Webcomic / Stars

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Stars, also known as STARS: The Webcomic, is a webcomic by New Zealand artist Matthew Wills, creator of Swords. It takes place on a spaceship known as the Theseus, where a crew of 914 people from every species in the Star Alliance work together to explore distant galaxies.

Stars provides examples of:

• Absurd Phobia: Bol’darr is terrified of paper.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Scuti pats Seiya on his head affectionately with her giant hand in episode 8 when he asks about her role as the head scientist.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Somehow, Shredz, a simple robot vacuum cleaner, achieved a desire for human flesh.
  Shredz: I'll clean the bones from your body!!
• Aliens Steal Cattle: An unconventional case, where an alien spaceship steals an Earth cow from another alien (and human) spaceship.
• Anatomically Ignorant Healing: Dr. Chitins misidentifies Stern, a human, as a houndarian, and replaces his severed hand with a canine paw.
• Androids Are People, Too: Red often attempts to humanize the security bots, even when they specifically state that they’re just expendable machines.
• Animal Facial Hair: Doc, a doglike houndarian, has a furry beard.
• Anthropomorphic Food: Pascal is a psychic alien who looks exactly like a floating pineapple, to the point of almost getting eaten by hostile aliens.
• Armless Biped: Fleming the beta centaur (the horse head alien seen in Stars 019) has no arms.
• Art Evolution: The art is noticeably higher quality with thinner lines and more detail from Stars 101 onwards. The most distinct difference is the use of Speech Bubbles instead of just text for dialogue.
• Beast Man: One of the crewmates, Doc, is a dogman, referred to as a houndarian. Another, Scuppy Barnacles, is a crablike alien.
• Beat Panel: Three identical ones appear in Stars 099 before AN-2E realizes that he's been left behind.
• The Big Guy: Big Good Boy seems to play this role among the engineers of the ship, being short on intelligence, but much stronger than the other engineers.
• Big "NO!": Ploont gives one in one issue when he is teleported to his battle station while using the bathroom.
• Bird People: Number 2 (the Number Two) is an alien resembling an eagle.
• Blue Means Smart One: The genius scientists of the Theseus wear blue uniforms.
• Body Horror: Greg resembles a human, but with his body parts in all the wrong places. He’s apparently a regular human who was disfigured in a Teleporter Accident.
• Call-Back: When Seiya’s outfit gets stained during his date with Scuti, he asks for a new outfit. He gets the same “I 👍 THUMBS” shirt he turned down many issues ago, and is baffled as to why so many species think humans like to express their love of thumbs.
• Caper Rationalization: Discussed in Stars 207. When Bean tries to justify an attempt to steal the sapphire crystanium, a background character (based on an actual troper) adds this trope to her catalogue, name-dropping it in the process.
• Captain Colorbeard: The ship's captain is Captain Starbeard, who has an appropriately star-shaped beard.
• Celestial Theme Naming: Most of the characters are named after celestial bodies. Examples include Captain Starbeard (star), Aster (meaning “star”), Neb (nebula), Hokulani (Hawaiian name meaning “heavenly star”), Enceladus (a moon of Saturn), Scuti (a hypergiant star), Rigel (one of the stars in the constellation Orion), Dusk (a term for sunset), Seiya (likely from the minor planet Seiyauyeda), Barnard (from Barnard’s star), and Nox (meaning “night”).
• Cephalothorax: Certain alien crewmates possess this body plan, such as Nox the tactician and Bean the science officer.
• Chocolate of Romance: Seiya gets Scuti a giant chocolate warp-worm effigy for their romantic first date on Oonst-V.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The divisions of the ship’s crew are distinguished by the colors of their uniforms (though the uniforms also have visual displays for colorblind crewmates). Red is for security, orange is for engineers, yellow is for commanders, green is for medics, blue is for scientists, purple is for tacticians, and white is for civilians (including all ship workers who don't fit into the other categories, such as janitors, accountants, and chefs). When former Faerie King Oberon joins the crew as a paranormal expert, he gets a unique light blue uniform.
• Color-Coded Speech: Many of the aliens and robots have their own distinct color of dialogue text or speech bubbles.
• Color-Coded Stones: The types of crystanium are named after their colors — red is ruby crystanium, blue is sapphire crystanium, green is emerald crystanium, and yellow is topaz crystanium.
• Comically Missing the Point: Captain Starbeard does so in Stars 206 while discussing a plan after the ship is split in two:
  Aster: We could resort to...
