Modern Masters Volume 17: Lee Weeks Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

M O D E R N

M A S T E R S

V O L U M E

S E V E N T E E N :

LEE EEKS W

Wolverine TM & ÂŠ2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

By Tom Field and Eric Nolen-Weathington

Modern Masters Volume Seventeen:

LEE WEEKS

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

Part 1:

Made in Maine— Soup and Nuts

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

LEE: And there were lots of neighborhood kids. We had five boys in our family, yet we would not be considered a big family at that time. There were lots of kids that read comics. We used to get ours at Curtis’ Pharmacy on Water Street in downtown Hallowell. On Tuesday there would be a race after school to get to there. With the old newsstand distribution system, you couldn’t always be sure how many copies of a comic would make it to your store.

LEE WEEKS: In comics, specifically, the usual suspects— names like Kirby, Kubert, Caniff. We’re all learning from these guys; they are our teachers. Foster, Raymond, Alex Toth. And some of the more modern comics guys, modern being relative, but certainly John Buscema, Neal Adams, and others—Gene Colan, Frank Miller, of course. I think there are others, really—I try not to say I know “this is the best guy,” but probably a half a dozen or so I would say share a very special resonance.

MM: It just occurs to me that you had more brothers in your house than any of us had channels on our TV at that time. [Lee laughs] So comics really were our culture. That’s what we did. LEE: In fact, I vividly remember the cable man drilling through the window sill to bring the first cable into the house, where we got as many as, what, eight or ten channels?

MM: Give me a sense of when you first started paying attention to comics and who the comics artists were?

MM: So comic books were always in your house. Were they Marvels, DCs, the typical stuff that most of us read at the time?

LEE: I paid attention early on because I wanted to do everything my older brothers did, and they liked comics, so I picked it up by osmosis. It was really two interests: comics and drawing. Back further than I can remember, apparently my dad would stick crayons in my hand. And a little later than that, I remember the Kirby and Ditko conversations between my brothers.

LEE: There seemed to be boxes and boxes of every kind of comic book, and I enjoyed them all: war comics, mystery comics, even Richie Rich comics and Gold Key Star Trek comics. It just seems there was a plethora of genres available. And I loved all the variety. But certainly the ones that seemed to have a higher value to my older brothers, and so to me, were the Marvel and DC titles.

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

MM: Were you guys serious collectors? LEE: I wasn’t at first, but my two oldest brothers, 6

Malcolm and Eric, were. The middle brother, Mark, he probably read them second-hand, more like myself, and then my little brother, Dean, picked them up, too. I remember Eric’s collection more than Malcolm’s. Mal’s actually gotten back into it the last couple years. Eric had a pretty substantial collection but sold it in the mid-’70s for a song to a guy with a mail order business. He got nowhere near what they were worth, but he needed to buy books for school, so he sold his collection. He had some vintage comics, and they were bagged. He used to get his supplies from that same guy, so I think that’s why he thought to sell him the books. MM: Did they go and find these, or did they buy them off the stands? LEE: Bought off the stands. [laughs] Malcolm’s first book off the stands was Spider-Man #24. At one point Eric wanted to go back and get Amazing Fantasy #15. No, no, no, excuse me. It’s the other way around, I’m getting them mixed up. He traded one of his copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for a new copy of Superman. MM: Oh, my. Didn’t one of your brothers have three copies of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Spider-Man? LEE: I think so. That’s what I understand. MM: One got traded away, just traded for some routine comic book. Didn’t another one end up, like, in a scrapbook? LEE: One was burned by Dad. I don’t know if it was the Seduction of the Innocent effect or what, but I think there were a lot of comics burned back then. I used to think it was pretty unique to us, but I’ve heard of others since. MM: Wow. Can you talk about some of the 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 just tremendous stories, especially for an entry-level young child to read. Wonderful morality plays with very simple yet multi-dimensional characters, simply executed. Clear-cut themes, as in SpiderMan, “With great power must also come great responsibility.” You know, I haven’t really drifted back and thought of this stuff a lot, but I remember lots of energy... and goodness. MM: If I were to ask you memorable comic stories from your youth, what would they be? LEE: Spidey #33 and FF #51. Spidey #33 was “The Final Chapter.” Just a great story—still is. Some others, I’m not sure how much I’m remembering from early childhood, or if it’s more from re-reading them as an older teenager. I can tell you one of the first comics I felt was distinctly my own, and not a second-hand comic, was 7

Previous Page: “Prior to recently finding this drawing of Captain America done in 1967 at age 4, my earliest surviving drawing was from about 1972.” Above: “Hallowell, Maine, or as I sometimes call it, ‘Mayberry North.’ The building at the far left is Boynton’s, and about eight doors or so down used to be Curtis’ Pharmacy, where we bought all our comics growing up.” Left: “A pencil portrait of Dad drawn as a Mother’s Day present in 1983 at age 20.” Captain America ™ and ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Fantastic Four #112, which is actually a little bit later. I think that’s, like, ’70 or ’71, if I remember? MM: You’re exactly right.

