Roy Johnson and Standard Comics are bringing the retro superhero action of THE SENTINELS back to Kickstarter, this time giving readers an opportunity to collect the first 12 issues of the series in trade paperback form.
THE SENTINELS is Standard Comics’ love letter to the superhero comics of the Bronze Age, presenting a world where another major comic-book publisher seemingly existed alongside the companies readers already know.
Johnson has described the concept behind Standard Comics as “From the Back Issue Bin of a Parallel Universe.”
It is an appropriate description.
Rather than simply creating modern superheroes inspired by older comics, Standard Comics approaches THE SENTINELS as though readers have discovered issues from a long-running superhero title they somehow missed the first time around.
The team serves as the Standard Comics Universe’s premier superhero group, occupying a role similar to that traditionally filled by teams such as the Justice League or Avengers.
The series combines Johnson’s original characters with reinvented public-domain superheroes, including Black Orchid, Grim Reaper, TNT Todd and Wildfire, allowing forgotten heroes from comic-book history to live again alongside an expanding cast of new characters.
The current Kickstarter focuses on collecting the series into trade paperback editions, including a volume collecting THE SENTINELS #7-12.
Those six issues bring the current storyline to its climax, but Johnson says readers do not have to be familiar with the earlier stories to jump aboard. The campaign also includes an option for readers who want the entire series, allowing newcomers to catch up from the beginning.
That makes the campaign particularly attractive for readers who may have discovered Standard Comics after the individual issues were originally released.
THE SENTINELS has deliberately embraced the storytelling style of Bronze Age superhero comics. Johnson previously explained that the series uses largely self-contained stories while maintaining continuing subplots that gradually move to the forefront, an approach associated with writer Paul Levitz’s work on Legion of Super-Heroes. Johnson has planned THE SENTINELS in six-issue story arcs, making the trade-paperback format a natural fit for the series.
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