Saga #22 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Drugs, affairs, and murder. Alana and Marko sure live the celebrity life.

The Review: It’s not a pleasant experience to witness a couple’s row, but it has its fascinations. There’s a reason why these things are often referred to as train wrecks; from the outside, the disinterested bystander can clearly see what’s going wrong, though the people involved seem completely oblivious. And while the old adage is right in saying it takes two to tango, you can usually pin the larger share of blame to one person or the other.

Alana and Marko’s spat thus breaks against the mold in that you come away as bewildered and at a loss as to what happened as they, Klara, and Izabel do. When it starts, you’re ready to side with Marko on this: he’s the thankless stay-at-home parent who never gets a break ever while his wife’s flying high at her job. Even Alana’s anger about him muttering Ginny’s name in his sleep doesn’t shift your opinion much; we know Marko’s not actually cheating with the purple-skinned dancer. Marko’s actually in a very good position to be self-righteous—at first.

The problem is instead of engaging Alana on the Ginny thing and sweeping it out of the way, he very obviously changes the subject to whether she’s ever been high in front of Hazel, which is a vaguer point of contention. His avoidance means one thing: there’s a genuine interest in Ginny, even if it isn’t physical (yet). So when he finally lashes at Alana, there’s guilt mixed in with the insecurity of not being the breadwinner (he cuts off Alana’s complaints about working and finishes “—so you can take care of helpless me…”), and the resentment that his wife isn’t at home even when she’s at home.

Ultimately, you’ll be able to forgive Marko easier than Alana, probably. While he’s immediately apologetic for his loss of temper, Alana escalates, ordering him to leave the house, which she significantly refers to as “my house,” just as she refers to Hazel as “my daughter[.]” Having taken ownership of the rest of Marko’s life, he leaves him with nothing except—guess who?—Ginny. That won’t excuse any funny business that will likely happen between the two afterward, but it’ll be Alana who drove him there.

By doing so, they are now at their most vulnerable just when forces threaten to converge on the family once again. Not only does the unstable Dengo reach Alana’s workplace and violently leaves it in disarray, Prince Robot is on his trail thanks to assistance from Gale. The Landfallian agent claims to be doing so out of respect to the late princess, but as King Robot mentions earlier, the contract on Alana and Marko is still outstanding and Gale doesn’t seem like the type who forgets such things. So we’ve got two off-balance killer robots drawing towards our favorite couple; the fact that Upsher recognizes Alana’s Heist quote on the Open Circuit is negligible by comparison.*

Saga #21 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Usually, the revelation of your newborn son involves less homicide.

The Review: As I said last issue, the core of Saga is maintaining a typical domestic drama within a highly fantasized universe. For the most part, Vaughan succeeds in this endeavor; some of the series’ best, most poignant moments have been sympathizing with Alanna and Marko in managing their in-laws, debating the upbringing of their child, worrying over the staling of their lifestyle. Many’s the time when you overlook the galactic war around them altogether.

But always, in the background of things, the war quietly exerts pressure on the story when it’s not drawing them in outright. Almost every single character in Saga wants to live an ordinary life, and it’s always the war that gets in their way. If not for the Landfall-Wreath conflict, Alanna, Marko, and Klara could live openly and take any opportunity that comes their way, instead of settling for less. Prince Robot could have his idyllic family vacation by the sea, instead of it existing merely as a hopeless dream.

Saga #20 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: It’s the typical Open Circuit story—sex, drugs, and money.

The Review: I’m sure I wasn’t the only one disheartened by last issue’s pronouncement that Alana and Marko are due to split up at some point—though #15 indicated they’ll still be involved in Hazel’s life together, no matter what—but what depressed me even further was the idea their parting would be due to something as cliché as work-family balance and a potential fling between Marko and a clearly flirty dance instructor he met in a park.

It’s possible, given Vaughan’s gift for the unexpected, that he could take this particular plotline in a different direction than you’re expecting, but I’m actually not holding out that much hope. The whole point of Saga is to maintain the normality of Alana and Marko’s relationship even against the backdrop of an intra-galactic war, and there is nothing more normal in a relationship than the imprudent affair that sends it astray. Hence Vaughan makes no effort to disguise the burgeoning chemistry between Marko and Ginny, as the dance teacher calls herself. She even goes so far as to mention, quite needlessly (but very purposefully, methinks), that her husband “is on the road most of the year.”