Above: A Spider-Man figure from Spider-Man: Death & Destiny, written and penciled by Lee. Next Page: When Lee’s older brother, Eric, presented him with his first hardcover sketchbook for Christmas in 1974, Lee set out at once to fill it up, starting with a Captain Marvel story and soon after an Iron Man story. Captain Marvel ™ and ©2008 DC Comics. Electro, Iron Man, Spider-Man ™ and ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

LEE: A very stark image of the Thing and the Incredible Hulk facing off on a black cover. I had plenty more comics that were given to me, but this was the one where I really was staking my own claim. That was John Buscema’s first run on FF, and his figures were just amazing. I also remember the death of Gwen Stacy. And the Sinister Six story. I may even have that. That would have been the reprint, obviously. That was, what, ’63, ’64? MM: Yeah, but I think it got reprinted around 1969. LEE: Yeah, that’s the one I remember, giant-sized or something. I was struck by an effect I didn’t see in any of the other comic books that I was reading, at least none of the super-hero books, which is the double-lighting that Ditko did, the edge lighting on Spider-Man; that made an impression on me back then. MM: Well, that’s what I was going to ask you. When did you make the connection between these stories you really enjoyed and this drawing activity you really enjoyed? LEE: It seems like I was always copying them, always trying to recreate those images. We used to do this thing with Silly 8

Putty, where you’d press the Silly Putty down on a newspaper strip, or even a comic book, and it’d come up with a mirror image that 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 of the Thing back and forth while my older brother was doing an oil painting copy of Avengers #4, the “Cap Lives” cover. MM: Now, you actually did narrative storylines back when you were a kid, as well. I’ve seen some of these. LEE: In the third grade, I actually did my first original material. Well, probably not that original, but certainly my first published. I was a publisher in the third grade. I did some strips on copy paper so that they could be folded into a book, and my middle brother, Mark—I’m the fourth of five—took them to his school. He would have been in junior high school when I was in third grade, and he ran off a bunch of copies on one of those old crank-operated blue-ink mimeograph machine, and I sold them to schoolmates for three cents apiece... sold a few dozen, I think. MM: Wow. So you had your own little shop going, there. LEE: Yeah, but I would have been nailed for copyright infringement on a couple, as one was an Underdog strip. Another story was of two guys running a track race, beginning at the starting line, followed by

Part 2:

Law and Spirit— An Artist’s Education

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

And I’m not sure anybody around me was equipped to help me if I had asked. MM: What was your experience like when you got there?

LEE: I pretty much knew I was going to go to art school after the accident. I had a sense this is what I’m supposed to do. I was happy about it, and though it would be another 20 years before I began walking with Him, I felt like God had spared me, and I had a sense— albeit a vague one— there was a purpose. I think about halfway through my senior year of high school I made the decision to go to Portland. I put together a portfolio, mostly a bunch of unfinished drawings. Specifically I remember sketching the potbellied coal stove from our kitchen and a few other things just to have something other than comic pages and portraits in my portfolio.

LEE: Oh, it was incredible. As much as I loved growing up in my tiny town of Hallowell, we had very limited experiences in terms of cultural diversity. Completely rich in character for what it was, but all of it within a particular bandwidth on the dial. Portland was an avant garde school with its share of esoteric characters. It was the biggest cultural shift in my life to that point, and there were things going on at home that made it tough. Again, I don’t remember there being anybody around me to sit me aside and say, “This is what to expect.” There wasn’t on-campus housing. For the first couple months, I tried living all by myself, but I didn’t like that at all. I thought it would be the greatest, being by myself. I think growing up with four brothers and all these friends around, being suddenly alone was not easy. Then around November, there were three guys that lost a fourth roommate. They were looking for somebody to take that fourth spot, and asked me, so I jumped at it. That ended up having its own craziness, but still, there was a lot of fun.

MM: Did you go off to Portland with a sense that you were going to go there and get a formal education, but a commercial career in comics is really what you had in mind? LEE: No question, Tom, long-term I wanted the comics career. I didn’t know when it was going to happen. I was trying to chase the dream, but be responsible, too, and I knew there were jobs to be had in graphic design, and you could make a living doing that. Honestly, there are many questions that I should have asked, and I didn’t.

MM: This had to be an eye-opening experience just artistically, everything you were exposed to, from your roommates to your educators. What was it like? LEE: I couldn’t make sense of it at first, very honestly. The focus was entirely abstract, which I knew nothing about. I 20

had some drawing chops for a kid my age, but in class after class, there was no interest in the classical or academic approach—no anatomy, proportion, etc. I didn’t know what to make of it. I remember one day in particular in life drawing, I was nailing this figure, and the teacher just kind of walked by, and the person next to me was working from the same figure and drawing something that, no exaggeration, looked like a crumpled up brown paper bag. There was nothing in it to even remotely suggest he was drawing a human. And she walked past me and stopped at his paper bag drawing and said, “Oh, my, this is marvelous.” She fawned over it, and I became confused, like everyone was in on the joke except me. I hid my interest in comics for the most part. A couple of my roommates were kind of into it, but that was about it, at least for the first semester. The idea behind the school was the first two years was what they called the foundation program: two years of basically unlearning everything you knew. Instead of being focused on representational ideas, ideas of making something look like something, they wanted to tear that all down, so we would focus on the abstract principles that go into making any picture work, whether it’s a photograph, a drawing, whatever it is... a sculpture. And it’s true, what makes a picture work are its underlying abstract principles, not so much the subject matter. But, I’m not sure I agree with the approach that wipes out all classical instruction during that period. It should incorporate both. Although I greatly appreciate it now, I certainly didn’t understand it at 19... not initially. I remember something finally clicking while working on an

assignment for my two-dimensional design class. I was looking at some comics one night, and trying to make a connection, looking at some “Kirby Krackle,” which is that wonderful cosmic effect with all the dots Jack used so often so well. I was looking at the Kirby Krackle and it kind of opened me up a bit. “Oh, I think I kind of get it. Look at these varying shapes and spaces, and repeating forms. That’s really what he’s doing.” And it’s just another thing that makes Kirby so great, among many other things: His drawings work so beautifully abstractly. Turn a page upside-down and, without even knowing what’s going on, there’s all this excitement on the page. So, I was doing an abstract assignment. It was just some repeating forms and various sizes and shapes and trying to create tension and stuff—working out the “figure/ground relationship,” and I thought

