For comic book readers who grew up with the Justice League of America, the Avengers, and the Legion of Super-Heroes, there is something special about the superhero comics of the Silver and Bronze Ages. The colorful costumes, larger-than-life villains, elaborate continuity, and imaginative adventures helped define an era when superhero comics were built around excitement, adventure, and an ever-expanding universe of characters.Writer and publisher Roy Johnson has made it his mission to recapture that experience with his independent publishing company, Standard Comics.
Combining revived Golden Age superheroes with original characters, Johnson has created an interconnected superhero universe that celebrates classic comic book storytelling while developing its own mythology.
His approach is particularly appealing to readers who miss the days when picking up a comic book meant discovering another chapter in a universe filled with heroes, villains, secret histories, and unexpected connections.
The Standard Comics name has a history reaching back to the Golden Age of comic books.
The original Standard Comics was associated with publisher Ned Pines and his interconnected publishing operations, which included Better Publications and Nedor Publishing.
Beginning in 1939, these companies produced numerous comic books featuring superheroes, adventure characters, and other popular genres.
Among their best-known superheroes were the Black Terror, Fighting Yank, Doc Strange, and American Crusader. The original Standard line eventually disappeared as the American comic book industry underwent major changes during the 1950s.
Decades later, Johnson adopted the historic Standard Comics name and its distinctive flag-style logo for his own independent publishing efforts.
Johnson began using the name in 2011 on commissioned artwork and imaginary comic book covers. His actual publishing operation began in 2015.
Importantly, today’s Standard Comics is Johnson’s independent venture, not a corporate continuation of Ned Pines’ original company.
Rather than simply reprinting vintage material, Johnson developed new adventures featuring Golden Age characters that he considers available for reuse, alongside superheroes of his own creation.
Johnson grew up during the 1970s in a small town in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Like many comic book readers of his generation, he was introduced to superheroes at an early age. His interests included both DC and Marvel Comics, particularly the Justice League, Legion of Super-Heroes, Batman, and Spider-Man.
His fascination with Golden Age superheroes developed partly through the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, which introduced readers to characters and comic book covers from publishers that had long since disappeared.
By the late 1990s, Johnson had become interested in the possibility of producing new adventures featuring public-domain superheroes.
That interest eventually evolved into something much more ambitious: a fictional comic book universe designed to resemble a long-established superhero publishing line.
Instead of presenting his creations as a brand-new universe, Johnson imagines them as characters with decades of fictional publishing history.
It is a clever concept that allows him to recreate not only the storytelling styles of earlier comic books but also the experience of discovering unfamiliar back issues.
The title serves as Standard Comics’ answer to the Justice League of America and the Avengers, bringing together characters with different backgrounds, personalities, and abilities.
Among the characters Johnson has incorporated into the series are revised versions of Golden Age heroes such as:
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Black Orchid: A revived Golden Age superheroine.
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Grim Reaper: A mysterious crimefighter adapted for Johnson’s interconnected universe.
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TNT Todd: Another character drawn from the history of early superhero comics.
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Wildfire: A Golden Age heroine given new adventures within Standard Comics.
Johnson also incorporates original characters into the series, allowing his own creations to interact with heroes who have their roots in comic book history.
One of the title’s most distinctive features is its numbering.
Rather than beginning with a conventional first issue, The Sentinels launched with issue #267, creating the illusion that readers were discovering a superhero series that had been published for decades.
This fictional publishing history is reinforced through references to past adventures, character relationships, and events that readers have never actually seen.
Johnson structures the series around individual adventures and longer-running storylines. Secondary plots develop in the background before moving into the foreground in subsequent issues.
The approach is reminiscent of the interconnected storytelling popularized in superhero comics during the 1970s and 1980s, when readers were rewarded for following a series over an extended period.
By October 2024, The Sentinels had reached issue #276, with Johnson continuing the second of his planned story arcs.
The team also introduces original characters such as Gravitrex, whose background connects with another Standard Comics character, Infra-Red.
While The Sentinels draws heavily from Bronze Age superhero storytelling, The Sensational 7 celebrates an earlier period.
Designed to resemble a superhero team comic from the late 1950s, the series combines three public-domain characters with four original creations.
The group’s introductory story explores how these seven heroes come together to form a team.
Artist Fish Lee has been associated with the project, bringing a visual approach suited to Johnson’s interest in classic superhero storytelling.
The result is intended to evoke a period when superhero teams were frequently assembled around colorful personalities, spectacular abilities, and the excitement of seeing different characters share an adventure.
One of Johnson’s most interesting projects is the Standard Comics Encyclopedia, a character reference series inspired by DC’s Who’s Who and Marvel’s Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.
These publications were essential reading for superhero fans during the 1980s, providing character histories, illustrations, powers, abilities, and biographical information.
Johnson has embraced that tradition with reference books devoted to the inhabitants of his own fictional universe.
The encyclopedia provides an opportunity to expand the Standard Comics mythology beyond the stories appearing in individual comic books.
It also reinforces the illusion that the publisher has decades of established continuity.
The original abridged encyclopedia was Johnson’s first published comic book project. Subsequent installments have continued to introduce and document characters.
In August 2026, a Kickstarter campaign for Standard Comics Encyclopedia #1-4 attracted 88 backers and raised CA$3,598. The project described itself as a character encyclopedia in the tradition of the classic Marvel and DC reference books.
Although Johnson writes and publishes the stories, Standard Comics has benefited from collaborations with talented artists who understand the visual traditions he hopes to preserve.
Among his regular collaborators are Fish Lee, and Luis Rivera.
Fish Lee has worked on The Sensational 7 and other Standard Comics projects, while Rivera contributed artwork to The Sentinels, including issue #276.
Johnson has emphasized the importance of working with artists who understand the look and storytelling techniques associated with classic superhero comics.
That understanding is essential to the company’s approach. The goal is to capture the appearance, storytelling rhythm, and enthusiasm of comics published decades earlier.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Standard Comics is its fictional publishing history.
Johnson describes the concept as comics discovered in the back-issue bins of an alternate universe.
The idea explains the unusual numbering, imaginary historical references, retro artwork, and extensive character continuity.
Readers are invited to imagine that Standard Comics never stopped publishing superheroes and that its characters continued developing through the Silver and Bronze Ages.
In this alternate history, titles such as The Sentinels have existed for generations, even though their actual publication history began relatively recently.
Johnson’s approach goes beyond nostalgia. It attempts to recreate an entire fictional comic book publishing tradition.
The encyclopedia entries, continuity references, and character relationships all support that illusion.
More than a decade after beginning to experiment with the Standard Comics name, Roy Johnson has developed a distinctive independent superhero universe.
What began with imaginary comic book covers and commissioned illustrations has expanded into an ongoing superhero team series, a Silver Age-inspired group of heroes, character encyclopedias, and collected editions.
For readers who appreciate traditional superhero comics, Standard Comics offers the opportunity to experience something familiar and new at the same time.
The heroes may resemble characters from another era, and the stories may evoke the comics of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, but the adventures themselves belong to Johnson’s expanding universe.
In an industry where publishers frequently reinvent their characters to appeal to changing audiences, Roy Johnson has found an audience by celebrating what made classic superhero comics appealing in the first place.
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