Introduction to the interview, written by Mr. Fish Lee, himself!
Mr. Fish Lee: I’m a neurodivergent artist living with severe Tourette’s syndrome, ADHD, OCD, and ASD. I spent over 15 years in a wheelchair unable to walk, talk or see, most days.
Now that I have learned to better manage my chronic illnesses, I had to figure out a way to start to make a living, again. Even though I’m very talented in numerous creative fields, I couldn’t find any employers willing to take a chance on a crippled artist … so it left me with no options but to try and rebuild a freelance art career from scratch … again.
First Comics News: Fisher, (do I call you Fish or Fisher), and is that your real name?
Fish: I go by Fish… It’s short for Fisher, but nobody calls me that… Unless I get pulled over or something. LOL
1st: Fish Lee, I might be the only one, that I know of, anyway, who asks these particular types of following questions in these interviews, but this type of information is actually rather interesting, to me, with each interviewee that I talk to.
And so, to start with, can you tell me where and when were you born, where did you go to school, and how did you first get interested in comic books? In other words, how exactly did you first discover their existence — this unique form of story-telling, that of combining story with art, in order to make a story in this unique art form of prose combined with illustrations that is comic books?
Fish: I was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma… And live in Vilonia, Arkansas. I joke that since my parents were native Arkansans… I technically am, too. It’s like if your parents were working overseas when you were born… You are still an American!
1st: I’d also like to know how old you were when you first started drawing, way back when? Was it comics that inspired you to learn to draw? And, are you self-taught, or did you have professional instruction, as well?
Fish: I’ve ALWAYS been the best artist… But that just meant that in kindergarten I drew the best dragster out of a triangle and two different-sized circles because I figured out how to scribble at the back, for smoke from the tires… Then I added another circle for the driver’s helmet, and all their little minds were blown! I first realized you could make a living as an artist with the episode of Scooby Doo and Scrappy when a comic book creator is haunted by his superhero the blue scarab… It was all over, after that. 
Everything after that is purely thanks to my being on the autism spectrum and having ADHD… I hyper-focused on art, and that was that. While other kids were making friends, playing sports, and such … I was in my room drawing page after page. I drew so much as a kid, my dad would bring home BOXES of that giant green and white connected computer paper that they would feed through the computers at Conoco. It would have random printouts on the back… The reverse side was a giant white playground. I would go through nearly a ream a week of that stuff. As I got a little older I decided I was going to become an engineer and inventor… And built a lot of ridiculous needle inventions like an automatic chocolate milk spoon that slung chocolate milk ALL over the kitchen. And the movie The Goonies came out and I fell in LOVE with Data! I wanted to be this kid. I started making plans for my gadget coat… And making lists of what I needed from the junkyard… But my mother (the wise saint that she was) refused to take me to the junkyard without detailed plans of exactly what I planned to build first. She knew I would drag home every cool thing I found. So I started drawing plans… Over and over. Then inspector gadget came out… And now I had to figure out how to strap a lawn mower engine to a football helmet so I could fly… And it kept on and kept on… 
I got a detailed schematic of how iron man’s armor “worked” from one comic… So the jacket turned into a suit of armor… And grew and grew…then it was a giant mecha, powered by a million different lawn mower engines, that I would control with a tangle of cords above my head. Pull this one to start the shoulder engine to move the arm, then quickly pull the one for the elbow… Wham! You have a punch. Makes perfect sense. LOL
1st: And, very early on, you started reading and/or collecting comic books, how? I mean, how did this come about; how did you first get introduced to that media?
Fish: My brother read comics… So they were always around the house. And if I was good at the Dr or the store.. my mom would buy me one of the plastic sealed packs with 4 or 5 comics in it. It’s the thing I dearly miss about comics being in stores and new stands… It’s easy to expose kids to comics when it’s right there… No mom is going to drive across town to a sketchy neighborhood to a dark comic book store and wait in line for 45 mins while the cashier argues with a regular about whether or not Wolverine has to get a prostate exam. 
(Actually happened to me with my kids) I had stacks of my own comics long before I could read. I would lay on the floor as a kid on Saturday mornings with my favorite comics spread out, watching cartoons and drawing. Eventually, I realized I would never be able to power my designs without some kind of magical power source .. and I was NEVER going to look good in spandex… So I gave up on actually BEING a supervillain… And just tell all the awesome stories running around my head.
Yes, I wanted to be a villain. But that’s partly thanks to my black-and-white autistic thinking. I started out wanting to be a superhero… until I realized there were no supervillains to fight. And being a hero beating up regular people seemed cruel … And giving crooks my designs for weapons so I would have villains to fight, seemed immoral. Then, I realized there were no superheroes, either… So there would be no one to stop me as a supervillain… Instant growth market. Win-win. Made perfect black-and-white sense.
