and I don’t ever want to be awayfrom it, or away from Him.

My relationship with Jesus hashad a profound effect on my work,the jobs I will take, the jobs I turndown—even jobs I’ve lost as a result.It’s having a big impact on just whatit is I want to do from this pointgoing forward, some independentthings I’ve been working on, oneidea being a series I’d like to do deal-ing with that relationship betweenthe two testaments, or covenants ofthe Bible. I grew up, like most people,not realizing that Christianity comesfrom, and was originally Jewish. Jesusand His disciples were all Jews. Andthat the entire Bible is about Jesus—the Old Testament telling us He iscoming prophetically, while the Newtelling us He has come and willcome again. Unfortunately, much ofthose Jewish roots were lost throughthe centuries, but there is a re-awak-ening to them today.

MM: Back up just a little bit. Youtalked about what changed for you.Tell me how that changes how youlive your life.

LEE: Most people are familiar withthe practice of baptism. In the NewTestament it comes from a Greekword, baptizo, that is also the wordused when describing what you doto a cucumber to pickle it. The

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Modern Masters:Lee Weeks

Lee Weeks is the consummate story-teller. Over the course of his twenty-five-year-plus career, he has proven thisagain and again. His ability to createdynamic, interesting layouts, plus hisstrong draftsmanship, and wonderfulsense of lighting made his runs onDaredevil, Captain America, Spider-Man: Death and Destiny (which he alsowrote) and The Incredible Hulk fan fa-vorites, and his artwork for BatmanChronicles: The Gauntlet is among themost finely crafted in the character’shistory. Join us as we go behind thescenes and explore the work of a Mod-ern Master: Lee Weeks! This 128-pagebook features an exhaustive look into Week’s career and creative process, with a ca-reer-spanning interview with tons of art, including many rare and unpublished pieces,and a huge gallery of stunning artwork by this true Modern Master! By Tom Field andEric Nolen-Weathington.

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95(Digital Edition) $5.95

http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=95_70&products_id=641

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