Richard: Where were you born and raised and can you tell us a little about your family?

Lee Ferguson: I was born in Northwest Ohio, a town called Bowling Green, just south of Toledo. Lived in Ohio my entire life until recently. But now I'm in Florida, adjusting to the lack of snow and the fact that even when football season is starting, the weather isn't going to change much at all. I've been married for almost twelve years, with a beautiful wife and wonderful kids...along with a couple of dogs who rule our home with an iron paw.

Richard: How did you discover you wanted to be an artist?

Lee: My uncles were both heavily into comics when I was a kid, and they always had some laying around my grandparents' house, where I lived until kindergarten. All kinds of Spider-Man and Fantastic Four goodness. There was no hope for me.

Learned to read before kindergarten simply because everyone got tired of reading Spider-Man comics to me, and started writing and drawing when I ran out of comics to read...

Richard: What was your first published drawing?

Lee: I think it was a pin-up in the back of an issue of Shadowhawk. I'm sure I have it around here, somewhere, but I have no idea what issue it was... It was terrible!

Richard: What characteristics will you bring out in Miranda Mercury?

Lee: I really try to focus on her strength and coolness, mostly through her body language and expressions. She's unflappable, but not emotionless, so it's usually got to be subtle...a shift of the eyes, a tilt of the shoulders. Very rarely does she get really demonstrative.

Richard: What other characters are you drawing in this comic?

Lee: Her sidekick, Jack Warning, and about a million aliens!

Richard: Do you enjoy drawing space aliens?

Lee: Love it. This book is a ton of fun, always something new to create, new characters, new places...

Honestly, even though it's about twice the work drawing Miranda Mercury as any other project I've been on, it's ridiculously fun. Brandon is always coming up with amazing ideas, stuff I'd never come up with on my own, and Marc (inks), Felix (colors) and Matty (letters) are just knocking it out of the park. Taking anything I might do and just ripping it over the fence.

Richard: What was it like working on Marvel Comics Heroes 9/11?

Lee: Well, I was really proud to have my work displayed in a book with guys like Romita and Kubert and a lot of others whose stuff I've admired and respected for years, but the circumstances sort of kept it from being a really exciting time. While it's great that everyone pulled together and donated energy and resources to make a project like that happen... you'd like to see a day where that sort of thing wouldn't be necessary.

Richard: What is "Freak" about?

Lee: Mostly it's about coming to grips with who you are, and whether or not what you've done in the past defines who you are. It's not a very lighthearted book, I guess, but I'm really proud of the work I put into it. I learned a lot just by 'doing', you know?

Richard: Do you prefer writing or drawing?

Lee: I don't know. I really love to do both, honestly. They each scratch a different itch, I guess. I do know that---until Miranda Mercury---I never enjoyed drawing someone else's script as much as I enjoyed writing my own stuff. Not that I'm a better writer than the guys I've worked with---just the opposite, actually, I'm sure---but it's a bit different trying to give a writer what they want, or what YOU think THEY want, as opposed to writing your story and knowing what you want.

I grew up writing and drawing my own comics, stapling them together and then charging my grandparents for them. It's just always seemed the most natural thing to me.

But, there's Miranda, where Brandon and I have a real comfort level with each other. Part of it is that I've known him since I entered the business, I'm sure, and the other part is that we just seem to be on the same wavelength. So this is the first thing I've ever worked on that I've enjoyed as much as writing. More, actually. I would never come up with some of the craziness that Brandon can toss into a paragraph with a straight face...

Richard: Which comic would you most like to work on that you have not?

Lee: Spider-Man. That's the character I first fell in love with. My uncles had a bunch of the great Romita stuff around, and it's shaped the way I view the medium ever since...

However, as much as I love Spidey, it'll have to wait. I plan to be working on Miranda for a long, long time...

Richard: What do you do with any spare time you have?

Lee: I try to spend time with my family more than anything else. Whether it's hanging out together or trucking off to one of my son's sporting events, we try to do it together. It probably sounds corny, but that really is what I enjoy doing more than anything. But I do also love to read when I can find the time...which isn't that often now that Miranda is on the schedule and I have a year's worth of deadlines!

Richard: What comics did you read as a child and do you read now?

Lee: Along with Spidey, I was a huge G.I. Joe fan as a kid. I had a subscription for years. The library also had some hardcovers collecting the old Alex Raymond Flash Gordon stuff that I read religiously, and a beat-up old copy of the "Demon in a Bottle" Iron Man collection that I must have checked out about a hundred times. Stan and Jack's FF stuff--- especially the Galactus trilogy--- blew my mind. That was a collection I checked out over and over, too. Hmm. Re-read the "Dark Phoenix" collection at that same library a lot, too...

Nowadays, though, I tend to follow artists more than characters, and if I can, I will pick stuff up in hardcover more often than I do monthly, simply because I like to have the big collected volumes to pull off my bookshelf and go through.

On a regular basis, in some form or another, I guess I've been checking out All-Star Superman, New Avengers, The Spirit, Jonah Hex, The Astounding Wolf-Man, TwoMorrows' great Modern Masters series... I’m sure I'm forgetting something!

Aside from comics, I will try to keep up with Stephen King...and whatever else that happens to catch my attention. I think I have a stack of about seven novels by my desk. All unread.

Richard: How can someone contact you?

Lee: At either of my email addys (sketchmonkeyalpha@netzero.net or LeeMFerguson@gmail.com) or through Joe Illidge at ASP.

Richard: Any last words of advice?

Lee: Buy Miranda Mercury and eat your veggies! All of 'em! Go on! All of 'em!