Welcome to Standard Comics!
Setting the Standard in Comics!!
The Standard Comics Universe is made up of a variety of heroes and villains, including updated public domain characters (like TNT Todd or the Grim Reaper) and original characters (like UltraMan, Optima, Star-Storm, Chthonak, Emulex, and Dreadhelm).
I began commissioning comic art in 2010 and quickly settled into pieces featuring old public domain superheroes with the idea that “Standard Comics” (a real company until the 1950’s) bought all these characters and published them together in a shared universe. Eventually my own creations crept into the mix. Basically, the idea was that each of the fake covers or interiors to these imaginary comics were a sort of window into another universe where the heroes of “Standard Comics” were as famous as those at DC or Marvel.
In a small way, I think the idea is reflective of this thought from Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges:
“Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.”
The first result of this was the Standard Comics Encyclopedia (see Current Projects).
Future Plans (2022/2023)
If you’re a fan of the Bronze Age of comics, especially team books like JLA, Avengers, X-Men, Alpha Flight, or the Legion of Super-Heroes you should check out The Sentinels for a Bronze-Age fix.
The Sentinels is my superhero team, ostensibly published since 1962, but in the real world, since 2018. They’re the JLA/Avengers of the Standard Comics Universe and they have a whole history of stories – they just haven’t all been published yet!
Given the current global supply chain issues, I’m not super-sure how things will play out, but I’m planning on releasing 6 Sentinels issues in 2022, and 4 in 2023 (along with a couple surprises along the way). Then there’ll be a second and third trade paperback for each set of six issues.
Stay tuned and follow us on social media!
Roy
