StarFox: Wings of Lylat (fancomic)

[SkyHunter95]

Hello, this is the beginning of my on-SFO link archive for my comic titled above. It is meant as a continuation of the 64-Command continuity taking place about a year and a half after the events of Command. (Plans have changed, I'm now having it set 3 years after Assault, and the vast majority of the events from Command never happened, since I think the writing in Command is extremely harmful to the writing of the series as a whole, and also very much inconsistent, and any forward writing following Command would also suffer) I try to put a heavy emphasis on consistent storytelling, world building and character development with this, and I will try to keep updates on it as frequent as I can, with as good of quality as I can. One of the goals with it in particular is to merge character casts of the various timeline and give them all a decent amount of attention, and in particular I've basically made Krystal the co-protagonist to try and develop the character the way I think she should have been.

Mainly here this will be an archive of the pages in order, but comments and discussion are welcome here too, thank you :^).

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 1: Page 1: I wanted to heavily reference the tactical map from StarFox 2 with the very first panel, I love how the Astropolis is shaded and ominous looking, the shadows disrupted by the lights on the structure gave it a cool mysterious look, and it was visible throughout the game, showing the players exactly what their end-goal target is. I tried to give it as ominous an appearance as I could for Panel 1 and 3, keeping it in the dark. I also tried to get the twin stars from SF2 the same look. Since the layout of the Lylat System has literally never been consistent, I decided to go with the binary solar system thing that seems to be implied given the two stars visible in SF2, and they are blue like in SF2, as how the sun appears either blue or white in 64, Assault, Zero and I think Command?

In Panel 3, the entry-way into the Astropolis is based on the design from the Sargasso space station in Assault, the Venomian cruisers visible in Panel 1 are based on the Battleships in StarFox Assault as well. Though I didn't draw them too well... The hangar bay in panel 4 is meant to resemble the interior of Sargasso in Assault, and panel 5 is meant to look like the shiny interiors from StarFox SNES to the best of my drawing ability. I hope to drastically improve later down the road. As for those Venomian troops, I gave them a design to resemble those ruffian enemies on the Sargasso mission from StarFox Assault, off-brand monkey stormtroopers, what's not to love?

Lastly, I included Andrew and Algy on the StarWolf team, Algy was retconned after SF2 was cancelled and replaced with Andrew in SF64, so I decided to imply some kind of rivalry between Algy and Andrew. A "I was replaced by this dunce?" type of deal, a meta element that I want to make a theme of with the characters going forward with this comic.

 

[SkyHunter95]

 

Haven't had the chance to give Algy any dialogue yet, hopefully I'll get to that in page 3 when he becomes relevant. On the very last panel we are introduced to Dash Bowman. He appeared as a playable  character in StarFox Command. At this time he was a pilot in the Cornerian Army, piloting the "Monkey's Paw" Fighter. In a couple of the endings, he becomes the political leader of the planet Venom, turns it into a superpower, and goes to war with Corneria. I went with the appearance he had when giving a speech in one of those endings, where he began to resemble Andross.

[SkyHunter95]

Chapter 1 Page 3. Finally have some more complex conversation between characters. What's being discussed here is that they now have the schematics for the shield that protects Corneria in StarFox 2. It was developed by reverse engineering the shield that protected the  Aparoid Homeworld at the end of StarFox Assault, since I like combining ideas. How did they get them? Panther's Spy? Well, it is to be revealed later, and it's not going to be Krystal because *Fuck* that element of StarFox Command, this time the traitor is going to be a very obscure character who technically doesn't exist, hopefully I won't upset anyone with the reveal, StarWolf has a secret double agent.

Also the data chip looks like a gamboy color card with a glowy screen on it, thought it would be a neat thing.

 

[SkyHunter95]

Chapter 1, Page 4.

