Who is Saxon you may ask...well from the hit series Mouse Guard of course.  This week we have David Peterson, creator and artist of Mouse Guard here.   On with the show!

The comic book world is generally filled with guys with super powers fighting evil doers...you on the other hand have embraced the art of story telling and taken on....Mice....and have done a stellar job at doing so. What are some positives and negatives that accompany working with "underdog" characters "Mighty Heroes."

I’d say the biggest positive is that the characters work perfectly into my sensibilities as a storyteller. I can tell that kind of story a lot better than I could big heroic action for god like characters. I have always been interested in animal stories, in some ways, I think they can emote better than people can in stories, which helps in the job of having an effect on the reader.

The biggest downside is their anatomy. I have some limitations that the human figure doesn’t. So in order to make some positions work, I have to change the whole pose just to get the arms or feet to reach where I want them to.

The few people I have shown it to noticed a palette change (which I thought was a subtle, but others thought it had an impact). I guess the biggest difference will be how almost none of the main Guardmice from Fall or Winter will be in this series since it’s a prequel. I’m handling the writing a bit differently too, with a bit more narration than ever before. It’s not something I’ll keep doing on future series, but felt right for this one.

I’d also say that readers may have a preconceived notion about this book based on what they have read so far and with the title of the book, but it’s less about Celanawe being awesome with the Axe and more about his path to it (or it to him)

As the creator and artist of Mouse Guard was it difficult to "pass the guard" so to speak and let other creators work on Legends of the Guard?

One thing that separates your book from a lot of others isn't the fact that Mice are the protagonist. There is a sense of the world being believable in Mouse Guard. How many years have you been working on Mouse Guard before it actually hit print?

Roughly nine years. I wasn’t working on it constantly throughout that time, but I’d pick it up and dust it off from time to time, design new characters, add to the history, make up a few stories, and put it back on the back burner. I’m a fan of creators who do a lot of world building, so it was something I really wanted to focus on and make sure I did as well as I could. I have done some furniture building and stained glass work, turned wood on a lathe, etc. And I think those experiences help me so that every time I start to design a new part of the world, I think about how it’s made and how it functions.

You inspire a lot of indie artist these days, who are some artist that inspired (inspires) you?

That is a HUGE list, but I’d say some of the main ones are Rick Geary, Edmund Dulac, Mike Mignola, N.C. Wyeth, and Jeremy Bastian.

Awesome process work here: http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2010/08/fcbd-2010-page-3-process-its-been-while.html

How long does it take you to complete a singe issue of Mouse Guard?

That depends on the layout. If I get an idea for a page layout that I like very quickly and I can sketch all the parts and make them fit in my layout, I can draw and ink a page in a day. (that doesn’t include the scanning, coloring, lettering and initial writing) But layouts are my nemesis. I'm a little OCD when it comes to trying to get panel layouts the way I want. I will redo thumbnails multiple times to get the ‘perfect’ one, so that can really slow me down. I was able to do a book every two months in the past. Currently on Black Axe, I’m going slower than that, but I hope that’s a temporary setback and I can get back to a quicker pace.

Are there any video games that catch your eye these days?

I just played the heck out of Lego Harry Potter and loved it! But I’m mainly an old school PC gamer. Moria is my all time favorite game...in this age of movie quality animations and gameplay, I still prefer an ASCII monochromatic dungeon crawl.

If you had the option to make Mouse Guard a playable Adventure RPG in the video game realm would you take on that challenge?

Well we all heard of Marvel Zombies...any future dealings with Mouse Guard Zombies? Only joking... In all seriousness David how would you survive a zombie Apocalypse?

I have no idea! I have some family near Lake Michigan, I guess we would head there since the population is less dense...easier to pick off the undead if there aren’t as many of them.

Thanks again David! Be sure to check out Mouse Guard: The Black Ax on Sale September, 2010!!!

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