MAMATH

Starrytellers was the first comics anthology I helped bring to life back in 2015! The theme for the anthology was just “stars” which we thought was a really rich visual theme that still gave contributors a lot of space for interpretation. I co-funded and co-edited it alongside Sid Stones (of Petrie Press), running a successful Kickstarter campaign and getting all those books printed and sent out in record time!

We had 11 contributors (including our lovely cover artist Sai AKA Lovesoup) and I hope everyone is still proud of their work because I know I am! The end product was a lovely A5 book of about 100 pages (I think it worked out to 80ish pages of comics, plus various bits of text and interstitial art), full colour interiors and silver foiled cover. I’ve sold out of my allotment as of 2023 so I’m afraid it’s no longer for sale anywhere unless Sid gives up their last few.

I was largely responsible for visual design of the book (what little there was to do around everyone else’s wonderful art) and contributed the story 500 Billion Suns, which I’m still fond of, as well as of course physical fulfilment of KS rewards. Editing duty was very light, mostly catching errors and readability issues. 🙂

Since the books are now more or less sold out, here is my short story in its entirety:

I went out on a limb a bit and used a combo of ink drawings and digital colour washes for the art and I have to say I really love the end look. I’m a big fan of the texture traditional art tools can bring!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the plush toys made as one of the Kickstarter rewards. I patterned, embroidered and hand-sewed a soft toy based on the bat character in Lex Sugden’s story Beautiful and Shining Bright. There are 3 full-size bats in existence (2 went to KS backers and 1 resides with Lex somewhere in Canada) as well as a half-size prototype with slight off colours, who lives with me.

Other Kickstarter rewards included bookplates with signatures from all the contributors (I would not do this again without a reliable way to get all the contributors in the same physical space at once – shipping the bookplates around was a pain), bookplates with sketches from the editors, the original cover painting and digital copies of the book, which was the only way ever to get an e-book copy.

Though the books are no longer available, the publishing rights are long expired so most of the contributors will have posted their stories online or re-printed them by now.

List of Starrytellers contributors with links:
Cherriuki
Madeleine Karutz
Natasha Sim
Lesley Vamos
Alexis Sugden
Jacobin
Ele Jenkins
Lee Lai
Mamath 
Sid Stones

Maybe it’s nostalgia speaking but this book came together fairly easily. Oh, we had issues with the printer jumping the gun and starting the print run before final approval and the usual challenge of getting multiple people to hit multiple check in deadlines, etc. But overall it was a good experience.