My name is Matthew J Wills, and I'm a cartoonist, card game and video game designer from Wellington, New Zealand.
STARS is a comic series about mankind and aliens learning to get along, with the help of Seiya, the Interspecies Resource Manager, as the crew travels the stars. Most recently they've stumbled into Fae Space, a strange place where the rules of physics aren't quite normal.
More info: starscomic.com | webtoons.com | Instagram | x.com | ko-fi.com
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I've wanted to be a comic artist ever since I was a little kid - I've always enjoyed building worlds and telling stories in them. I've made that dream a reality by turning comics into my full-time job!
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I get some inspiration from sci-fi shows and comics when working on STARS. I've only very recently watched every series of Star Trek for the first time, so it's all very fresh in my thoughts when I work on STARS - but I've also been enjoying the surreal alien worlds of a lot of comics like Saga, The Metabarons and Prophet and other TV shows like Farscape. STARS is a lot more tame and wholesome than a lot of those things though. There are a lot of things that people will think are straight references, that I just stumbled on by accident - like the Wormwiggle Drive being powered by an earthworm, which I came up with before watching Star Trek Discovery (their Spore Drive is powered by a water bear).
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I chose to focus on the relationships between characters in the STARS setting because I think that lends itself well to the 4-panel format and also people just want to read nice things! I see a lot of young comic artists struggle with their lack of fame and glory when all they are putting out into the world are comics about horror and misery. They don't seem to understand that that's not interesting for everyone.
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The title STARS is just a light riff on Stargate, Star Trek and Star Wars - all the great sci-fi have "Star" in the title. It's become a shorthand for people to know exactly what your series is about before you've watched a single episode, in the same way fantasy always has "Sword", "Dragon" or "Quest" in the title.
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If I were among the crew of the Theseus, I would probably end up in Command (yellow) and probably be using my real-world experience as a Quality Assurance Tester to make sure that the entertainment systems on the ship were working as intended. Maybe taste-test everything out of the food replicator and take notes. Can it make a lasagna out of popcorn? Let's find out.
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