Saga #19 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Are there couple’s counselors for wanted criminals?

The Review: With my overloaded Pull List, I shouldn’t mind a few months’ hiatus from any given series, but I do get a little pang every time Saga goes on break. It’s a bit like every time I started a new semester in law school and basically abandoned all my friends for four months, except Alana, Marko, Will, Klara, Izabel, etc., don’t have Facebook pages for me to keep up with. After that kind of separation, you can’t help feeling a little giddy when you finally have the chance to catch up.

Despite the break, or maybe because of it, Vaughan is clearly in his usual fine form, opening the issue with—but of course—a woman under labor. This time the lucky lady is Princess Robot, whose delivery takes place within far more rarefied circumstances than Alana’s, but without the love of the father nearby. Chalk this up to the princess still being on her epidural, but this is the first time you’re really seeing the depth of feeling this robotic woman is capable of, both in her tender ministrations to her newborn child or her confidence that Prince Robot is “alive and well somewhere out there[.]” Typical Vaughan: always finding ways to find the humanity in non-humans.

Saga #18 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: When confronted by your raging ex-fiancée, resist the urge to push your wife off a building.

The Review: While I usually shy away from conflating what I like to see in a story with what is actually good in a story, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that usually, the more developed characters, the better.  If a series is interested in longevity, it’s got to build up its inventory so that it always has a source of material to turn to.  If you can make even your minor, interstitial characters worth their page-time, you’re pretty much golden.

It’s this quality that makes Saga special among comic books.  I can name a goodly number of titles that are character-driven, that take great care of its stars, but it’s hard to think of any that loves all its characters the way Saga does.  How often do non-talking animals in fiction get developed beyond their cute factor?  It’s got to say something about Vaughan that even Lying Cat gets a backstory and motivations undefined by its various partners.  Cat is no gimmick; he’s a legitimate member of the Saga cast.

Saga #17 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: No better time for a literary discussion than during a hostage situation.

The Review: Ever since #12, when Vaughan revealed that Marko, Alana, and Co. had arrived at Heist’s lighthouse a week before Prince Robot, we’ve been eagerly waiting for the story to catch up to the highly tense confrontation between the soldier and the writer.  With nearly all of Saga’s forces converging on the same place at once, you know that no matter which way the encounter turns, everything will change when it’s over.

And so it goes.  Spoiler alert—the death of Heist, all things considering, was probably to be expected.  Surprising as it is to see his romance with Klara nipped just before it had a chance to bloom, Heist was the only truly expendable character at the lighthouse.  Not that Vaughan is the type of writer who’d be squeamish about killing off a principal character relatively early on in the series (Barr did die within several issues of being introduced), but the time just isn’t right for anyone else to die yet—not until their story arc reaches some resolution, at least.

Saga #16 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: What’s worse than being a war criminal?  How about a war criminal who acts?

The Review: If there’s one thing I’ve learned from both creative writing and improv comedy, it’s the magic of details.  It really doesn’t take all that much to flesh out a story; even just one salient detail or factoid can suggest a wealth of information about a character, place, or thing.  The power of human experience to flesh out a story with only a little prompting is unparalleled—which is why any story that feels lifeless or flat is truly a stain on a writer’s craftsmanship.

Conversely, a mark of excellence in a writer is the ability to leverage a single detail to his advantage, something which Vaughan does constantly.  Alana notes in passing that, “I used to check [the Open Circuit—a semi-illegal entertainment channel] out after my mom passed out.”  In that one statement, you have a big chunk of Alana’s formative years in miniature: a neglectful, substance-abusing mother who simultaneously afforded Alana the freedom to explore the seedier side of life early on, partly as a form of escape from an unhappier circumstances.  In turn, this informs us on the person Alana has become; she nurtures Hazel in a way her mother didn’t; she’s freethinking and daring because she’s been brought up that way; and she’s always ready to run from the harsh realities of life.