1st: You had been a freelance artist before?
Fish: Yes, I have been earning money with my art since I was in Junior High School drawing pictures of people’s Dungeons & Dragons characters, and portraits of their girlfriends, as gifts to give away. I studied 3D design and animation in college, but never quite got the job in video games school promised me… the curse of being the best artist in school. They spent the whole time telling me how amazing I was, and not teaching me how to put together a decent demo video, so I could actually GET the job. I have worked on T-shirts, and signs, and worked as a freelance artist doing everything from logo design to murals. I did it up until I was completely crippled by my Tourette’s syndrome at age thirty.
This time, I decided to focus on indie comics, since the new digital landscape has made it so much easier to self-publish. About five years ago, I ran my first Kickstarter and self-published the first issue of “T-Man & HyperStrike!” about a superhero team with Tourette’s syndrome and ADHD, aimed at inspiring kids like me, to find the things that make them awesome, before the world beats them down. In the 5 years since, I have been so busy illustrating other people’s books, that I am only just NOW getting back to doing my own books. I have worked on sixty-six books in the last five years, and I helped raise nearly $100,000.00 on crowdfunding sites, like Kickstarter.
1st: Wow, that is a lot of books worked on, Fish. You said, “This time, I decided to work on indie comics.” What type of comic work did you do before that?
Also, could you possibly supply, for our readers, a complete list of comics that you have either written or illustrated, for the interview, if possible? Not just the comics you’re worked on for your own imprints (comics publishing company names), but also the stuff you worked on for other publishers, as well? I think that would be very interesting to a lot of our readers.
Fish: “This time, I decided to focus on working in indie comics”, as opposed to freelance art in general and logo design, etc … This list is from a few years ago of the books I have worked on, and I have added the books I can to the list, as I’ve gone along. It’s surprising to me how many books I finished years ago, now, that still have yet to go to print, for one reason or another.
“T-Man & HyperStrike” Writer/illustrator is available for FREE at:
eepurl.com
“The Traveler” writer/illustrator
mrfishcomics.com
“The Creatur Chapter 9&10” co-writer and illustrator is at www.severecomics.com
“Empyerean Command issue # 0” Inker is at:
indyplanet.com/empyrean-command-0
I published two stories in “YEET Presents” “Project: Sojourner” and “The Creature Chapter 9”
you can sign up at
patreon.com/yeetmagazine
“Ceres1: Volume 1: Regeneration” illustrator
amazon.com
or at
facebook.com
“Descent into Dread” (Mature readers) illustrator on “Territorial Imperative” is at:
amazon.com
“Fivestar 1” illustrator is at:
Freestyle Komics
“Fivestar 2” illustrator is at:
fsknow.com
“Fivestar 3” illustrator is at:
fsknow.com
“The Light Within” Penciler, is at:
fsknow.com
“Sentinels 269” illustrator is at:
indyplanet.com/the-sentinels-269
“Sentinels 270” illustrator is at:
indyplanet.com/the-sentinels-270
“Sentinels 271” illustrator is at:
indyplanet.com/the-sentinels-271
“Sentinels 272” illustrator is at:
indyplanet.com/the-sentinels-272
“The Sentinels 267-272 TPB” illustrator is at:
indyplanet.com/the-sentinels-267-272
“Sentinels 273” illustrator is at:
indyplanet.com/the-sentinels-273
“Sensational 7” illustrator
(coming soon)
“Atomic Chimp” illustrator
(coming soon)
“Power Company 2” Colorist:
indyplanet.com/power-company-2
“Power Company 3” illustrator:
indyplanet.com/power-company-3
“
The Indieversity Project Issue 1″ illustrator:
indyplanet.com/the-indieversity-project-1
“Team SupremUS” illustrator
“G-Men United #1” illustrator on “Point of View”
g-man-comics.com
“G-Men United #2” cover artist
g-man-comics.com
1st: Wow, Fish. I think we’re going to give you a new middle name, so that, from now on, you can go by ‘Fish PROLIFIC Lee’-!! And, G-Man Comics a publishing company run by my best pal Rik Offenberger, my editor at First Comics News, who also created and runs both First Comics News dot Com, where my interview with you will be published online, and he also owns the also huge website mightycrusaders.net Additionally, he co-wrote the published book The MLJ Companion!
