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Comic creator and video game writer Sam Maggs has been working on some of the biggest pop culture franchises around — from Transformers and Captain Marvel to My Little Pony and Star Trek. While continuing her work in the video game industry, Maggs has a new story in Star Wars Adventures #7, exploring an untold tale within the Star Wars Universe focusing on Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. With upcoming manga work, a Critical Role original graphic novel, and a slate of video game projects, Maggs is not slowing down any time soon.
In an exclusive interview with CBR at Washington, D.C.’s Awesome Con, Maggs discussed working with IDW Publishing and Lucasfilm, shared her lifelong love of Star Wars, and explains some of the recurring themes across her work. Also included are preview pages from Star Wars Adventures #7, drawn by Liana Kangas and colored by Brittany Peer.
You’ve got Star Wars Adventures coming out through IDW Publishing. How is it to get to play in that galaxy far, far away?
Sam Maggs: It’s so much fun! I love the Lucasfilm team. They are so knowledgeable and so helpful. People are always like, “It must be so hard to write for these big IPs, they must limit you so much and be difficult!” But my experiences on both Star Wars Adventures and Marvel Action has been that they come to you as a writer because they like your style and know what they’re getting into up front and help you tell the best kind of story you want to tell. They’re not really there to tell me what to do, necessarily. I bring them ideas.
For example, my husband Blair Brown was a producer on Jedi: Fallen Order at Respawn Entertainment and I’m a big fan of Fallen Order and one of the planets in Fallen Order is Bogano and they have these cute, little creatures called boglings. When I played the video game with my husband, I was obsessed with the boglings so as soon as the opportunity to write children’s comics for Star Wars came up, I was like, “These cute things have to be in it!” It was cool to have that personal connection and Lucasfilm was totally into it and it was great to write early Luke and Leia. That sibling relationship is always really fun and they were really supportive of that as well.
Liana Kangas did the art on the book and she is so talented and brings a fun, loose style and Brittany Peer did the colors and it was so wonderful. I really love working with IDW on their all-ages comics, it’s such a fun opportunity to bring these stories to a really broad audience.
As someone that has the unique perspective of writing for both Star Wars and Star Trek, especially with Star Trek hitting its 55th anniversary this year, what commonalities do you see between the two as they welcome in new audiences?
I think they are similar but I just want to throw out there that I’m a Stargate person. I know objectively that I’m wrong but I do love Star Wars and Star Trek equally. [laughs] But I think they are similar in that they are these expansive universes that exist and each generation gets to add to it in a way that speaks to its current audience and that’s really an opportunity. The Star Trek story that I told was about reclaiming the lost history of a woman redshirt who, in the ’60s, we never really got to know what her story was because that was of the time and now we can get to do that.
Same with Star Wars Adventures, recognizing that kids of all genders are into Star Wars and write a story that embraces that. It’s like modern myth-making where you just get to add onto it as time goes on, there’s no limit to the stories we can tell in these cool, established universes. That’s what I like about IP writing too: It’s like playing with dolls as a kid. Those worlds existed and now I get to make-up stories in them, I love working in that sandbox.
Like you were saying, you’re writing a relatively unexplored period for Luke and Leia. Were there any restrictions as you got to play in that expansive sandbox?
Usually, Lucasfilm will lead with something like, “Avoid this area between Episodes X and Y,” or whatever, and not necessarily tell you why. Or, if you pitch something and they already have something planned for that era, they will say to maybe think of something in this direction instead. They never really tell you why at the time, but, years later, a movie will come out set in that exact time zone which is why it’s so important that they have these masterminds watching over comics, prose, video games, movies, and TV shows to make sure it’s all cohesive and doesn’t step on each other, so I’m happy to fit stuff where I can.
Across your work, there is this theme of more marginalized individuals claiming or reclaiming areas, like with Call of Duty. Aside from being an important theme, what do you want to speak to more broadly with this theme?
Thank you, it means a lot to me that you noticed that. That’s something that’s important to me when I write. I think that comes from that I grew up into all of this stuff. My dad read Silver Age comics and he was a huge Star Wars and Star Trek nerd. He used to pull me out of school to go see premieres of Star Wars movies. I remember seeing The Phantom Menace when I was in the sixth grade, which was great. Growing up loving this stuff, I would’ve loved to have had a character who wasn’t just Princess Leia to play as when I was a kid.
So much stuff growing up, there was the one girl on a team with a bunch of dudes. You had all these different examples of ways to be a man: The Funny Guy, the Strong Guy, the Cool Guy, the Smart Guy, and then you had the Girl. And that one girl had to encapsulate everything for all women which is impossible because we are all different humans. [laughs] For me, wanting to make sure that every single person who loves this stuff is able to find themselves in it somewhere to realize that they are seen and they are heard and important and meant to exist here too because I never thought, growing up, there would be a space for me to do this professionally. As a girl and then a woman, it was not super represented… I just want girls and kids to feel like someone is saying, “I see you and I’m like you and this is for you as well.”
What do you have coming out in the weeks and months to come that you can divulge?
Call of Duty: Vanguard comes out on Nov. 5. And I worked on a manga adaptation of Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl. Volume 2 is coming out soon so be prepared for that. I also have a Critical Role graphic novel that I’m doing with Dark Horse out in October and if you’re a fan of Jester, it’s kind of her origin story, which has been super fun to work for. There’s a couple of comic announcements coming that I can’t quite talk about and I am working at Aspyr Media on a video game that I can’t talk much about, but I can say that I’m working there! [laughs] I’m also working on a game called Scavengers that is an online multiplayer battle royale that’s been super fun to work on and fun to play too!
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