The Standard #6 – Cover

Aug28
by on August 28, 2015 at 3:00 pm
Chapter:

CHAPTER 6: INTO THE SUNSET

Writer: John Lees

Artists: Jonathan Rector & Will Robson

Colorist: Mike Gagnon

Letterer: Kel Nuttall

Editor: Steven Forbes

 

All good things must come to an end.  And here we are, at the beginning of the end of THE STANDARD.  What a glorious cover Jon Rector cooked up for this final issue, eh?  A truly epic tableau, showcasing most of the major characters in the series.  I loved this image, you can almost imagine it as an old-school illustrated movie poster for a film of THE STANDARD.

Chapter 6 is an interesting case, as in a lot of ways it never really got a chance to stand on its own before now.  Back when I first finished the series, after long delays between every other issue, THE STANDARD #5 and #6 were finished pretty close together, and so I decided to debut both of them with a special advance limited print run of both issues at Glasgow Comic Con 2014, featuring Glasgow exclusive covers from local artist Chris Connelly.  Here is the cover he drew up for issue #5:

TheStandard5GCC

And here’s his cover for issue #6:

TheStandard6GCC

Then, after the simultaneous local release here in Glasgow, when it came to the worldwide launch through Diamond, ComixTribe decided to mark the occasion by going with a double-sized finale that connected both chapters 5 and 6 into one big double-sized issue #5 to wrap the series.  It was the smartest decision to make on ComixTribe’s part, as by this point it had been a little over a year since the release of the last issue, and it likely made most sense to just end with a bang rather than trying to win fans over again with two issues.

But still, it’s nice to see Chapter 6 get its own time in the sun now, as I’m incredibly proud of the script I wrote for it.  I’ve said before that I feel like I learned to write over the course of THE STANDARD.  And the culmination of that learning came with this final issue.  To this day, I’d rank it up there with the best comic scripts I’ve ever written.  I hope you enjoy our final visit to Sky City… come back next week where we’ll start the commentary proper.