Previous Page: 1983 self-portrait in charcoal done from the mirror, at age 20. Below: Cover pencils for Stan Lee Meets the Thing, complete with Kirby Krackle. “Finally, I get to work with Stan Lee. This cover is a complete ape of FF #51, with Stan playing all the non-Thing roles. I suggested the cover copy, ‘This Stan, This Monster’.” Fantastic Four, Thing ™ and ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Kirby. The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking of a Negative Zone kind of thing or something. And it came out great. And no one knew! Here’s this totally abstract thing, and they had no idea a funny book unlocked the mystery of it for me. Later on, I did a big 2-D design assignment in color where we had to fill up a 16" x 12" frame with little halfinch squares of this special colored paper, and create a sense of planes and depth, using just the squares, playing with hue, value, and chroma. We were to just explore, really. And then there’d be a group critique. The critiques intimidated me that first semester. A piece would go up on the wall, and the students and the teachers would talk about it... and I would be lost. They would be talking about man’s struggle against nature, the inner workings of the psyche present in the work... all this stuff they were reading into it. I thought everybody got it and I didn’t know anything, because they would find all these hidden meanings and psychological aspects to these simple little things, and I was clueless. I thought, “Oh, man, I don’t know what’s going on. I have no clue.” That is, until the day when my assignment with the little squares of color was put up for group critique, and everyone started finding all the same lofty things in my assignment, amazing ideas and insights that I supposedly had put in this piece.

I was stunned at first. I looked around. “They’re talking about—that’s mine, right?” And just like that, a big, giant light bulb turned on over my head, and I can’t tell you how much this helped me the rest of the way. I just put my hand up on my forehead and with relief and a smile I thought, “Ohhhh, now I get it. It’s just a bunch of hooey.” I realized much of it—though not all—was just gobbledy-gook. It really didn’t have anything to do with anything. So Kirby helped me over the abstract hump and then this other thing relaxed me a bit. MM: You spent a year there. What ultimately made you choose not to go back, and what do you feel you came away from the school with? LEE: Several things, but here are two key things: the second semester, I remember I really wanted to do some comic art. I started working on stuff. I started incorporating a little of it in some of my assignments, partly being silly because I was fried from all the hours. First semester I had a design teacher named Joe Guertin. In the bathroom of one of the buildings, there was graffiti everywhere— philosophical meanderings of every flavor. During an allnighter one night, I added my work to the wall in the form of a comic book cover featuring Joe as our hero, 22

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

LEE: Boy, that’s weird, isn’t it? Oh, my goodness. MM: By 1983 you’re working, you’re taking some classes, drawing constantly, always working on samples, ideas, your own strips, and then going to shows and meeting professionals. We went to Portland when Bob Layton was there on a signing tour. We went back to Boston a time or two and you met with some other people. That’s just sort of my memory of it, from the outside, it was just all this sort of preparatory work, how to

MM: Al Williamson was there. I think it was the last day of the show, and Howard Chaykin was going to be talking about American Flagg, and we went up to the room, and I remember him being kind of—y’know, he had a reputation of being sort of like a Harlan Ellison, so you wanted to be careful around him. You didn’t want to say something stupid and get called on it. LEE: Right, right. MM: In that room, and there were two older guys that were sort of sitting on the other side, and nobody was talking to them. One of them was Fred Fredericks, and the other was Al Williamson. And, to me, anyway— LEE: You’re telling me Fred Fredericks was there, too?! Oh, man. I didn’t know that. Well, I probably knew it back then, but didn’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 even supposed to be in the same room with him, I was so intimidated. Because this was EC Al Williamson. LEE: I probably didn’t even know that, at the time. I think I was aware of some of his Star Wars work, but I don’t know how familiar I was with him, yet. MM: You spoke with Al Williamson, and Bruce and I didn’t. We were so intimidated. [laughter] LEE: Oh, I do remember that. MM: But the irony is, within that decade, what were you doing? You were working with him. 29

Part 3:

Breaking In...

MM: How did you make the transition into drawing professionally? Marvel had you do that inventory Vision story that, as I recall, they gave to lots of people because it was challenging.

but I remember you being in Rockaway or Dover, New Jersey, in the area, and working, and sort of getting back into drawing, but nothing really taking off until the following summer.

LEE: Yes, I don’t think it was lots, but there were a handful of people it was given to, and actually that was right after the school year at the Kubert School. I went to Marvel and showed Mark Gruenwald samples. I had redone a couple of Nick Fury pages from a Bruce Canwell idea I had originally drawn before going off to school. I redrew a scene I had done a year or so earlier, and took those pages in as my samples. And, really, they weren’t that good. It wasn’t the best stuff I had done at the time, but I remember Gruenwald thought I was ready and gave me the sixpage Vision story—a story I would still find difficult to draw today, because the action pretty much all takes place inside a plane, in a confined area, and there were difficult storytelling challenges: a lot of panels and a very confined setting. I had a hard time finishing the pages as I was just burnt out from the very intense school year. I did finish and took them in, and Grueny said, y’know, “This guy’s ready.” He took me around and introduced me to a few other editors. All I had to do was push a little bit and I would have been working then, but instead I disappeared for a year. There were a few things going on, but the gist was, for the only time in my life, I was having a hard time drawing—getting past the blank white page.

LEE: Right. In fact, I think I tried something else that didn’t work out. I was running, really. I was really just running from myself and God—a theme of much of my old life. Eventually, I met a person by chance, quoteunquote—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 couple months later, I was working for him at the little 7-11. It seems like such a small and quaint experience, but it really was one of the most important years of my life. It was a nice break, a nice breather—call it a silhouette in my life up to that point. MM: Well, that’s interesting. What recharged you, what rebuilt you so that, in the middle of 1985, you could start aggressively pursuing your career goals and having some success? LEE: I read a couple of books that were helpful. I was in a pretty low place, and I read a couple of books, and this friendship built up with my friend and manager, Dean Cohen, and a lot of conversations about God and just purpose in life, and our being here for a reason. I remember reading a book by a guy who was a sales trainer and considered a top motivational speaker. I was struck by the first two or three pages where he talked about the most important thing in his life, which is his personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That impacted me—obviously, as I still remember it.

