We continue our Iron Fist 50th Anniversary celebration with a special interview featuring prolific artist Stephen Segovia. It’s a fitting time to publish this interview given that it’s the 300th volume of my Iron Fist Friday, which means I’ve been posting for 300 consecutive Fridays now.*
Segovia has illustrated virtually every superhero from Marvel and DC Comics, taking on various assignments across multiple publishers since he broke into the comics scene.
Stephen is an incredibly talented artist hailing from the Philippines. He has worked with some of the biggest comic book publishers, namely Marvel, DC, and Image Comics. Segovia has lent his artistic prowess to popular Marvel titles like Dark Wolverine, Wolverine, X-Treme X-Men, Thor, Superior Carnage, Silver Surfer, and Hellions. Over at DC, he was a regular artist for Action Comics, Detective Comics, Justice League Dark, Red Hood and the Outlaws, WildC.A.T.s, and more.
He is currently working with industry legend Todd McFarlane on Image Comics’ Spawn team book titled, The Scorched, and is the main cover artist of X-Men: Blood Hunt – Psylocke #1, a Marvel Comics one-shot special.
A few years ago, he provided pencil work for former Iron Fist writer Ed Brisson on Contagion, a semi-horror mini-series centered on an antagonist rooted in K’un-Lun. Through this project, Segovia illustrated Iron Fist in issues 2 and 3 of the series. Moreover, he has a deep connection to the Living Weapon through his brother, which you’ll read about in this interview.
IAMIRONFIST: How did you get introduced to Iron Fist?
STEPHEN SEGOVIA: It was way back when I was a kid and trading cards were the craze. That’s where I first discovered Iron Fist along with other Marvel characters like Doctor Doom. I think I was just around six years old at the time when I was introduced to Marvel trading cards because back then, the only characters I knew were Batman and Superman. When you’re a kid, usually it’s the main heroes of DC and Marvel [that you are most familiar with]. So, yes, it was a long time ago when I discovered Iron Fist.
The next time I saw him was in the comics, I believe, but it was the [Bronze] Age comics [that I read]. Then, after that, I read about him in more modern comic books.
IAIF: So you went back to the very beginnings of Iron Fist after seeing those trading cards.
SEGOVIA: That’s because back then, we had no access to comic shops. Our only means of reading comics was through our neighbors, and I remember most of the comics were already beat up, and I said, “Wow! This character is so cool!”
I said that because his costume was not the usual kind compared to other heroes who had a full spandex suit. With Iron Fist, you could still see his skin showing through and I thought his tattoo (the dragon brand on his chest) was so awesome.
Since I loved dragons, I became curious about his powers. Of course, I knew very little about him since I was very young then, and I only found out about his powers and skills probably around the late ’90s already.
IAIF: What were your first impressions of the character?
SEGOVIA: I thought Iron Fist was such a badass. His costume, particularly his mask, was not the typical hero mask that you see. There’s usually a template for these things like Captain America, Batman, etc. There are similarities between them where you see the nose and the mouth. Iron Fist’s mask is unique in that it’s a bandana and then there are special designs around his eyes which are quite different and then, as I said, the dragon was the one that made me gravitate towards the character and made me interested in knowing more about him.
”Oh wow! This guy’s new!” I thought.
And one more trivia about him that I’d like to share is that Iron Fist is my brother’s favorite because he studied karate when he was a kid. In fact, when he was moving up in skill and his belt color had to be changed to reflect that, he didn’t want the instructors to change it because he wanted to keep wearing a yellow belt, the same color that Iron Fist was wearing. He didn’t want anyone to change it. He cried because he felt that Iron Fist would be gone from him if they took his belt away from him.
IAIF: Haha! That is such a cool story! I have to meet him!
SEGOVIA: He’s a seaman now but he’s still an Iron Fist fan so most of the original art I did for Contagion I gave to him as a gift. All of them went to him since that was his favorite.
IAIF: So when am I getting an Iron Fist original art page from you?
SEGOVIA: Once you move up in belt color (laughs).
IAIF: (Laughs) But I was a blue belt already when I last did martial arts so that should count! That was the black belt for kids my age then (I was 13). They said they would convert it to black once I reached 18 but I didn’t continue my training, though.
Ok, so how would you differentiate drawing Iron Fist, his fighting form or style, compared to Spider-Man, Daredevil, or Captain America?
SEGOVIA: When it comes to Iron Fist, his style is more supernatural because he can punch walls and floors. So his style is more straight to the point, not as acrobatic as Spider-Man where his body twists around. He’s kind of like Daredevil but more supernatural.
IAIF: You worked with writer Ed Brisson on the Contagion mini-series. How did you land the project, even if it was just illustrating the title for an issue and a half.
SEGOVIA: I was emailed by the editor who then asked me if I like Marvel’s street heroes. I said, “Street heroes are my favorites.” Then, next are the cosmic characters, but I prefer street heroes like Spider-Man, Iron Fist, and Daredevil. I don’t know, I feel like there’s more impact and I can relate to these characters since they’re mostly normal citizens with civilian identities, unlike cosmic heroes who are who they are. I guess I just have a stronger connection with street heroes.
But I also like zombies, by the way. So when they asked me if I was interested in the horror genre involving street heroes, I accepted the [Contagion] project although I still had no idea what it was really all about. Then, I got excited that that was the style of the storyline.
IAIF: So how come you only illustrated issue 2 and then parts of issue 3?
SEGOVIA: Basically, the project was supposed to involve different artists for different issues. Issue 1 had one artist and issue two had to have a different artist (Segovia) on board. It just turned out that the artist (Mack Chater) for the next issue could only do a few pages so the remaining pages were given to me, the artist who drew the previous issue.
IAIF: Good thing you were available to help out.
SEGOVIA: I was available but I still had to tell the editor that I could only do this much because I didn’t expect that I would get the assignment for parts of the following issue. It would have been better for me if I did the entire issue but it was fun.
IAIF: I really love the splash page of Iron Fist with Sparrow that you did. That was so good.
SEGOVIA: It was fun! Hopefully, I can draw Iron Fist again in the next project. You’ll never know.
IAIF: Since it’s Iron Fist’s 50th anniversary, what would you like to see happen for the character?
SEGOVIA: I hope to see Iron Fist in standalone live-action on the big screen. That would be wonderful to see. But it would also be great if he could meet the other heroes like Spider-Man and Daredevil, the three of them together. Because I remember there was an issue where three or four of them were together, something like the Fantastic Four, and then they could add Ghost Rider, too. I hope there will be a project like that for Iron Fist.
That would be really interesting.
IAIF: Sounds great! Thank you so much for your time!
SEGOVIA: Thank you!
When he’s not busy creating fantastic illustrations on a comic book page, Stephen shares his creative art process on his various social media accounts.
*Mostly consecutive, since I think there was a two-week gap between the fourth and fifth Iron Fist Friday posts.
I AM IRON FIST 