Saga #15 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Alana and Marko are defeated—by the greatest board game ever made.

The Review: Vaughan made an interesting choice at the top of this arc when he opened on Prince Robot catching up to Alana and Co. on Quietus.  He seemed to be setting things up for an imminent confrontation, but the succeeding issues don’t seem to be in any hurry to have one.  Even so, the knowledge that our favorite space family will soon encounter new troubles casts all their doings in a different light than if you just took them on their own.

Basically, we have a ticking time bomb of about a week before Robot arrives.  In this issue, Hazel tells us that we’re on day five.  Her family only has two more days before their “blissful” time with Heist is over—but they don’t know it yet.  That’s the tragic part, as it is with all situations of dramatic irony.  As sweet and fun as it is to see the gang play Nun Tuj Nun, a Wreath board game that crosses Pictionary, arm-wrestling, and psychological warfare all at once, their activities have a certain amount of poignancy, too, because you know it can’t last.

Saga #14 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Hazel gets an unconventional, but literally cleansing, baptism.

The Review: To the owners and operators of Comics Unlimited—much as I revere and adore your store and happy as I am to funnel my increasingly scanty funds into your business, this ridiculous business with slipping Saga in into plastic sleeves with a mature content warning sticker has got to stop.  At least, read through an issue to make sure there’s some actual explicit content in there before wrapping it up.  It’s just environmentally the smart thing to do.

This issue could easily have gone on the shelves without the extra non-biodegradable packaging without raising too many eyebrows.  Aside from the Stalk’s nips and a rather jaw-dropping panel of author Heist puking out his guts (from emotion!) onto Hazel, this is probably the least offensive issue of Saga yet, both visually and textually.  Even if you find something graphically objectionable to it, the issue more than redeems itself with moments of pure, if bruised, heart.

A lot of it, as with the best works of fiction, is in the little things: Klara’s growing rapport with the family’s ghostly nanny (“Ready your side of the ether, Izabel.  At this rate, we’ll be ghosts by dawn…”) or the faith Alana’s stepmom still has in her despite their estrangement (“Our girl may have her problems, but Alana isn’t a turncoat.  She was…she is a good person.”).

Saga #13 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: For once, a mother-in-law gets her ear chewed off.

The Review: Fresh from three big wins at the Eisner Awards, and still riding a powerful wave of near-universal popular and critical acclaim, Saga comes back from its second hiatus raring and ready for another banner year.  While I certainly share in the enthusiasm for the series, I have to admit that the sheer amount of love it’s received has surprised me—in a pleasant, if bewildering, way.  After all, once you strip it down, Saga has really been a modest little story thus far.

Or perhaps it only seems that way because Vaughan spends so much time fixating on individual characters, rarely pulling back to reveal the larger context they’re operating in.  So much of Saga’s tension comes from personal acrimony among the cast, to the point where you start to lose sight of the bigger stakes within the story.  It gets so you even occasionally forget there’s a war going on in the background.  This ain’t Star Wars, is all I’m saying.

Saga #12 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Prince Robot just can’t wait for a book signing.

The Review: I always enjoy giving a so-called controversy a few days to land.  I notice that more often than not, the scandal that prompted such initial furor usually turns out to be far less interesting than it first appeared.  To me, it’s all about learning as many hard facts as you can before you start making your opinion on the matter and putting it out into the world.  One’s good opinion is too precious to squander on half-baked gut reactions.

So it didn’t surprise me one jot that the story of Apple apparently refusing to allow Comixology to sell Saga #12 on its app, due to a couple bukkake visuals in the issue, turned out to be a story of Comixology preemptively deciding not to submit the issue to their app for the same reason.  Was the concern worth it?  Well, I think once you’ve allowed the uncleaned, bare loins of a gargantuan space ogre to go through the publishing channels, all bets are off at that point, right?

Saga #11 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Will this tree hold together long enough to escape a mini black hole?

The Review: I don’t think there will ever be an outright bad issue of Saga; the caliber of both the writer and artist is just too strong for that.  But I think within the title’s spectrum of excellence, the issues that fall within the lower range will be those that, once you get past the entertainment value of the words themselves, don’t quite advance the plot very much or short-change a part of the story that can use more development.

