The book is fiction. The town it's built on is real, and the crater is real, and the bridge is real, and Fat Lance was named for a real best friend.
Mike Uhlir is a comic book writer, creator, and visual effects veteran with over 25 years of experience in film, television, and emerging technology. He began his career in New York before moving into the broader industry, working at studios including Digital Domain and Magic Leap, where he served as Creative Director and designed original intellectual property for one of the most ambitious mixed reality platforms ever built. His film credits include Thor, Rock of Ages, and Fantastic Beasts, among others.
A child of the 80s who grew up in South Florida reading comics and watching horror movies, Uhlir eventually traded the coast for central Alabama, where he found a town with a meteor crater, a legendary catfish, and enough history to fill a lifetime of stories. StarFell is his first published comic series. He is also the founder of StarFell Studios and the creator of POPUHLIR, a collectible designer figure brand. He lives in Alabama with his family.
Wetumpka, Alabama is one of those places that doesn't announce itself. It has a pretty downtown, a concrete arch bridge over the Coosa River, a single-screen movie theater that has seen better days, and a small museum on the corner that keeps the town's history in order. What it doesn't advertise is that the whole thing is sitting inside a meteor crater.
About 85 million years ago, a cruise-ship-sized rock traveling at somewhere between 10 and 20 miles per second hit what is now central Alabama with an impact roughly 175,000 times the force of Hiroshima. The debris reached the Gulf of Mexico. The crater rim is still there — a ridge of hills that most people drive past without realizing what they're looking at. The rocks jutting out of the Coosa River at the base of the Bibb Graves Bridge are angled from the impact. The whole town is the crater.
Mike Uhlir found all of this by accident, the way you find the best things. He started exploring — driving roads with no guardrails to stand on the rim, reading the local history at the Elmore County Museum, learning about the endangered Tulotoma snail that lives only in that stretch of the river, hearing the fish stories about the legendary catfish that nobody could ever catch. He learned that in the late 1800s, a stretch of downtown was known as the Dark and Bloody Square. He stood outside the old Fain Theater, shuttered and dark, and pictured what it would have looked like in 1962 with something pouring out the front doors.
That was the book.
StarFell is Wetumpka with the crater turned on. The Bibb Graves Bridge is in every issue. The Old Calaboose — built in 1820, still standing on the riverbank — is where Johnny Gale spends Issue 3. The Elmore County Museum is a recurring set. The Tulotoma snail mutates into a kaiju. The legendary catfish grows tentacles and walks on land. Every landmark is real. Every street exists. Mike photographed the town block by block before he handed any of it to the monsters.
He also went to the mayor's office and introduced himself before the first issue went to print.
The concrete arch bridge over the Coosa River that opens the book. Mike rebuilt it in CG, bolt for bolt.
StarFell's 1820 jail — where Johnny Gale spends Issue 3 chained to a wall.
The single-screen movie house where Mike first watched The Blob. The spark.
The local museum that holds StarFell's real history — and one of the book's standing sets.
A real, endangered river snail native to central Alabama. In the book, the crystals make it bigger. Much bigger.
Every Southern town has a legendary giant catfish. StarFell's is named for Mike's childhood best friend.
StarFell is a collaboration of artists who took the script and made it stand up.
StarFell has been covered by Southern lit and comics outlets — and the bridge built in CG has its own video.
→ Watch the CG bridge intro on YouTube
→ StarFell Studios — the official site
→ Press, retail, or interview requests
"It's better to give her flowers while she is here,— Johnny Gale
instead of bringing them to her when she's gone."
For press, retail orders, interviews, signings, or just to say hello — Mike reads every note.