Howard G. Ferguson

Howard Grant Ferguson (1895 -1957)

Howard Ferguson was best known as the letterer for Simon and Kirby's studio. He started working for them in 1940  and continued with them up to the early or mid 1950s, lettering their work at DC, Prize, and Mainline.   He lettered Captain America #1. He also worked for Adolphe Barreaux's Majestic Studio. Bernard Bailey, and the Jacquet's Funnies, Inc.  For Jackquet, he lettered the Human Torch and Terry Vance.  Non-Studio work includes  lettering direct for DC, Archie,  Standard-Pines, and Avon.     There is even a non-comics advertisement in the early 1940s, where the lettering has his distinctive style - with the initials HGF.
   Prior to his lettering career, he did do some  commercial art circa 1939.

Ferguson was born in Washburn,  Wisconsin, his father died when Ferguson was very young.  He completed the 8th grade.  Moved to Detroit as a young adult, where he married and had a wife and child. This marriage however did not last long.   He remarried  and he and  his wife moved to New York in the late 1930s and lived with her family in Queens.  He continued to reside in Queens until his death.




below: Captain America splash taken from recent reprint. HG Ferguson lettering

*  I note that I had submitted some of this biography as a website comment back in 2011, no doubt much to the annoyance of someone else who a couple of days later submitted an expanded version of the same census data, which seems likely to have been written before my comment was submitted  At that time, information on Ferguson's second wife was not known.  She was around  15 years younger than he was, indeed only about  5 years older than Ferguson's child by his first wife.