Fish: Many new characters designed for Kitbash games by myself:
kitbashgames.co.uk
“Gary Feldman: Assistant District Manager Of The Multiverse” short story in Cthulhu Is Hard To Spell Vol.2″:
uhstudios.com
“The Legend Of Novakov” illustrator:
indyplanet.com/legend-of-novakov-1
“Greenzone: Life In The Blocks” issue 1 writer-illustrator:
(website coming soon)
“Greenzone: Life In The Blocks” issue 2 writer-illustrator:
(website coming soon)
“Greenzone: Life In The Blocks” issue 3 writer-illustrator:
(website coming soon)
“Greenzone: Sourcebook” issue 1 writer illustrator:
(website coming soon)
“The Mighty KAAW The Crowmagnon” Writer illustrator:
(website coming soon), and many others that I don’t have links for, or have yet to be published.
Fish: I am launching my own new series entitled “The Mighty KAAW The Crowmagnon!” on May 16th, which I am super excited about. I literally jumped up from a nap a month ago, with this image of the character in my mind, sketched it out … and now, a month later, I have a finished first issue, the first twenty-plus issues outlined, and a new Kickstarter about to launch, a Merchandise store for T-shirts and swag, and I’m launching a Patreon subscription service for the future issues.
But they don’t call me the FASTEST man in indie comics for nothing! LOL, My life is an open book, feel free to ask me anything. I’m also long-winded, so feel FREE to edit it down! LOL
link to the Kickstarter… gomrfish.com
link to the Patreon… Mr Fish Comics | Patreon
link to FB… facebook.com/mrfishcomics
links to TikTok… tiktok.com/@mr.fish.comics
link to Instagram… instagram.com/@mr.fish.comics
link to Youtube… youtube.com/@MrFishComics
link to Twitch… twitch.tv/mrfishcomics
website… mrfishcomics.com
1st: Edit it down? Nothing doing! You’re the very first comics pro person I’ve ever interviewed who has provided the Introduction to one of my interviews, himself, and I’m tickled pink!
You just saved me some work! LOL
I should mention that I thought your political cartoons on your internet pages (links are above), were apt and very interesting.
I did complete the reading for this particular PDF of this Kaaw The Crowmagnon issue, by the way, and I quite enjoyed it!
1st: Do you write the comic in addition to drawing it? Also, do you do the colouring and lettering for this comic, as well?
Fish: I did everything but the editing. And I hire a flatter to separate all the areas to make it easier to color. Saves me so much time …. it’s worth $10.00 a page.
1st: I’m going to ask – sorry – because I have no idea what a ‘flatter’ is. Can you perhaps explain that?
Fish: Since you asked, Phil, a flatter is a unique job in the age of digital artists making comics. In the old days, a colorist would color pages with markers or watercolor… And it would go to the color separators… Little old ladies sitting in a room cutting out sheets of Rubylith to make a color separation for the printing plates. Now, I send my line art to a flatter. She fills in the page with blocks of color. Doesn’t matter what, and the colors are usually WILD. Everywhere KAAW’s skin is on the page it might be hot pink… And everywhere his wings show up might be green… But it’s the SAME hot pink and green across the entire page. I use that color later as a reference and make color selections from there. When I color select the hot pink… All of his skin on the entire page is selected… Then I can paint it brown on a new layer. Select his wing color and paint it blue. It saves me SO much time NOT having to draw out all those selection areas over and over. It saves me SO much time I got my first book I used her on done in 13 days! It’s crazy. It makes the coloring, shading, and highlighting so much faster not having to trace out all those areas.
1st: Cool! If Kaaw ever goes up against Hawkman in the ring, I’m betting on Kaaw! And hey, I LIKE Hawkman! By the way, I LOVE the look of The Talon, a Skeetian (starship) slaveship~! As soon as I saw that HUGE gun on the front of it, I was like “EEEEK!” How long did it take you to design that cool technological monster??
Fish: The slave ship is kind of funny … I had tried just making up a design, but it kept looking like some other type of ship … Too star wars… Too Star Trek… Too Battlestar Galactica … So I started looking around for inspiration, and grabbed the box cutter by my desk and a multi-head screwdriver, and played around until I found an angle I liked. Sketching it was easy… And using the two tools helps me envision it from any angle going forward… The actual detailed drawing took two full sessions on my “School of Fish” art stream in the agents of Geekdom network (now available on my FB, Youtube, and Twitch Channels). I walked fans through drawing things in perspective … Figuring out complex curves in perspective and how to plan for success, and making things easy on yourself. It was a lot of fun … I get lost in those technical details. I spent more time on that one ship than any other two pages combined.
1st: So, obviously, these slavers aboard this ship, these Skeetians, are interplanetary space aliens, bird-based, and they love eating disgusting bugs, heh, heh! And, apparently, these Skeetians (from the root word skeeters?) have green blood! How wonderfully disgusting. I love this! Really!
