Pic from Comics Continuum
Lee Ferguson: Cinescape 7/23/01
LEE FERGUSON: MUTANT X
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Dateline: Monday, July 23, 2001
By: ERIC J. MOREELS
By: Editor
Source: X-Fan
With the announcement that artist Lee Ferguson would be joining writers Howard Chaykin and David Tischman on the upcoming new Mutant X comic book, which ties-in to Tribune Entertainment's live-action TV show, the first reaction of many a fan may have been "Who?"
X-Fan recently caught up with Ferguson to find out more about his past body of work, as well as his work on the Mutant X series, set to debut in the first week of October.
X-FAN: First up, you've been called a newcomer by many but you have actually done some comics work before. What exactly have you done?
FERGUSON: Not much! I did three issues of a series called Stranger Than Fiction back in '98. It's a little black and white newsprint comic, self-published by a great guy named Josh Roberts. It was a lot of fun, but we sold like 700 copies of the first issue, then declined rapidly from that. Pretty hard to find. Then, last year I did a couple of short stories for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund benefit books Occupational Hazards... one was written by Dan Brereton, the other by David Mack. I think one of 'em is three pages, and the other is four, maybe?
X-FAN: How did you come to get the plum job of working on a comic book tie-in to a live-action TV series?
FERGUSON: I don't know! I think they meant to call somebody else... Actually, Joe Quesada had been showing my stuff around Marvel's offices for a while, and apparently Mike Marts and Mike Raicht had taken a liking to my work and decided this would be a good book to try out a new guy on. I'm still sort of dumbfounded, honestly.
X-FAN: How will the visuals in the comic compare with the visuals of the TV series?
FERGUSON: Heh... good question! I've drawn a lot of the first issue without seeing any of the TV series, so I haven't really been able to consciously try to connect what I'm doing with the show. I'm actually going to watch the first two episodes tonight... I got a tape in San Diego that I'm dying to check out! I'll try to coordinate what the characters and settings look like with the series somewhat, but as far as the action and storytelling go, I think there's things you can do in comics that you can't get away with on the small screen, so I'm going to try to take advantage of that.
X-FAN: What's it like working with Howard and David?
FERGUSON: Intimidating! These guys have worked with so many talented artists that I really don't want to be the guy that lets them down! I'm really enjoying it, though... the scripts are so sharp and clean that they really give an artist the chance to do his thing.
X-FAN: How long do you envisage staying on Mutant X?
FERGUSON: That completely depends on how things go. I really like my editors, my writers and my inker, so if the book does well and nobody decides to give me the boot, I'd like to put together a good run. So many guys switch books like socks nowadays that I'd really like to build a rep as a dependable guy.
X-FAN: Is there anything else in the pipeline for you at Marvel? Elsewhere?
FERGUSON: Not really. There's some guys I'd like to work with and characters I'd like to try my hand at if and when I get the chance, but for now that's all on the backburner. My focus in on Mutant X.
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