  Aster: ...that.
  Captain Starbeard: Right... eating half the crew.
  Aster: What?!! No!!
• Cooldown Hug: Barnard the space vampire calms space werewolf Lucas down enough to turn back into human form through a hug.
• Costume-Test Montage: Occurs in Stars 120 when Seiya is trying on outfits for his upcoming date.
• Crush Blush: Seiya blushes in Stars 158 after seeing Scuti in a form-fitting blue dress for their date.
• Crystalline Creature: One of the ship's engineers, Gemini, is a floating crystal who speaks High Crystalian. Geo, a rockgolium tactician, also has crystals on his head, much like a geode.
• Cthulhumanoid: Multiple members of a species that fits this trope have appeared. The species apparently hails from the desert planet Oonst-V, and its representatives in the crew include engineers Neb and Ploont.
• Cyclops: Multiple of the alien crewmates are single-eyed, such as Krater and Nightshade.
• Delightful Dragon: The Great Accountant of the Cosmos is a wise and kindly dragon-like alien.
• Dressed to Cook: Scuppy, the ship's chef, wears a classic chef hat (in half black and half white, to match his civilian uniform).
• Dumb Muscle:
  • Discussed and averted in regards to Scuti, the giantess who serves as the head of the scientist branch. Seiya asks her why she's not on the security team, and she answers that being the biggest person on the ship also means having the biggest brain on the ship.
  • Big Good Boy, a strong but not bright engineer, plays the trope straight.
• Ear Fins: The small buck-toothed alien from Stars 122 has this trait.
• Energy Being: Ohm, one of the engineers, is a ball of sentient energy. They’re still required to wear a uniform.
• Evil Laugh:
  • Hokulani and Nox perform one of these together after synthesizing a deadly virus.
  • Bean laughs wickedly after finding a loophole in the Loony Laws of fae space.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: Bean sports a pair of these in one episode due to staying up all night researching fae law.
• Extra Eyes: Multiple of the aliens have more than two eyes, as does Lucas while in werewolf form.
• Eye Beams: The Faerie King promises to grant Captain Starbeard and his crew this superpower. He ends up being dethroned before he can do so.
• Eyes Are Mental: When AN-2E swaps bodies with the backpack robot, their lights (which act as an eye for AN-2E) swap colors.
• The Faceless: Scuti, being a giant, is too tall to fit in frame. Her body and hands have been seen many times, but her head is always just out of frame.
• Faerie Court: Fae space is ruled by the Faerie King.
• The Fair Folk: Fae space is inhabited by fair folk who function on Fairy Trickster rules.
• Fairy Ring: Played with. Captain Starbeard knows that the ship has warped into fae space when he sees that it traveled through a ring of moons.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: This is apparently achieved through wormwiggle, a technique involving vibrating the ship rapidly while in a wormhole, which allows it to punch through the wormhole in a straight line instead of traveling along its folded curvature. The wormwiggle drive is controlled by an actual earthworm.
• Flower Mouth: The space animal in Stars 052 has this type of mouth.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Robots have a tendency to swap minds with other robots when teleported at the same time.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom:
  • Lucas's eyes glow red before he transforms into a werewolf.
  • Barnard the space vampire's eyes glow yellow when he threatens Pascal.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Referenced by Marie in Stars 019, in which she expresses frustration that the men who wanted to do it with attractive aliens aren't interested in her, an alien centaur.
• A Head at Each End: In Stars 101, two aliens want each other to respect their boundaries, despite being attached to each other.
• Healthy Green, Harmful Red: The medical branch wears green uniforms, while the security branch wears red uniforms.
• Hive Mind: The Great Accountant of the Cosmos is connected to a hive mind with the rest of their species.
• Human Popsicle: The Theseus has cryostasis chambers to allow some passengers to skip the long trip.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: In Stars 120, when Seiya asks an alien fashion designer for a more human-looking outfit, he is given a shirt that says "I 👍 THUMBS".
  Seiya: ...Is this what you think of us?
• Insectoid Aliens: The xenomantisects are a race of three-eyed, four-armed aliens.
• Insistent Terminology: Captain Starbeard insists that the enemy Torus ship is a bagel, and not a "doughnut" as Shrip refers to it.
• In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: Barnard's space helmet is completely transparent.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Seiya, the human head of interspecies resources, is in a relationship with giantess Scuti, the head of the scientist branch.
  • One comic shows [She Who Ponders Oblivion and Beauty in Equal Measure, Now and Evermore] falling in love with Oberon (partially because he remembers and likes her name).
