Lee Weeks is an artist that you don’t see a great many articles about. While he’s an incredibly talented artist, the way he has conducted his career–on his own terms and in a modest manner–has kept him out of the spotlight (as compared to many of his contemporaries. So months ago when I found out that Tom Field and Eric Nolen-Weathington had devoted a volume of the Modern Master series to Weeks, I was eager to interview them. And then…my disorganized nature misplaced this interview. My apologies to Field and Nolen-Weathington for the delay. (This interview was conducted in early December 2008, well before I joined Robot 6 and that’s why I am running a comics interview here for the first time in awhile.) To make it up to these fine fellows, I will be splitting this interview into two parts. Part one will be with Field and the second part, which will run tomorrow, will be with Nolen-Weathington and will delve into other projects of his.

But before jumping into this first part, in case you don’t know Weeks’ work, here is some info courtesy of TwoMorrows: “Weeks is the consummate storyteller. Over the course of his twenty-five-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, Spider-Man: 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.”

Tim O’Shea: Given that you and Lee Weeks are old friends, were you afraid you were too close to him to be able to create a good book?

Tom Field: Actually, I looked at it just the opposite way — that because I *did* know him well, I could do a better book because I’d know the best topics to ask him about. I could get a little deeper than ‘Which character have you always wanted to draw?,’ y’know? We did speak upfront about what we wanted to stress in the interviews — topics we did/did not want to pay much attention to — but our friendship was never a challenge. Quite the opposite. I think it was a major strength.

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