We introduce Miyu and Fay into the story as Private Mercenaries, they still fly their Interceptor variant Arwings, I was gonna draw them with scanning equipment from the Itoh comics, but couldn't figure out how to draw them to fit the split fuselage the interceptors have. Miyu is seen using a "Virtual Boy" looking device called the "Zoom Boy" which I Thought would be a funny little aesthetic. They are of course discussing that Dash's military base is illegal, and that informing the Cornerian Army means duty as well as reward to them.

 

 

[SkyHunter95]

Chapter 1: Page 5.

After the first scene closes out with the reveal of Miyu and Fay spying on the Astropolis, we see what's going on in another part of the Lylat System. Krystal arriving at Fortuna, thinking about her troubled past. I think Krystal is a far better character than people give her credit for, and one thing I want to do with this comic is show that. I'm staying true mostly to what was established of her in Assault, and Adventures. I'm also borrowing a lot from Dinosaur Planet, as I think more of that cut content would otherwise have been a great fit for the StarFox Universe, and I think it would be worth exploring.

She remembers her adopted father Randorn (From defunct Dinosaur Planet), the Animus Wizard who rescued her as Cerinia is destroyed by some cataclysm yet to be explained. This flashback gives her a jolt as she arrives at the planet Fortuna, and is met by Slippy hailing her. Let's see what the others are up to.

 

Also small details: I wanted to include that one weird moon that appears in Fortuna's sky in its SF1 background sprite, and also during the cutscene for StarFox Assault just before the first mission. I think the Cloudrunner Arwing is pretty cool, I like to imagine Krystal would embark on solo missions with it. The controls in Krystal's cockpit? If I drew a closeup of the Interceptors' interior, I'd want to make the control sticks vaguely resemble the SNES controller, whereas Krystal's and the newer Arwings have GameCube controller looking control sticks. Also press the C-buttons to respond to incoming messages, like in StarFox 64? It seemed to imply that it looked like that in-universe. Remember the spaceship interior for Kool and Katt's ship having a GameCube hidden in the dash?

 

[SkyHunter95]

So Krystal enters the atmosphere of Fortuna, and follows Slippy's signal down to where the rest of the team were meeting on an Archipelago somewhere on the planet's surface. The Cloudrunner fighter, LandMaster, and even the distant Arwing and Cat's Paw fighters were fairly tricky. The drawing work for the Great Fox 2 is supbar, hopefully I'll figure it out later.

The horizon and sea are meant to resemble how most of Fortuna looked in both StarFox 1 and 2, for Super Nintendo, combined with how Fortuna had a slight green tint to its sky in StarFox Assault for GameCube. Given the planet appears mostly to have an open ocean, and jungle-infested continents, I think it makes sense for Fortuna to also have Archipelagos too, right?

 

[SkyHunter95]

So since I've changed things, ignoring the events of Command, this is now the first meeting between Katt and Krystal so that's basically the one big story element happening here, that and the landing. Probably off to meet up with Slippy, and the others to see what their mission here is. Which of course means lots of establishing shots of the Fortuna island landscape. And also for costume, already established Krystal in her Assault suit but with a cape. I decided to give Falco the getup he wore in Super Smash Bros Brawl and 4, and for Katt, her outfit from the Fairwell Beloved Falco comic. Of course she is also pink since Command never happened here. That said, I did sneak in Falco's gold boots that he wore in the Marcus ending of StarFox Command where he appeared as an old man in a hover chair. The boots are a pretty cool reference to Captain Falcon from F-Zero.

 

Like how before, Miyu and Fay's interceptor landing gear sprung out from the GDF shoulder structures similar to what Fox's Arwing did in Adventures. Naturally the same thing happens for Falco's Arwing since it is just a standard model. The Catspaw fighter I just sorta winged it. With Krystal's Cloudrunner I had to mess around to figure out where the landing gear would be, of course still using the same GDF pop-down things for it to make its landing. I have to admit I do like the aircraft designs used in Command, the Cloudrunner suits Krystal's character well, I think most of the aircraft do.