• Joke and Receive: In Stars 095, when Aster asks Neb for a fairy destabilizer and claims that normal engineering won't cut it in fae space, Neb sarcastically shouts "Then why don't you ask our wizard department for help?" A few strips later, it turns out that there is a wizard department, and he gets the fairy destabilizer (a flyswatter) from there.
• Just a Machine: Surprisingly, it’s the robots themselves who believe that robots shouldn’t be treated as people, as they’re designed to be replaceable. AN-2E outright rejects Red’s attempt to give him a more humanizing name, claiming that he’s “very expendable”.
• Language Barrier: Happens to Ploont in one episode, and to Gemini the High Crystalian frequently.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Captain Starbeard's computer says that filling the ship with its new crew is only 10% complete (in the tenth strip), the captain asks if they have to do a joke for every one.
• Literal Metaphor:
  • In Stars 031, Aster claims that the ship's wormwiggle drive is so easy to understand that even a baby can comprehend it. At the end of the strip, it's revealed that he was literally explaining the drive to a baby (later revealed to be his child).
  • In Stars 033, when Seiya asks Doc how to get a crewmate to go to their physical, Doc asks if he's tried throwing a ball. Seiya interprets this as advice about incentivizing the crewmate so they don't feel as if they're being punished. It turns out that Doc actually just wanted Seiya to throw a ball.
• Loads and Loads of Races: The Theseus carries members of every species in the Galactic Alliance, of which there are many. Among their ranks are humans, rockgoliums, xenomantisects, a houndarian, an ibbybibby, a giantess, an Energy Being, a centaur, a shapeshifter, a psychic pineapple, and countless others. And that's not even counting the species that aren't part of the crew, such as the aliens on the enemy Torus ship.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: The beautiful Faerie King Oberon has long, wavy blue locks.
• Loony Laws: The laws of fae space are strange and often nonsensical.
  Bean: "The Faerie King, highest legal entity of the realm, decreed on the third day of negotiations with himself that gravity was optional for law-abiding subjects"...
  Bean: What...
  Bean: WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!
• Loophole Abuse: To become the new Faerie King, one must beat the existing Faerie King in a game. Bean succeeds at this by declaring that the game is “whose name sounds the most like Bean”, causing him to instantly win and attain the title.
• Malaproper: In Stars 032, when Seiya asks Dusk if they have narcolepsy, Dusk replies that they think raising the dead is an immoral practice.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The rockgolium security guard is named Bol’darr. Another rockgolium crewmate in the tactical branch, named Geo, has a head resembling a geode. A giant boulder who may or may not be another rockgolium is named Gra'vaal.
  • The xenomantisect doctor is named Dr. Chitins.
  • The chef robot who makes coffee is named KF-N8 ("caffeinate").
  • The Torus is an enemy ship that is both shaped like a torus and inhabited by cattle-like aliens (“taurus”).
• Metal Muncher: Krater, the ship’s resident mineral expert, was thrown in the brig for eating parts of the engine.
• Milking the Giant Cow: Hokulani does this gesture during her Evil Laugh in Stars 128.
• Mini-Me: In Stars 015, security robot AN-2E reveals that he's constructed a miniature replica of himself to increase efficiency. It's not very effective, as the miniature AN-2E is too interested in wearing tiny hats.
• Mistaken for Aliens: Greg is initially mistaken for an alien by Seiya, until he reveals himself to be a human victim of a Teleporter Accident.
• Most Writers Are Human: The Theseus contains aliens from every species in the Galactic Alliance, but humans are the most commonly seen species among the crew, with more than ten individuals seen, while most of the alien species are represented by one individual.
• Multi-Armed Multitasking: Nightshade, a many-tentacled alien gunner, is apparently a skilled multitasker.
• Must Be Invited: Barnard the space vampire seems to be affected by this common vampire restriction. When he's first encountered in fae space, he knocks on the spaceship and asks politely if he can come in.
• Mystical Plague: Hokulani synthesizes a cursed virus to counter the invasion of alien butterflies by inscribing runes on individual virons from the lab.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Zig-Zagged by Ll'uk'sh-taed the Soul Butcher. He's a black shadowy alien with a green face and skeletal arms whose name is literally "death skull" backwards, but he's apparently quite nice. However, he does have a personal collection of rusty knives, and he attempts to eat synthesized human flesh in one strip.
• Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom: [She Who Ponders Oblivion and Beauty in Equal Measure, Now and Evermore] has this type of name.