That said, we always have to keep in mind that Vaughan prefers the piecemeal method of storytelling on this series.  There’ll be times when he’ll hold back or cut short what seems to you the natural progression of a scene so he can deliver it later, at a more opportune time.  Such is the way he’s dealing with these flashbacks of Alana and Marko’s early relationship days.  We basically went from the painful initial meeting directly to the first kiss, without ever seeing the fairly important steps between.  While I’m sure Vaughan has a clear timeline for when he wants us to see those scenes, it can be a little annoying to experience them out of order like that.

Saga #10 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Most mothers only joke that it feels like they’re giving birth to a little planet.

The Review: In Saga #8, we got a deeper glimpse into A Night Time Smoke, a book which figures heavily in Alana’s history as a soldier and whose contents interested Prince Robot too much to just be a trashy romance.  Clearly, there’s more to the book than a steamy attraction between a flesh-and-blood girl and a rock monster, but what that is exactly is more of a mystery, as well as the exact impact it had on our heroes’ lives.

Here, we finally learn more about the exact nature of A Night Time Smoke.  Despite the rather mundane language Alana reads from the book, the words seem to stun Marko.  Amazingly, he sees “[i]t’s not a love story at all, is it?  It’s about us, about the war between Landfall and Wreath.”  You should read the excerpt of the book yourself, but as an English major, even I feel there’s some extreme extrapolation going on for Marko to make that conclusion.

Saga #9 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: The Will and Gwen strike the slave traders like lightning out of a clear orange sky.

The Review: I’ve often made the point that when it comes to critiquing comedies, they often get away with more since their only real goal is to make you laugh.  If they do that, then it almost doesn’t matter if they have much of a point, if their character work is consistent, or if their plot goes anywhere.  Dramedies have it a little harder—they have to make you laugh and they’ve got to have some substance—but they still have it easy compared to straight dramas.

I really, really hope no one will take this the wrong way, but I sometimes feel that a large part of Saga’s popular appeal is its clear dramedy status.  The basic premise of the title is, after all, very simple, even pedestrian: lovers who incur the wrath of their respective groups, now persecuted by all.  Furthermore, Vaughan doesn’t go out of his way to deliver a particularly nuanced view of the overarching conflict.  From the start he established the war between the winged and horned people as senseless and pointless; its only purpose is to provide a specter of tension and give a reason for the characters to move forward.

Saga #8 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Alana’s streak of good fortune continues with the greatest father-in-law ever.

The Review: In fourth grade, I fell in love with a little book that no one has ever heard of, much less doted upon: Mary Rodgers’ A Billion for Boris.  You can Wiki the plot, but it was really Rodgers’ style that impressed me: the fantastic premise anchored in an otherwise realistic setting, the stream-of-consciousness narrative, the quirky characters, the way the action was broken up across specific days.  It was truly the first of the foremost influences on my literary appreciation.

So do I believe that a seemingly innocuous romance novel could affect Alana such that, as she tells her comrade McHenry, “[M]y entire outlook on existence has just been permanently altered”?  Absolutely.  It’s about time that we got a deeper glimpse into what exactly it is about D. Oswald Heist’s A Night Time Smoke that seems to have gotten everyone in a tizzy.  From the looks of it, there doesn’t seem anything extraordinary about the book; in fact, as a younger Alana describes it, it goes out of its way to be as decidedly ordinary as possible.

Saga #7 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Marko and Alana get to perform in their very own Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

The Review: Anyone who’s reviewed or read this title knows that at its heart, Saga is really a story about a family and the struggle required to remain one.  Sure, the struggle’s often made harder by the backdrop of intergalactic war they live in, but I’d say you’re just as invested—if not more so—in whether this diverse little group can keep themselves together long enough to survive the conflict.

The story has depicted Marko and Alana, horns and wings aside, as a pretty ordinary couple.  They’ve made it pretty clear that they’d like nothing better than to live and be treated as such.  Yet they seem to have no choice but to have a space opera thrust upon them.  Consider Marko as a young lad, bathing in the downright halcyonic sunlight of Wreath, playing with his dog, Rumfer—and then his parents magically summoning up the images of a past massacre to teach him never to forget “those evil fucks with the wings” from Landfall.

