GRAND BLANC, MI -- When Marvel's new Wolverine comic hits newsstands Wednesday, Feb. 5, the iconic hero will appear as Grand Blanc artist Ryan Stegman has always interpreted the clawed, animalistic X-Men character: He's ugly.

Stegman recently tackled his childhood dream of illustrating Marvel's Spider-Man, and now he's got Wolverine at the end of his pencil.

"Since the Wolverine movies have come out, there's been this attempt to make him more attractive, because (actor) Hugh Jackman's a good-looking man," Stegman said, leaning back in his home studio. He was taking a break from making costume changes on each of the pages of the new series' third issue.

"I always try to bring something of my own to the table. That's what I would always look forward to as a reader: This artist takes over the book, and this is how he looks now, because this is his version of it. But I had such a long history with Spider-Man … because it was the first thing I was into," Stegman said. "I'd be drawing and I'd think, 'Oh man, this is just how McFarlane would've done it, not me.'

"As soon as I took over Wolverine, I felt like I was doing my own thing with it."

Stegman is slated to draw the first four issues of "Wolverine," and he will handle all of the series' covers, even for issues he doesn't draw the pages for. He has already finished the first two, and with the third issue almost complete, he said he is beginning to hit his stride for the series. He said he usually takes four to six weeks to complete a 20-page issue.

He's still planning for when he will re-enter the series after the first four issues, since his wife is due to give birth to their second child soon. He said that these days, his toughest task is finding ways to schedule work, family time and visiting the gym to exercise. He dedicates Saturdays to rest -- a big change from earlier in his career, when he would stay up uuntil 6 a.m. drawing.

The edits he was doing on Wednesday, Jan. 29, were a result of miscommunication between him and writer Paul Cornell; they were unclear about which costume Wolverine was wearing in the storyline, so on Wednesday, he was going through the different frames, changing Wolverine's costume page by page.

"My editor was apologizing, like, 'I'm so sorry you have to do this.' I said, 'It's not bad. It's just the first time I felt like I've had a job in 10 years. It's the first time I feel like I'm doing paperwork,'" Stegman laughed. "...Every bit of me, when there's down time, if my son's sleeping or my wife's doing whatever, every part of me wants to come down here and work, because that's what I would do anyway."