• Non-Humanoid Sapient Race: The crew of the Theseus contains plenty of non-humanoid aliens, like Ohm (a ball of energy), Pascal (resembling a floating pineapple), Glonk (who resembles a kiwi bird), Gemini (a faceless gemstone), and the accountant (a giant dragon).
• Numbers 2 Names: Red attempts to give the robot AN-2E the more human nickname "Anthony", but the trope is defied by said robot, who considers himself expendable.
• Number Two: The Theseus’s second-in-command is referred to as Number 2. The captain is amused by the other meaning of the phrase, though he doesn't reveal this to Number 2 when he asks.
• Octopoid Aliens: Nightshade is a one-eyed purple alien. The janitor is a different version of this, with blue-green skin, many tentacles, and Too Many Mouths.
• One to Million to One: Barnard the space vampire turns into a swarm of alien bats after taking his helmet off.
• One-Word Title: The webcomic is simply titled "Stars" (except on Webtoon, where it's titled "STARS: The Webcomic").
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Centaur aliens exist, hailing from Alpha Centauri. There’s also “beta centaurs”, the physical opposite of traditional centaurs: instead of a horse’s body with a human’s upper half where the head would be, a beta centaurs is a human’s lower half with a horse’s head on top.
• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: Hokulani mentions two cryptids of Oonst-V: the Mothreaper, which supposedly inhabits the desert planet itself, and the Nightpunk, which is said to inhabit the planet's ice moons.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The ship's accountant is a yellow dragon-like alien with a grey mane who is connected to a Hive Mind.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: One of the aliens on the ship is a fantasy dwarf, with Seiya recognizing this.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Scuti, the head of the scientist branch, is an alien described as a giantess. Sure enough, a human like Seiya comes up to just below her hip, and her fingers are about as wide as his head. She's a Gentle Giant, being kind and well-meaning, and she's very much the opposite of Dumb Muscle, putting her giant-sized brain to good use as a scientist.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Fae space contains alien vampires, who possess white skin, Pointy Ears, and antennae.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Lucas was bitten by a space werewolf, giving him increased strength. Landing on a moon (or entering fae space) triggers his transformation into a black wolfman with four brightly colored eyes. He can be turn back to normal if he's sufficiently calmed.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: Wormholes connect two points in space, and can be traveled through at a faster rate via a technique called “wormwiggle”.
• Overly Long Name: In Stars 127, [She Who Ponders Oblivion and Beauty in Equal Measure, Now and Evermore] requests a nickname so her crewmates can remember what to call her.
• Painting the Medium:
  • In Stars 037, the dialogue text for a being from a higher dimension appears outside of the panels, and can alter the shape of the borders (sometimes in ways that interact with objects in the panels).
  • After the Theseus breaks, the image of the ship in the corner of each strip on Webtoon shows the ship in its broken state.
• Plant Person: Ygg, the extremely slow alien, resembles a tree covered in mushrooms.
• Potty Emergency: The place Ploont needs to go to but doesn’t know the word for is implied to be the bathroom, as reinforced by a later strip showing that he has his own designated bathroom.
• Power Crystal: The ship's robots are powered by crystanium, a type of crystal.
• The Prankster: Nox loves pulling pranks on their crewmates.
• Punctuation Shaker: Bol'darr and Gra'vaal are aliens with apostrophes in their names for flavor (and to hide the fact that they're just English words for rocks spelled differently). This trope also applies more so to Ll'uk'sh-taed the Soul Butcher.
• Purple Is Powerful: When the Great Accountant of the Cosmos consults the Hive Mind of their people, their eyes glow purple and the background takes on a purple hue.
• Rainbow Speak: Regularly used when discussing important things or characters.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Lucas’s eyes turn bright red when he begins his werewolf transformation.
• Red Is Violent: The uniforms of the security branch are red. Additionally, Lucas's Color-Coded Speech is red when he's in his wolfman form, as is the speech of Shredz the killer robot vacuum cleaner.
• Robot: Multiple robots are present on the ship. Most of them are humanoid with No Mouth and a single "eye".
• Robot Names: The ship’s security robot is named AN-2E. A crewmate attempts to give him the more human-like name “Anthony”, but he refutes, as he is “very expendable”. He's later replaced by AN-2F. Other robots have similar names — the coffee-making robot is named "KF-N8".