MM: Okay. What happened? I sort of remember then you going to work at 7-11. I don’t know if it was immediate, 40

ate anthology stuff. We came up with some science fiction and horror ideas for Eclipse. I know we also thought a Conan story would be a good idea, because Marvel was publishing the Savage Sword of Conan. They were using new creators, and they were looking for opportunities for new creators. And so we came up with a Conan story. And we would be at my parents’ house, and you were the only one who had the temerity to get on the phone and call up the editor, Larry Hama, to ask about submitting a story. [laughs] LEE: Oh, I totally forgot about that. MM: Do you remember his reaction?

MM: So talk about 1985. What got you back into drawing? What did you focus on, and what was your big break? LEE: You’ll probably be able to help with the timeline. After not drawing for months, I got the itch while working in the store. I just started drawing with felt pens, ballpoint pens, and stuff, on brown paper bags for people at the 7-11, and later graduated to cocktail napkins at diners. And I got excited about drawing again. It still was what I wanted to do, and I believed it was what I was supposed to be doing. And, if I’m not mistaken, I think I contacted you about it. Does that sound right? MM: It does, because I was freshly out of school at the time and looking around for writing opportunities, and it seemed natural—“Let’s put some samples together, a complete package.” There were lots of options out there. Eclipse Comics had just picked up or revived some of the titles that Pacific was doing, as anthologies, and it just seemed a natural. Anthologies, we can cre-

LEE: I think I shared with him what had happened with Gruenwald. And, without going all into it, he just told me I wasn’t ready. And I thought it was kind of funny that he could tell me I wasn’t ready when I was up in Maine and he had never seen any of my drawings. MM: And around that time we were doing the Eclipse stuff. Did you draw the entire story and then did we send in the entire package, like, penciled and scripted, or did we send in a proposal? LEE: For Conan? MM: No, no, no, for the Eclipse piece that we did, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” LEE: Oh. What I remember is taking your story—I was convinced it would show a lack of confidence to pencil, ink, and letter the 41

Previous Page and Left: Lee’s first work for Marvel, a Vision six-page try-out story. “The late Mark Gruenwald gave me this paying assignment, calling it the ‘earn while you learn’ plan. The story was titled, ‘Double Vision,’ and was given to a few artists who Marvel thought were just about ready. However, I was on the verge of burnout. Shortly after drawing this, I put the pencil down for several months... the only such period in my life.” Below: Napkin sketch of Dracula and an eye. Vision ™ and ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MM: The New Wave. LEE: The New Wave, there we go. I did that for over a year, a year-and-a-half? And a few other things. MM: What was the premise with New Wave? The writer was Mindy Newell, but was that a property that was created by Eclipse, or was it created by Mindy? LEE: I think it was Mindy’s, but I’m not positive. 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 your work at the time? LEE: I certainly learned a lot. It was hard. Working from full scripts was not easy for me. There were a lot of characters, a lot of cross balloons, trying to make it all work so that the word balloons didn’t cross up. I

remember it being kind of hard. But I also remember certain moments where things would click in my drawing. That was where I became more comfortable with my drawing, especially of interiors and perspective. I didn’t have to really think about it and be as conscious of it. I actually can say there was a particular page where it seemed all of a sudden I was able to move pieces of furniture around, draw them at any angle, have objects with different vanishing points all look like they’re on the same flat plane. It’s not an easy thing to master. I gained a comfortability with many of the fundamentals I had learned but hadn’t yet mastered. And it was really just from drawing pages every day. That’s all it was. It’s a muscle memory thing, and each time you see that you do something wrong, you do it a little less wrong the next time. I spoke with someone recently about Chuck Jones, I think it’s a Chuck Jones quote, that everybody has

Previous Page: Rough and finished inks for the payoff page in, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk,” written by Tom Field. “Professionally speaking, this job is still at the very top of all my experiences, and not just for the obvious reason of it being my first real gig. It was pretty special to break in working with my friend—doing a story that we generated.”

Part 4:

...And Breaking Out

MM: Where did Daredevil come from? Because I don’t remember that ever being a character that you talked about a whole lot, or expressed a whole lot of interest in.

Dave’s work was so beautiful and beautifully simple. Our book, Fall of the Kingpin, was a sequel in that it dealt with some things from the Born Again storyline, turning the tables on the Kingpin.

LEE: Totally from the Frank Miller run in the mid-’80s, just coming out of the low period when I wasn’t drawing. When I worked at the 7-11 we would tear the covers off the magazines for returns, back in the old days of newsstand distribution, and that was when Frank’s “Born Again” storyline was coming out. I so related to that story. And still do, even more profoundly so in some ways today. People call these things funny books, but that story really had an impact on me. And I fell in love with the character, with his struggle to do the right thing. It really meant something to him to do the right thing, and there’s a great moment when he’s holding Karen Page as she is going through heroin withdrawal, and he’s thinking about all the stuff that he’s lost, running through it all—job, money, relationships, etc.—but ultimately says, “I’ve lost nothing.” He ends up realizing he lost all fear when he lost all hope. Though I don’t agree with that particular line, certainly life, though lived through the material, is beyond material. It’s something much deeper than that. MM: Well, talk about what goes around, comes around, didn’t you ultimately end up drawing a cover for a Born Again trade paperback? LEE: No, that was actually the final four issues of Daredevil that I drew, #297 to #300. It’s a sort of sequel to, although I wouldn’t in any way try to suggest that it belongs on the same bookshelf as, Born Again. I am in awe of what Frank and Dave Mazzucchelli did. 47

