Alex Saviuk is an artist who spent nearly 40 years bringing Spider-Man to life in comic books and comic strips, in addition to his work on other well known characters. While he was a guest at Heroes Convention, Saviuk chatted with Scoop about his career in comics, other characters he’s worked on, experiences meeting fans, and what he likes about Heroes Con.

Scoop: Good afternoon, are you having fun this weekend?
Alex Saviuk (AS): Oh, the weekend here is great. Heroes Con has been a fabulous show for such a long time and I’m happy to be part of it.

Scoop: What do you like about Heroes Con?
AS: Well, number one that it’s all comics. It’s comics oriented with artists and writers. There are no celebrity TV people or movie people, anything along those lines, which is okay to have shows like that. But it’s really nice once in a while to go to one where it’s just comics oriented.

Scoop: What does it mean to you to meet fans at comic cons?
AS: I think it’s great. It’s actually very flattering to come to a show and have younger people come up to me, and I say, “Well, how do you know my work?” Because I haven’t been in the mainstream for such a long time. And they say, “My dad collected your comics, loved your artwork, and he passed them down to us. And we love your artwork.” So, you meet up with people like that. You meet up with people that say, “Hey, your comic book, whatever issue it might have been was the first one I ever read, and so that means a lot to me. I’ve always enjoyed your artwork after that.” I’ve had parents come up to me and say, “Hey little Johnny loves your artwork, and thankfully he does, because we can get him to read. So at least if he’s reading comics, he’s reading something. Yeah, so stories like that are really fun to hear when you come and meet with the fans.

Scoop: What are fans asking you about most this weekend?
AS: Mostly Spider-Man. I’ve been doing Spider-Man for 37 years in one shape or form. Currently I’m just doing some covers here and there, but I guess I’ve been the most known for that particular character. So, people always come up to me looking for Spider-Man information or artwork or sketches or whatever.

Scoop: Aside from Spider-Man, what are some of the characters that you worked on that you are really proud of?
AS: Well, I started my career at DC Comics and that was back in 1977. My first big job there was working on Green Lantern and Green Arrow. I was a big fan of Green Lantern since I was a really young kid, so to be able to work on that particular set of characters was really exciting for me. Then eventually from there it led to working on The Flash and Superman and Hawkman and The Atom and Aquaman and a number of others. So, I was really covering the gamut in those first nine years in DC. Then moving over to Marvel after that, I started with Iron Man and then a book called The Defenders of the Earth, which was fun because it was based on the cartoon series of the same name and it featured the Phantom, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician. Then that somehow led to me working on Spider-Man and I never stopped.

Scoop: That’s an impressive group of characters. Are there any you haven’t worked on yet that you’d like to draw?
AS: I never worked on the Fantastic Four. I never worked on Daredevil, I never worked on Doctor Strange. I was very fortunate when I was working on the Spider-Man newspaper strip with Stan Lee for over 20 years, occasionally I would give him a phone call and speak to his staff and mentioned that, gee, I never did Fantastic Four, maybe we could do a storyline with them, or maybe we could do Daredevil or Doc Strange. Somehow, I was able to fulfill that dream by working on those characters in the newspaper strip.

Scoop: What covers are you working on now?
AS: I have a cover coming up for Marvel, which is an homage cover, I guess, for Marvel Two-in-One. And I’m also doing a cover for a company called Mad Cave Productions which are bringing back the Defenders of the Earth in a new series, and publishing a trade paperback with all the first four issues of the series that I did back almost 40 years ago. So I’m doing a cover for them. Also just recently I... when I was at DC Comics many moons ago, I was doing special project work and I was doing card covers for the superheroes toy line from, I guess it was Kenner or Toy Biz, and so I just recently did eight new covers for the Super Powers line. Hopefully those things will be coming out pretty soon.

Scoop: Which conventions are you going to be attending this summer?
AS: Well, let’s see next up for me is Wicked Con in Boston, that’s in August. At the end of the month, I’m going to Wyoming for the first time to the University of Wyoming and for the library, they’re doing some sort of a tribute to Stan Lee. In September, I’ll be heading over to Baltimore Comic-Con, and in October I’m hoping to be in New York Comic Con.