• Rock Monster: Rockgoliums are tall, strong aliens with rocklike skin and sometimes crystals on their bodies. A living boulder (Gra'vaal) is also seen, and rockgolium Bol'darr claims that she is his ex-wife (it is unknown whether she's a female rockgolium or another species entirely.)
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: In Stars 001, Bol’darr (a rocky alien) is frightened of the paperwork he is required to sign. He's later shown to be scared of paper airplanes and even the "paper" hand position from the game.
• Runic Magic: To create a cursed virus to counteract the invasion of alien butterflies in fae space, Hokulani engraves runes on every individual virion.
• Science Fantasy: The series takes place on a spaceship and features lots of aliens and technology, but a number of the aliens look exactly like Standard Fantasy Races. Fae space ramps up the fantasy elements with lots of magic and fantastical reality-bending, courtesy of The Fair Folk.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ygg's response to the swarms of alien butterflies is to go back to bed.
  Ygg: Reporting...
  Ygg: for...
  Ygg: ...duty.
  Stern: The ship has been overrun by alien butterflies!
  Ygg: Reporting...
  Ygg: to...
  Ygg (walking away): ...bed.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Ll’uk’sh-taed the Soul Butcher's name is literally "death skull" spelled backwards and seasoned with a Punctuation Shaker. Appropriately, the planet he originates from is called H'taed ("death" backwards).
• "Second Law" My Ass!: AN-2E is very quick to disobey the geologist despite being programmed to obey him.
  AN-2E: He gave me orders to stop but they were dumb orders.
• Shout-Out: The uniform colors are assigned to the same branches of the crew as they are in Star Trek.
• Single Tear: Ygg cries one in Stars 018 when they fail to tell Seiya that their uniform is the wrong size after many hours.
• Space Is Noisy: Averted for comedic effect in Stars 050.
• Spare Body Parts: A fairly common trait in the alien characters. One alien even has two tongues.
• Spotting the Thread: When a second Bean comes in claiming to be Bean from the future, both Bean and Seiya ignore him, as he speaks in the first person rather than the third person like the real Bean.
• Technicolor Toxin: Played with. Nox is a spiky purple-and-green creature who claims to be poisonous, but they later confirm that they were joking.
• Teleportation Misfire: A Faster-Than-Light Travel example. When the Torus emits a sound loud enough to vibrate the entire Theseus, the earthworm that controls the wormwiggle drive is disoriented, and warps the ship into fae space.
• Teleporter Accident: Greg was the victim of one of these, resulting in his body parts being rearranged.
• Tentacled Terror: The janitor is an Octopoid Alien with Too Many Mouths who’s frightening enough to make the other crewmates flee when they enter the room.
• Third-Person Person: Bean always refers to himself in the third person.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Scuti and Bean are a non-romantic coworker example. Bean is extremely short while Scuti is too tall to fit in a panel, and together they make up the head of the science branch of the ship. Scuti and Seiya become a romantic example once they start dating, though Seiya is an average-sized human and only appears tiny in comparison to his giant girlfriend.
• Too Many Mouths: The janitor is a tentacled creature covered in sharp-toothed mouths.
• Translator Microbes: It’s implied that the crew has access to translators, as one member speaking in an alien language is seen as surprising and leads to questions about potentially broken translators.
• Unobtainium: Crystanium is a mineral power source sought after by the crew to power their electronics. It’s rare and valuable enough to warrant going on dangerous missions to retrieve it.
• The Unpronounceable: Nightshade, the ship's gunner, apparently uses a nickname because their real name is unpronounceable.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Sterrennacht is a shapeshifter with the ability to turn into an abstract Pablo Picasso-esque version of any person they’ve seen.
• Weird Beard: A mustache variant. Scuppy, the ship's chef, is a crablike alien who appears to have a mustache made of crab exoskeleton.
• Werewolves Are Dogs: Lucas, the space werewolf, chats with Doc the Houndarian guidance counselor in hopes to gain sympathy for his difficulties. They commiserate about fleas.
• Wingdinglish: A multitude of alien languages are written in this way. High Crystalian is the most commonly seen example (and the only one with an official key, albeit only accessible for paying Patreon subscribers), but any text written in alien characters in the comic can generally be deciphered via letter positioning, context clues, and occasional visual similarity to Latin letters.
• Witch Doctor: Pascal the psychic pineapple is referred to as a witch doctor, and possesses healing powers.
• Wizard Classic: Stars 105 features an alien variant of this trope. The alien wizard has a Wizard Beard, a Magic Wand, and a wizard hat consisting of a floating geometric shape and a green energy ring for the brim.