Above: Wraparound cover art for the Daredevil: Fall of the Kingpin trade paperback collection. Next Page: Pencils for page 6 of Daredevil #284, Lee’s first issue. “It was on Daredevil that I began to learn how to pencil tighter. Really, it was just a matter of settling down a little bit.” Daredevil and all related characters ™ and ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

It’s sometimes confused with Born Again. The Fall of the Kingpin trade cover is one of my favorite covers, one I had a lot of fun doing. At the time it seemed much of the thinking in editorial was formulaic. Find something that works, and just do it that one way. There was a time when there was a rule that all panels had to be separated by quarter-inch gutters, stuff like that. Sometimes people find something that works for one reason, and they make dogma out of it, which chokes the spirit out of the thing. The spirit of a rule should always trump the letter of it. When I did the wraparound cover for that Daredevil trade, I put all the characters except for Kingpin on the back cover. Even Daredevil was moved to the back. The only thing on the front cover was a giant red DD, this trickle of glass that came down through the middle of the DD, and Kingpin laying flat on his back in an elliptical spotlight. Everything else was black. Though unconsciously, that idea of the trickling glass trailing from above came from that 48

Eisner story, Gerhard Schnobble, “If a Man Could Fly.” I turned it in knowing they were going to say, “Switch it. Make the back cover the front cover, and the front cover the back cover,” because I didn’t have Daredevil on the front. I didn’t have the major players, the guys that sell the book, on the front. But, we had an assistant at the time who ran cover for me, he actually snuck it through, because he thought the same thing, he also believed they would switch it. The cover was dramatic the way that it was, but it was kind of out of the norm for what they were doing at the time. And, sure enough, after the cover was finished and the galley was hanging on the wall the editor-in-chief said, “Nice cover, but it should have been reversed.” We were right. They would have switched it. Jim Shooter had been there for six months, I think, when I first got there, six or seven months—long enough for him to give me one of my all-time favorite memories. He put together a seminar for the young artists, whoever wanted to go, really,

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

drawing comics. I was so excited to be doing this one fill-in. And I was going to get a chance to work with Al Williamson. Beat that. MM: Do you remember what issue that was? LEE: My first issue was #284. Matt Murdock had amnesia. He was walking around wearing a New Orleans Saints baseball cap, hanging out in Hell’s Kitchen was a young black girl named Nyla. So, he was out of costume a lot. In fact, I think for the first couple of issues, when I drew the Daredevil costume, it was actually Bullseye wearing the costume.

MM: So let’s talk about your Daredevil experience. What happened after you sat there that night, and drew those sketches, and sort of felt inspired? LEE: I just committed to go after what it was I wanted to do the next time I went in, which was going to be Daredevil. Two or three weeks later, I was delivering a job and getting a new assignment, and I went to Ralph Macchio’s office, who at the time was editing Daredevil and Dr. Strange. He offered a back-up story for the latter book, which I took, the whole time Daredevil being on my mind. We had a pleasant meeting. I hung out with he and Mike Heisler, his assistant at the time. And as I turned to leave, I got one foot on either side of the threshold, and I—it was almost like asking a girl out on a date; I was nervous. I knew if I left I would feel very defeated, like I didn’t do what I set out to do. So I glanced back at Ralph, and in the most casual tone I could muster, I said, “By the way, Ralph, if you ever have need for a Daredevil fill-in, I would gladly take a hit out on your worst enemy for the chance to do it.” I think that is almost verbatim what I said. And I was going to just let it hang for a second and then say goodbye again and leave, but before I finished my sentence, he and Mike kind of looked at each other, “Oh, why didn’t we think of that?” I think they actually said that. At the time, John Romita, Jr. had taken on a special project, something that was taking him away from Daredevil a little bit. I could have walked out and missed that opportunity. Instead, I learned a big lesson: You don’t know until you ask. I went home with a script and was more excited than I’d ever been 49

Part 5:

Jungles of Green and Concrete

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

LEE: Leading up to that project, I always felt like the pages rarely came out just as I’d like them to. If out of 22 pages, I could 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 a success for me. If that happened once or twice an issue, I was thrilled. I had an idea of what I was trying to do, but didn’t have the mastery over the skills to pull it off consistently—still don’t, but much less so then. By the time I got to Daredevil #300, I started to have more, “yeah” pages. Possibly that was a function of drawing under such deadline pressure that I worked faster and got more of a flow. With Predator/Magnus, I was given the time to do it, and consequently it was the first job where, page in and page out, I was hitting my marks more consistently. I was also exploring a lot of things that I’d not drawn much of before— futuristic settings, the tall spires, the cities—yet trying to give it a more grounded feel than maybe it had had in the past in Magnus, Robot Fighter.

LEE: Yeah, the entire decade was special projects, jumping around. On the one hand, it makes it hard for the ever-changing fan base to figure out who you are. People think you’re either the new guy coming in, or a really old guy just coming back. But I kind of liked it that way. I just wanted to do the stuff that excited me. Actually, I’d never heard of Magnus before I took on that job. MM: Oh, you didn’t remember that from the Gold Key comics when we were kids? LEE: No. I had no memory of it whatsoever. I mean, I may have seen it. I saw so many comics, growing up. My first memory of Magnus, however, was when I did that job. The original concept was actually Magnus/Terminator. That’s what they were trying to get done, but weren’t able to work out all the licensing, so having a framework for a story— or maybe they redid the whole story—they ended up doing Predator/Magnus instead.