But your gladiator hero Skaa The Crowmagnon, looks human, with a bird-based outfit, the bird helmet mask, and wings. Is Skaa a human, from Earth? I’m truly curious. And, oh, I love that alien expletive, “What the scaggin’ Fex?!” I equally like “Die, you avian Skragg!”
Fish: The Mighty KAAW is a Crowmagnon. He comes from the planet Zion, the Avian homeworld. There are many species of humanoids that evolved from various types of birds. Raptor clan, the noble owl tribe, the thunderbirds of the wide sky tribe… Even the angelic council, the most technologically advanced species, and the ruling class. The Crowmagnons are viewed as inferior savages and kept as slaves. Their wings are bound to prevent them from flying like the rest of the world, except for the rarest of occasions… And then They are chained. Those that are too stupid or feral to serve as slaves are fed to the arenas to fight and die for the entertainment of the masses. KAAW was thrown to the arena as a fledgling and has fought his entire life. He wears a crow-like mask he made from bits of fallen foes… And over the years it has taken on magical properties in his simple mind. He truly believes the mask is part of what makes him unstoppable.
As far as “What the scaggin’ Fex?!” I have to give credit where credit is due… I was talking to Eric N. Bennett of G-men Comics fame (as I do every day) and as we were chatting I just randomly asked “What’s a good space pirate swear?” And he instantly came back with “What the scaggin’ Fex?!” And I loved it. It inspired a few other swears along the way. We got to discussing the way we make up these things and he told me he just makes weird sounds till he finds something he likes and then figures out how to spell it. I was shocked! I told him with my “by the frozen shards of St. Validore!” I had to think through the alien history … What matters to them, what hurts, what would heaven and hell be like… figure out a religion … And stories from that religion… And then what parts would they hold on to and exclaim… his way is far too easy! LOL
1st: Where do you get your ideas, aside from that initial nighttime dream, for this series?
Fish: Where do I get my ideas? Like I said, this one … Steven Butler was sending my pics of the barbarian stuff he’s working on … and old Flash Gordon serials … and we were talking about all the cool stuff from childhood we loved … And I laid down for a nap and BAM! The image and the name hit me fully formed, and I woke up laughing at the pun.. and had to get up and draw it. Now 35 days later the book is done and ready to go to print.
I get ideas from everything around me, the news, movies, and TV… anything. We can start a TV show, and 5 mins in I’m spurred to a dozen ideas running at the same time in my mind. Oh, this show is about a female pilot? what if the plane was haunted? what if it was alive? What if this were in space? OH! What if the ship was a conscious AI, and they liked each other… NO! HATED each other… but they came to respect each other. and what if the ship died? or she died? NO! What if they BOTH died sacrificing themselves to save others… or better yet, flew into a black hole and died… NO wait… got fused into one biorganic cybernetic being with a warp drive fused in her chest? OOH.. that would be cool! and then the NEXT three minutes of the show spawn ANOTHER million ideas… on and on. My series Greenzone follows a group of Mutant cops in a world where it’s illegal to be born a mutant (Genome in the book) if they use their powers they could go to prison. so every cop show or news report spawns a million ideas. what if that traffic stop happened to Virgil, my 8-foot-tall mutant lizard man? what if it happened to Bellamy, the 5 ft tall 98 lb woman covered in razor-sharp quills? what if they pulled over a punk that can burst into flames or shoot lasers out of his eyes?! The stories spin-off in wild new directions and take on a life of their own.
1st: Tell us about your superhero hero group Sensational 7. I read the thirteen-page illustrated PDF of that. Was that published? Part of it is coloured, and part of it wasn’t. I’m guessing it’s since been completed, completed coloured, and published? When did that come out?
Fish: “Sensational 7” was published by Roy Johnson at Standard Comics and it has already gone out to the KS backers. I’m sure it will soon appear on Indyplanet.com He loves to take Public Domain characters and give them a new life, and mix them with some of his own creations… and with Sensational 7 he wanted to give it a real 1960s throwback feel … so from the artwork to the coloring, to the paper texture, I gave it that old school vibe. We EVEN did a vintage version that had a distressed-looking cover and ragged worn and stained pages … little bits of the black ink rubbing off of one page onto the facing pages… it was SO MUCH FUN to work on!
1st: I can tell by the way in which you describe it!
Mr. Fish Lee, doing this interview with you was a real pleasure for me, and I am hoping that you enjoyed it at least half as much as I did! I’ll be looking for your comics online, and, if they ever go to comics specialty stores in the future, then I’ll be picking them up and buying them there, too! All the best to you in all of your future endeavors, Sir!
Cheers!
link to the Kickstarter… http://www.gomrfish.com
link to the Patreon… Mr. Fish Comics | Patreon
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