If Kurt Sutter is involved with a project in any medium, you can be sure it is going to be gritty and fast-paced. His success as a writer, director and producer on The Shield in the early 2000s gave him the opportunity to do his own show, and in 2008, Sons of Anarchy was born. Through seven seasons, the series about a fictional outlaw motorcycle club in California became one of the most watched shows in FX history.

S.O.A. made Sutter a major name in entertainment, and in 2013, he worked with BOOM! Studios to continue the tales of SAMCRO in comic books. While he didn't personally write those books, his involvement in the series hooked him, and in 2016 his first original comic book series was released by BOOM!, Lucas Stand. The book followed the exploits of a time-traveling demon hunter and was co-written by Caitlin Kittredge (Coffin Hill) and illustrated by Jesus Hervas. He followed that with a fun miniseries about vengeful, gun-toting nuns titled Sisters of Sorrow, just last year.

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If you got a chance to read the first volume of Lucas Stand, you will know it ended with the title character hellbent (pun intended) on revenge against the Tempter known as Penemue. Well, Sutter and Kittredge are back with Hervás to make Stand’s life a living hell (sorry) once again, with the four-issue series Lucas Stand: Inner Demons, which debuted this week. CBR talked with Sutter about his latest adventures in comic book-making, and Lucas Stand: Inner Demons #1.

Lucas Stand: Inner Demons #1 cover by Adam Gorham

CBR: Most everything you’ve done, like Sons of Anarchy and The Bastard Executioner, have been reality-based. So, how come you went in a completely different direction with Lucas Stand?

Kurt Sutter: I try to exercise different creative muscles. It started out as a TV script, but the nuance of it was really hard to do in the serialization world, just because it wasn’t black and white. I love the idea of that supernatural component of heaven and hell, and demons and angels, and that it’s all different shades of grey. We’re never quite sure what side of the line we’re on.

It’s a difficult thing to do in TV where you tend to need to land an audience and be very clear, and things sort of have to be black and white. So, I just couldn’t figure out how to do it, and I was becoming educated on the comic book world with the S.O.A. project that BOOM! was doing. And much to my excitement, it really flourished in the medium. As a creator in TV, I get to create the rules but once the rules are established, I have to stick to those rules. Or if I break them I have to lead people into it. But in the graphic novel and comic book world, you can create the rules and then two issues later, break them all…or reinvent characters. It’s such a bigger sandbox to play in.

What was co-writing this title with Caitlin Kittredge like?

Caitlin has been masterful at navigating all this and really honoring what I want to do tonally. She’s so good at having it be character driven, really have it be… like Lucas will get to the point where he just starts to heal some wounds or begins to feel some of that redemption that he desperately needs, and then we’ll turn it all upside down on him. So, it’s just been so much fun to play in a medium where we can do that so easily and so effectively.

It’s interesting that it started as a concept for a TV show, because I was going to mention that BOOM! has a first-look deal with Fox, and then ask if you would like to adapt Lucas Stand to TV. So, how would you feel if it got optioned for TV now?

I think it’s a really interesting property and I think it’s a great character, but I think perhaps some of the same issues may still exist, in terms of why it was a struggle to do it the first time around. But I also feel like once a property has some legs and people see where it is and where it’s going, it’s easier to sell that nuance. But yeah, I try to stay involved in pretty much everything if it is my original idea. So yeah, of course, I’m open for them to explore that again. But it’s hard to predict anything in TV right now.

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As far as the illustration, did you pick Jesús Hervás or were you teamed up? Were you an admirer of his work on Androïds?

Honestly, I came to the comic book and graphic novel world sort of late in the game. I wasn’t a comic book kid growing up, and I discovered graphic novels when I was abroad. It was fantastic because a lot of them were not in English, so I didn’t know what the panels said. All I had were the visuals and I thought they were amazing. At the time it was exploding in France and England, and there was so much more content than there was here. So, I came to it late and then learned a lot when we did the Sons of Anarchy comic book.

But no, I didn’t have that Rolodex, and BOOM! was so great at bringing people to the table. Then, it became a discussion. It’s like, you need writers, you listen to pitches, [and] you get a vibe. You look at artists, you look at their artwork, you look at sketches. Then it becomes a collaborative decision with BOOM!, in terms of who is the best artist [for the project].

All these nuances that I was so unaware of, like the colorist and the value of that, and how important that is. I remember people coming to the booth at [San Diego] Comic-Con because they were big fans of Adam Metcalfe, who does our color. He’s got a following. There’s all these layers of artistic involvement… obviously there’s lots of layers in TV and film, but it was this whole other hierarchy and process that I was so unaware of. It’s just been fun educating myself. I was able to go through the same process of picking the right artists and writers with Sisters of Sorrow. I’m becoming aware now, like when I pick up properties the first thing I do is I look at who the artist is, I look who the colorist is. I’m slowly educating myself and taking note of that.

What were your influences with Lucas Stand? It seems like he’s a bit Hellblazer with a touch of Terminator.

It’s interesting because you can see some of my childhood inspirations in Lucas Stand. Quantum Leap was one of my favorite shows. So, that time-traveling component was something I thought would be a really cool element. And I’ve always loved the shades of grey, in terms of heroes and antiheroes, and I thought to bring that to the angel and demon hierarchy would be really interesting. So, ultimately, that’s what we were able to do.

You see it in my TV work, I love mixing the reality of a very specific world and emotionally complex characters, but then plugging into it that adrenalized action. I love the pulp component in what I do. So, I get to create these really complex, damaged characters and then I get to create cool toys and cool guns, and really visually compelling demons. So, I get to play in both parts of the backyard. Again, being a guy new to the comic book world, I didn’t have any preconceived notions of, “Oh, I want it to be a little bit of this or a little bit of that.” Now, as I become aware of properties, I go, “Oh, I guess it’s a little bit of that, it’s a little bit of this.” But really it’s after the fact.

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So, where is Lucas headed in this new series? We’ve seen different types of demons, when are we going to see some of Heaven's beings?

We sort of throw away some of the rules in this first episode. It’s kind of cool, where traditionally we’ve been going to one time period [per issue], Caitlin does this really great thing where Lucas is on a task to find something, and he time jumps through all these different times and places before he lands where he needs to be for the issue. We end up with him at the end of that first six [issues] pretty much ready to shut it all down. When we see him step into that biker bar, it’s like an “all bets are off” moment. So, we begin in that same place.

I don’t want to give away the story but… We end [in Vol. 1] with him really feeling set-up and betrayed by Penemue. So, we come into this first issue with him ready to take out anything and anyone he has to, to stop this bitch. So, that’s his drive. Then, of course, shit happens, he gets sidetracked, he gets more information, and at the end of that first issue, we turn that upside down a little bit.

Lucas Stand: Inner Demons #1 is on sale now from BOOM! Studios.