MM: What did you use for reference, there? Did you have the Valiant stuff that was out? Did you go back and look at some of the Russ Manning material from Gold Key? LEE: I’m sure I looked at it some, but not a lot. As far as my feel for that kind of world, I thought more like Blade Runner... and Moebius. That’s what I remember

MM: Your memories of the work? 58

most. I loved dirtying things up a little bit, especially as we would go from the higher parts, the penthouses where these Elites lived, the hunters that were out trying to hunt the Predator, from there down into the belly of the beast, the lower parts of the city, I really tried to show a lot of chipped paint, rubble, rust, dust the deeper we went. MM: Is that the first major project that you penciled and inked? LEE: Yeah, I think I inked just those first couple jobs, the job with you, the job with Bruce Jones, some short stories. I penciled and inked my first issue of Justice and, I think, my last two or three issues of Justice. And a smattering of pages here and there, a short story here and there. Yeah, this would definitely have been the first big thing that I penciled and inked.

MM: Did you go right from that to doing the Predator/Tarzan series with Walt Simonson? LEE: No, I don’t think so. I think that’s where the bookshelf with Captain America and Ghost Rider comes in, and the Gambit mini-series, after which I did Tarzan. MM: Oh, that’s right. There was a Gambit mini-series that Klaus Janson inked, right? LEE: That’s right, written by Howard Mackie, who also wrote the Captain America/Ghost Rider bookshelf. MM: That was called Fear. LEE: That’s right. And, actually, the Gambit mini-series may have come before Fear. They kind of blur together for me. MM: Again, it’s part of this period where 59

Previous Page: Magnus trading card art. The cards were stapled into issues of the Predator vs. Magnus, Robot Fighter mini-series. Above: Pages 12 and 13 from Predator vs. Magnus, Robot Fighter #1. Magnus, Robot Fighter ™ and ©2008 Random House, Inc. Predator ™ and ©2008 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

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

the world within the earth that Burroughs had created where the dinosaurs never died out. Basically, the Predators have found their ultimate candy store—trophies all around. Word gets back to Tarzan of a slaughter taking place in Pellucidar, so he and his crew make the journey to investigate. It was a blast working with Walt. He was just an incredibly wonderful person. MM: How had you known him? You hadn’t worked with him, had you? LEE: No, I didn’t know him. But, for my money, over the last 30 years, the guy that has most closely embodied that same sense of awe and adventure, without aping— certainly you wouldn’t look at Walt’s artwork and say, “Oh, he draws like Kirby,” because he doesn’t, but there’s a Kirby feel to it. You can see the Kirby influence, the dynamism, the power. I’ve always felt like Walt was the closest thing to Kirby we’ve had in the last 30 years—I mean, other than Jack, himself. MM: Now, Tarzan, of course, guys like Foster, Hogarth, Kubert and Buscema had drawn the character before you. What sort of influences did you or did you not look at and bear in mind as you worked on your own approach to the character? LEE: I had the big treasury editions of the Tarzans Joe Kubert did, which are incredible. Joe is going to be 82 this year, and he’s probably in one of the most productive periods of his life. But that Tarzan stuff was just so unbelievable for its simplicity, for how much he was able to convey with the least amount of lines. His influence shows up in places in my Tarzan. In other places, it’s harder to see. But I was also just trying 62

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

LEE: I enjoyed it very much. There are some real fun moments. There’s a close-up panel where Tarzan, really up against it, says, “My knife won’t be enough this time, but a grenade might kill us all.” It’s a real Kubert-esque kind of close-up. I have a giant blow-up of that panel hanging in my studio. And I did a lot of delicate brushwork. A project like that is great for exploring the human figure, for gaining understanding you can’t really get drawing guys in costumes, because even with skintight costumes, there are things you can get away with you can’t so much with a Tarzan-like character.

The way John Byrne would draw the X-Men figures in his heyday, which I loved, wouldn’t really work for Tarzan. It has to be more naturalistic, more real-world anatomy and stuff. Something I love about being a comic book artist in general is you’re always learning something about something, as long as there’s a variety of jobs—another reason I like jumping around. With Tarzan, I drew my first DC-3 transport plane. I think it had the longest commercial use of any plane, ever. It’s the one you always think of when you think of old Tarzan movies, with the two props on the wings and a half dozen windows down the side. I also drew my first Ford tri-motor plane in Tarzan. Again, one of the fun things about jumping around. Years earlier, I had to draw a helicopter chase scene in an issue of Justice, and I had so much fun investigating and learning about helicopters, military helicopters. And I made sure that these Russian-made Hind helicopters I chose to be the pursuers, the enemy, I made sure the helicopter carrying all our characters was a transport that technically made sense—that it was big enough for everyone to fit and fast enough to elude the Hind. And then a third helicopter came to the transport’s rescue, and that was an Apache AH64. That was the first 64

Part 6:

Picking up the Gauntlet

MM: There are two things that stand out for me in that period. One would be the Thing black-&-white story that you wrote and drew for Marvel, and the other would be Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet, that you did with Bruce Canwell. What do you remember about The Gauntlet? How it got pitched, and how you got the momentum behind it. How did the project initiate? LEE: Y’know, I always tell people I’ve gained more of my understanding of storytelling from conversations with Bruce than just about any other person. In one of those conversations it just came up that I wanted to do something with him.

He had a story I thought was exceptional. What a great idea, that Robin would be put to a final test before Batman would allow him to become his full-fledged sidekick. MM: And, just to clarify, we’re talking about Dick Grayson here—the original Robin. LEE: The original Robin, right. Obviously, you avoid putting a year to something like that, but Dick Grayson was put through basically a test that consisted of a sophisticated game of hide-and-seek. I loved it. When you can clearly pitch a concept in a couple sentences, the idea is strong. And one thing that I think I’ve had a knack for is, when I’m really excited by something, I can usually get other people excited about it, with the work. But that was easy to pitch. They approved it pretty much immediately. MM: How’d you work on that? Did Bruce send you a detailed plot? Did you work from a script? LEE: I think it was a very detailed plot containing some script. Actually, it was a pretty organic process. There were lots of things that would come to my mind as I was drawing scenes, and I’d call up Bruce and talk with him. But the skeleton, the spine of the story idea was so strong that there existed a flexibility. When your target is so clear it makes things easy and fun. MM: How large of a story did you have at that point? LEE: It’s a 48-page bookshelf. It was done under the umbrella of the Batman Chronicles. It was very satisfying working up the cover. I put some people that we know into the book. There’s a bridge scene that I had a lot of fun working out, due in part to the bridge being based on the Hill to Hill Bridge in the next town over in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It’s probably the most intelligent story I’ve ever

