Note: This comment is all entirely my opinion. If you don't agree, that's cool. We can't always agree on the same things. You can even express your own thoughts with a reply!
As much as I love making headcanons about these characters, it feels like I HAVE to do this for a good portion of the story, as well as the series, itself. Don't get me wrong, it IS fun to make headcanons, but to me, if you have to do that just because a media refuses to fill in its own blanks, it becomes less fun. Headcanons should be for the question "What ELSE can they do?" and not just "What can they do?"
This is where I feel like what Matthew showcases in worldbuilding, he kinda lacks in writing. He has a lot of characters that don't get a lot of screentime, despite having some intriguing backgrounds. There's also some plot holes and cliffhangers that haven't been addressed in months or even years.
Stars Comic also kinda suffers from this, despite having way less characters and way less plot; You have this cool Star Trek-inspired series with the primary plot of exploring the universe in search of a white hole, lots of unique human and alien characters with intriguing backgrounds, and some cool worldbuilding with planets and galaxies. But the primary plot kinda gets forgotten, most of the characters get no more or even less than 4-5 episodes worth of screentime, and we don't see a lot of worldbuilding that much. It's like Matthew can't decide if he wants this to be action/adventure, or slice of life. A lot of the time it just feels like it should be called 'The Seiya and Bean Comic', since those two characters are the most prominent in it.
Just to clarify a few things:
- Am I saying Matthew's comics are bad? No. In fact, I love his comics! This doesn't mean that I can't give genuine criticism on them, though.
- Am I calling Matthew a bad writer? No. It's definitely not his fault that the writing appears half-baked in some of his work. But I do think there are parts that he could improve on in both Swords and Stars.
- Do I still appreciate Matthew as an artist? Of course! Like with all the artists I post from, I'll always appreciate him!
- Does this comment completely destroy my liking of Quest Sprout? Hell no LOL
I didn't expect to make a whole essay about my thoughts on the writing, but here we are. And there are going to be more of these long comments in later threads, so I hope you guys don't mind...
