john lees

It's been nearly five years since IDW's ground-up reinvention of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the publisher's line of Turtle-based comics have stayed strong as one of the most innovative and exciting licensed properties on the shelves right now. One of the coolest things has been seeing a generation of creators who grew up on Turtles get their hands on the property and the new issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universe sees Michelangelo getting involved in a missing person's case that leads to the discovery and debut of the semi-obscure villain Wyrm

A familiar fixture at conventions, writer John Lees' The Standard has been in-publication since 2011. The story of a retired superhero forced to put back on his cape to investigate the apparent murder of his former sidekick, the six-issue series was picked up by ComixTribe and published across 2013-14. Joined by artist Jonathan Rector and a creative team of Will Robson, Mike Gagnon, Kel Nuttall, and Steven Forbes, the series was highly acclaimed across the UK, and earned Lees the Best Writer Award at the Scottish Independent Comic Awards. This year the team has come to Kickstarter to fund a collected hardcover edition of the complete series. Featuring over 200 pages of story, back material, and many other surprises, the collection has already been funded and is headed into stretch goal territory. Following on from that success, ComicsAlliance spoke to Lees about the long journey that led him here.

Visiting the bustling hive of energy that was Edinburgh Comic Con back in mid-April, I was delighted to see that the table of dynamic duo John Lees and Iain Laurie had completely sold out of their critically acclaimed horror comic, And Then Emily Was Gone. With a highly anticipated prequel, And Then Emily Was Gone #0, as one of the highlights of the 2015 Free Comic Book Day slate, what better time to sit down and talk horror, David Lynch, Scottish folklore, and how such a wicked comic ever reached our shelves with Lees and Laurie?