worked on—just really smart, in my opinion. And, from what I’ve heard through the years from persons that have read it, that seems 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 tell people that although he’d been writing other things for years, that was Bruce’s first published comic book. The jaws drop. “You’re kidding me! Why isn’t this guy doing regular stuff?” And I gotta tell you, it’s a mystery to me he didn’t take off. I think some editors missed the boat with Bruce. MM: What do you remember about your work on it? I don’t remember even if you inked it. LEE: I did ink it. I remember individual shots and pages. I believe that’s about the time I had done some animated work on the storyboards for the Superman cartoon, so there was more of a streamlined, simplified approach to my figures. It was less cluttered with superfluous rendering and the like. I felt I was getting a real grasp on the Batman character—things like keeping the faces open and not having a lot of lines on the faces—and I tried to be more graphic in the way I separated everything. I believe Toth was on my mind a lot during that period. MM: That was something I wondered, because we talked about influences you had when you drew Daredevil, when you drew Tarzan. When you did Batman—particularly when you tried to do Batman in what would be sort of a period—what kind of influences were you channeling? LEE: Hmm. Some of this is going to just be a guess. Again, I was very influenced by Mazzucchelli’s work. When I think of certain specific pages that come to mind, I don’t see them necessarily as being from anybody else. I was coming into my own way of doing things. But there were some places where there was some real Toth influence in the way that I arranged certain shots and scenes, the way that he used blacks. I’m sure I may have even borrowed a shot or two of his... the way he structured a shot.

MM: I don’t remember you being the biggest DC fan, so I’m not aware if you had seen the Batman that a lot of people had seen in the ’70s, whether it be the Neal Adams stuff, or, later, the Marshall Rogers 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 my house. I remember being in Curtis’ Pharmacy when I was a kid looking at an issue of his Batman and seeing how strikingly different from all the other comics it was. He was a big influence on me when I was trying to learn how to draw as a kid. 71

In fact, boy, I remember doing that head turn thing where Neal would really emphasize the big neck muscle that comes from under the ear at the back corner of the jaw down to the neck hole at the clavicle—think Cap on the cover of Avengers #93. It’s called the sternomastoid. That’s where I learned the name of that muscle, because he would do these great sternomastoids on these turned heads, with the awkward shaped mouth that was calling out, usually while the guy was waving his hand flatly through the air as if to say, “No way.” MM: I remember you saying that The Gauntlet was one of the projects that you enjoyed the most, for lots of reasons. When you got done with that, what did you want to go to next? That’s kind of a hard one to top. LEE: I don’t think it’s any coincidence two of my favorite projects were the first job with you, and this one 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 this stuff with your pals, it makes it special. Years later, I think it holds up. What was the question again? MM: Well, what did you want to do next? What I remember is that you pretty quickly decided you want to start to write some of your own material, but I don’t know if that was an immediate transition. I don’t know what you were thinking. When you got done with Gauntlet, what did you want to do next? LEE: At that time, I wanted to at least have a taste of doing everything. I was working on some ideas. But, again, that time is kind of a blur to me, so I don’t know the exact chronology. I pitched a couple little things here and there. Sometime after that I did the Thing story. It was 17 pages, I think. And I’m trying to think of why I even hooked up with those guys—Joe Andreani and— MM: Hadn’t you been approached to do a back cover or a pin-up page or something? It seems like you had a piece in there an issue or two before your Thing story. 73

Previous Page: “Page 26 [of The Gauntlet] was one where everything seemed to fall into place. Left: “Duck Soupers reunited a couple summers back at the Liberal Cup in Hallowell, just across the street from where we all met nearly 30 years ago. As far as we know, Duck Soup was the first comic shop in all of Maine.” (L to R): Howard Downs, Dave Peabody, Doug Thornsjo, Bruce Canwell, and Tom Field. Missing are Duds, Dean, Lam, and Walt. Below: A penciled panel from The Gauntlet. Batman, Robin ™ and ©2008 DC Comics.

Below: Pencils for page 15 of Spider-Man: Death & Destiny #2. “I’ve drawn more than a few cemetery scenes over the years.” Next Page: Spider-Man: Death & Destiny #2, page 9 pencils.

Romita’s Spider-Man, as a kid. I didn’t see a Ditko until much later. LEE: As a kid, I did. Eric had almost all of them, actually—Malcolm, too. At one point almost every issue came through our house up until whatever it was. I remember right up until the death of Gwen Stacy. I think I lost interest after that. Maybe not quite at the death of Gwen, because I was buying some off the stands right after that, too, when my fifth grade teacher would send me down to the store during recess. When I was in fifth grade, the same Mr. Small I mentioned earlier became my teacher. He used to send me

