By Pat French
Brian K. Vaughn is one of my favorite comic writers working today. His Runaways series for Marvel is one of the most poignant and heartbreaking new series in the past decade. Y the Last Man, a truly unique dystopian future epic for Vertigo, is actually probably the best thing I’ve ever read. If you know me you know that’s an assessment I don’t make easily. When I went into the comic shop the other day looking for something new to read, I was happily surprised to discover that he had a new series out from Image Comics. It’s called Saga, and it proves once again that Vaughn is a literary force to be reckoned with. Complimented by striking painted art by Fiona Staples (in what I believe is the Wash method), Saga is a badass yet beautiful space opera about true love in the face of adversity.
The planet Landfall and its moon Wreath are two galactic empires at constant odds with one another. Because orbital bombardment of one would destabilize the orbit of the other, their war is fought across the cosmos on proxy worlds. The natives of Landfall, colloquially referred to as Wings, are a technologically advanced race with an ordered society that more or less resembles human civilization. The Wreath natives, called Horns, are a magically imbued culture who’s peoples have varying forms of antlers horns, and spikes protruding from their skulls. Saga’s main characters are Alana, a reluctant soldier from Landfall and Marko, a prisoner of war from wreath Alana is ordered to guard, who has taken a vow of pacifism. They fall in love and run away from their respective armies to sire a child. Our story begins with the birth of their hybrid child, and the action picks up immediately as both races arrive to capture their AWOL soldiers. Discovering that they’ve coupled, the two opposing factions open fire and, ironically, manage to kill each other, sparing the child and its parents.
Marko and Alana run from the massacre and the book’s first storyline covers their escape from war-torn planet Cleave. Along the way they encounter ghosts, bounty hunters, monsters, as well as skirmishing forces from their own civilizations. Eventually they make it off world in a rocket tree (which is exactly what it sounds like).
Saga is freaking great all around. It’s characters are deep and layered, and each and everyone likeable. Because all of the characters of real and understandable motivations you sometimes find yourself rooting for the bad guy (kinda like Game of Thrones: You want the Starks to win, but you can’t help wanting Tyrion to win too). It thematically approaches war, love, lust, innocence and the difficulties of raising a child with horns. The world resembles ours in surprising ways, and really pulls you into the story in ways you would never expect from a space opera. I can’t say enough good things about Fiona Staples art, although my sister (an artist herself) pointed out a few spots where things seemed unfinished or the foreground and background didn’t quite meld).
A defining mark of good space sci-fi is the concept and design of the the story’s aliens (and/or monsters, mutants and robots). Think about the cantina aliens in Star wars, H.R. Giger’s terrifying xenomorph in Alien, or the energy based Drej in Titan AE (yeah I went there). On this count, Saga delivers in spades. Each obstacle the Marko and Alana encounter is accompanied by a new and bizarre looking creature. Fiona Staples has done a fabulous job of bringing this world to life and constantly surprising the reader with the depth and variation of her creatures. I particularly love her design for the denizens of the Robot Kingdom and the nightmarish dichotomy of beauty and arachnid that is The Stalk.
If I was to have negative criticisms for this book it would be that it doesn’t come out twice a month. Given the amount of care and love put into these pages however that would likely require a time machine or Hyperbaric Training Chamber. Hmm that’d be interesting: A world where entire seasons of TV shows come out in a day because the creators are in a time machine. Course this would mean that our artists and writers would age superfast relative to us. Which would make them like, time-slaves or something. Note to self…
Saga is currently 11 issues deep with a 12th coming out on April 10th, so it’s not at all too late to catch up on the first two storylines. Also, rather incredibly, the first trade paperback (collecting issues 1-6) is only 9.99. That’s a steal for a bad comic let alone an amazing one by medium re-defining creators like Vaughn and Staples. I imagine some time in June we’ll see a volume 2 trade, though I wouldn’t keep my hopes up for it being quite so cheap. I know I’ve found a new selection for my pull list.