Deadpool #1 – Review

By: Gerry Duggan & Brian Posehn (Writers), Tony Moore (Artist), Val Staples (Colorist), Joe Sabino (Letterer)

The Review: So, it’s a comedy book. I’m not sure why I’m so surprised that Marvel chose to take this direction for the Marvel Now! Deadpool relaunch. After all, the evidence was pretty conclusive from the preview pages and the appearance of comedic actor and stand-up Brian Posehn on script duties. Maybe it was because (from what I could gauge through internet forums, comic book shop chatter etc.) there was a consensus among fans that a return to the Joe Kelly-era Deadpool was the preferred option. Insane, wise-cracking and maniacally violent, yes, but with a twisted vulnerability at his core; a sad clown hiding two machetes and an M60 in his pants. Instead Duggan and Posehn have played the book for straight-up LOLs. Which is fine – as long as they can actually get you to laugh. It’s not always the easiest thing to do in comics.

The set-up provides a decent enough stage for the mirth-making to play out on. A brief bit of exposition at the start of the book shows how a patriotic Necromancer  has taken to reanimating the bodies of America’s greatest non-living-Presidents so that they can save America from poverty, political division and Disney’s rampant subjugation of the entire entertainment industry (well, something like that anyways). While S.H.I.E.L.D. admits they’ve got to do something to stop the likes of Nixon and LBJ tearing Manhattan asunder, they’re also not totally keen on the idea of the Avengers being seen decapitating heads of state, zombie or no. Deadpool has no such haughty reputation to worry about however. After witnessing the Merc With A Mouth tussling with FDR (now imbued with super-strength and a whole host of other undead powers) S.H.I.E.L.D. offer him the gig.

Duggan and Posehn really try their best, keeping the jokes coming at a constant break-neck pace, Airplane!-style, though as such there’s little room for any real drama or depth. Humour can be a decisively subjective matter so I wouldn’t go so far as to say “this book isn’t funny” but…well, I don’t know, I guess it all just feels a little safe at best and a little awkward at worst. Somewhere hidden in here there might be a hilarious Deadpool MAX book trying to get out, but this isn’t it.

Saga #6 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: It’s a bad sign when your husband hasn’t told your in-laws about you.  Or your baby.

The Review: You can always tell the ripening of a plot when the various threads begin to weave together.  In fact, you can say that’s really the moment a story begins.  Until then, you only have a handful of ideas, some more likely to succeed than others.  Once they intersect, they cease being individual parts you can judge separately; they must rise or fall together.  A strong plotline can prop up some weak ones, yet conversely, the weak can drag down the strong.

Vaughan is already ahead of the game here since every part of his story works just fine—more than fine—on its own.  While the fate of Alana, Marko, and Hazel is clearly the focus of this series, and you care about their happiness and downright survival several degrees more than you do with other characters, you also get heavily invested in the course of Prince Robot and the Will’s lives.

Saga #5 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: According to Marko and Prince Robot IV, fatherhood actually increases testosterone.

The Review: Characters in the sci-fi genre sure talk and act differently from us, don’t they?  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they seem somewhat more formal and calculated in their general manner than us modern folks have gotten used to.  Using Star Wars as an example, you either go from the stately extreme of Obi-wan Kenobi to the total incoherence of Jar Jar Binks, with maybe some measured relaxation from Han Solo.

But then Star Wars is a product of its time, and media manners of that time were somewhat stricter.  People on TV and in the movies certainly didn’t talk like people who actually lived during that period did.  We live now in a decade where the differences between fictional language and real-life language are negligible, give or take an F-bomb here and there.  It’s hard to deny that we—and by that I mean Americans in general—have become a pretty crude society, even on a purely linguistic level.

Saga #4 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Alana and the Will blow some steam, but only one actually kills anybody.

The Review: If you were ever a fan of Vaughan’s seminal work on Runaways, you probably got hooked by its down-to-earth, naturalistic dialogue and its devotion to making the gang of kids come across as relatable as possible, despite the incredibly weird circumstances they had to live with (e.g. telepathically controlled pet velociraptor).  Those same qualities have been a major strength of Saga from the start, getting you closely invested in characters completely unlike you.