on an errand to run his passbook through at his bank downtown while the other kids were in recess, then he would give me a quarter, and I’d head over to Curtis’ and pick up a comic book. I can’t imagine— MM: I’m thinking the same thing. You could never do that today. [laughter] LEE: No teacher would get away with doing that today. But that was little Hallowell, and it wasn’t a big deal, I guess. I mean, it was a big deal to me. I felt like such a big kid, “Wow, he’s giving me this responsibility.” I believe one of the first issues I bought was the Punisher’s first appearance [Amazing Spider-Man #129]. Maybe a few before that. MM: So here’s Lee Weeks, with great power comes great responsibility in a comic book at Curtis’. [laughter] LEE: Yeah, right? That’s the only place I knew to get comics back then. Actually, I knew of a couple other places, but I couldn’t walk that far. I remember those covers in the 20s. They’re still some of my favorite comic book covers. Spidey and the Goblin, Spidey and the Torch, Spidey and the Molten Man. And then J. Jonah in the big robot thing with all the tentacles and his face 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 were so good. And the Annual, was it Annual #2? MM: That’s the one with Dr. Strange. The first 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 closeup of the head, right? He used to do that wonderful edge-lighting. I never saw that in the other—I had never seen an EC book. But of the stuff that I had seen, that was really unique, that beautiful edge lighting done in yellow. So, Ditko was/is by far the biggest influence on my Spidey. I also dug Romita and Ross Andru, who was pretty underappreciated. And Gil Kane. Gil Kane inked by Romita—that was beautiful.

Part 7: Re-Birth MM: Talk a little bit about some of the work you’ve done this decade, because it’s been, again, special projects spread throughout. Certainly Captain America was a big 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, when Marvel was shutting down Daredevil so they could restart him under the Marvel Knights imprint, they asked Dan Chichester and myself to come back and do the final issue of the first volume of Daredevil.

MM: How did that feel for you, going back to Daredevil and 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 changed my mind, which I’m happy for, and happy with the way it came out. Robert Campanella inked it, and he did a terrific job. It was like coming back to an old friend. To this day, Daredevil is comfortably easy to draw. I just feel 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 worked on in recent years? LEE: Boy, it’s so different now. A couple days ago I put the finishing touches on Captain Marvel, and, in many ways, that’s been an incredibly satisfying project, with a few bumps in the road.

Around the middle of it, we changed inkers. In most cases, the job on the board usually becomes my favorite. I really get into what it is I’m doing at the time. I loved doing the Captain America stuff with Gibbons and Palmer. It was very, very intense. I keep copies of all my pencils, and sometimes I go back and look at those. One of the things that is most memorable to me was the premise being that it’s an alternate history, an alternate reality. It’s some kind of a different time stream where Cap is found floating in the block of ice, à là Avengers #4, only, instead of the Avengers finding him, he is plucked from the freeze only to find himself on a Nazi sub. He’s brought back to headquarters, which are in Manhattan, only Manhattan has been Nazi-fied, which is revealed in a double-page spread—maybe the most ambitious one I’ve ever tackled. It’s actually Manhattan,

but with some additions and changes. The Nazis had won World War II in this time stream and taken over the world, so we had things like the Albert Speer Dome, the Reichstag building in this skyline shot. I threw in a nod to one of the prominent buildings from the Fritz Lang German expressionist movie, Metropolis, and a few other things. But just creating this Nazi version of Manhattan, lots of zeppelins, dirigibles floating around—it was a real challenge MM: You generally haven’t inked your work the past few years, have you? LEE: Just some short stories here and there. I did some stuff for “Civil War,” a continuing short story run in Frontline, called “Sleeper Cell,” and I inked some if it, not all of it. Just some little things here and there. 81

tures—the Old Testament of the Bible—of a coming messiah were actually fulfilled by Jesus in the first century, that he was and is the ultimate Passover Lamb—the sinless one dying in the place of sinners, giving Himself as payment for the sins of the world, myself included. From that night forward life changed forever. Priorities, how I thought, what I desired, everything changed, 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’s stony heart and replace it with a soft one of flesh. He did this for me. And realizing that God actually wants us to find Him—that was huge for me. He desires that we repent of sin so that we can come to Him. All I know is I felt the reality of His love and forgiveness for the first time that Friday night in ’02 and I don’t ever want to be away from it, or away from Him. My relationship with Jesus has had a profound effect on my work, the jobs I will take, the jobs I turn down—even jobs I’ve lost as a result. It’s having a big impact on just what it is I want to do from this point going forward, some independent things I’ve been working on, one idea being a series I’d like to do dealing with that relationship between the two testaments, or covenants of the Bible. I grew up, like most people, not realizing that Christianity comes from, and was originally Jewish. Jesus and His disciples were all Jews. And that the entire Bible is about Jesus— the Old Testament telling us He is coming prophetically, while the New telling us He has come and will come again. Unfortunately, much of those Jewish roots were lost through the centuries, but there is a re-awakening to them today.

wasn’t interested in religion, but I wanted to know about God—if and who He was. I began an intensive journey that lasted several months, began studying the Bible, asking God to reveal Himself to me, which He did very evidently again and again. Finally, in February of 2002, I committed my life to the lordship of Yeshua Maschiach— Jesus Christ—the final public step taking place at a congregation in northern New Jersey made up of Jewish and non-Jewish believers of Yeshua (Jesus) and led by a Jewish rabbi. These Jewish people have come to understand that the prophecies contained in their own Hebrew scrip-

MM: Back up just a little bit. You talked about what changed for you. Tell me how that changes how you live your life. LEE: Most people are familiar with the practice of baptism. In the New Testament it comes from a Greek word, baptizo, that is also the word used when describing what you do to a cucumber to pickle it. The 86

Lee Weeks

Art Gallery

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Modern Masters:

Lee Weeks Lee Weeks is the consummate storyteller. Over the course of his twentyfive-year-plus career, he has proven this again and again. His ability to create dynamic, interesting layouts, plus his strong draftsmanship, and wonderful sense of lighting made his runs on Daredevil, Captain America, SpiderMan: Death and Destiny (which he also wrote) and The Incredible Hulk fan favorites, and his artwork for Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet is among the most finely crafted in the character’s history. Join us as we go behind the scenes and explore the work of a Modern Master: Lee Weeks! This 128-page book features an exhaustive look into Week’s career and creative process, with a career-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 and Eric Nolen-Weathington. (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95

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