And while that remains true, this issue begs you to take note of the potential side-effects from Vaughan’s writing style: a glut of exposition and thus a slowdown on the plot, which—let’s face it—hasn’t exactly run on Indy 500 speed this whole time.  By plot, I mean the galactic war going on, and each side’s shared interest in pursuing Marko, Alana, and Hazel.  At this point, you still don’t know why there’s a war in the first place, and you have a feeling that our protagonists’ real adventures still haven’t begun.

Saga #3 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Perfect timing—Marko and Alana could really use some spiritual help right now.

The Review: We talk a lot about “twists” in fiction, but what are they, really?  They can’t be just surprises, because there are plenty of things that surprise you, but you wouldn’t call them twists—like when your pals throw you a birthday party three weeks before your birthday because they forgot exactly when your birthday is.  Same thing with things that shock you; you wouldn’t exactly call a disastrous car accident a twist either.

My theory: a fictional twist, particularly a good one, is when the writer upsets expectations you didn’t even know you had.  So really, the impact of the unexpected event comes not from the occurrence itself, but from a lot of purposeful groundwork beforehand.

Saga #2 – Review

By: Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Fiona Staples (artist)

The Story: And now we all know why camping in the woods isn’t as fun as it sounds.

The Review: I was amused to discover when I visited Comics Unlimited this week that they had begun to sell Saga in a plastic wrapper on the stands.  To make it clear, I had seen no other title sold in this manner in my entire patronage of the store.  So what is it about this series that it seems so necessary to protect your casual readers from?  It can’t be the swearing nor the nudity; the average Vertigo title has just the same amount and often uses it more blatantly.

Perhaps it’s the completely unromantic way the title approaches the least glamorous yet most human parts of ourselves.  If last issue’s portrayal of Alana’s labor didn’t make that clear to you, then the revelation of her “secret” in this issue will.  To save herself, Hazel, and Marko from killer vines, Alana admits, “I enjoy the taste of my own breast milk.”  (Don’t ask how this works—it’s almost irrelevant anyway.)  She then explains, “Hazel spit up in my mouth last night.”  Gross, but having babysat in my day, entirely plausible.  Yet this hardly seems like reason enough to restrict the series’ accessibility.

I’m not sure the violence and gore has anything to do with it either.  The average issue of Animal Man sports more blood, guts, and deformity than anything this issue coughs up.  Given how the mention of the Horrors strikes fear into even a professional assassin (one who’s not exactly easy on the eyes herself), you’d expect them to be, well, horrifying.  And at first glance, they’re not; but when you really think about what they are, they become horrifying indeed.

You can never forget that behind every scene and plotline here, there’s a never-ending war going on.  Vaughan reminds you this conflict involves more than just the fates of the protagonists by showing how this very world they stand upon has been devastated as a result of their respective races.  For that reason, even though they’re victims themselves, Marko, Alana, and Hazel must make examples of themselves, and sometimes that requires sacrifice.

Saga #1 – A Second Opinion

By: Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Fiona Staples (artist)

The Story: Well, an episode of How I Met Your Mother this ain’t.

The Review: Alex already made some excellent points about this issue, so I won’t go around stepping on his toes, but I do want to make a few observations of my own about this series that’s already received so much attention.  Obviously, a title like Saga comes attached with some pretty high expectations.  It means Vaughan must not only deliver a complex narrative with adequately vast scope, he must have enough material of sufficient depth and quality to do so.

In other words, you don’t make Star Wars by playing it safe, story-wise.  So it’s a pretty good sign that right off the bat, Vaughan throws in every sci-fi/fantasy feature you can think of into the series: opposing races, winged humanoids and bestial humanoids, robot third-parties, hulking creatures of implausible shape and anatomy, advanced technology and old-school magic, guns and swords—you name it, this issue has it.

Above all else, Vaughan gives us the very best kind of story of all: a love story, set between two members of opposing races fighting a fruitless war that’s been corrupted and prolonged beyond recognition.  This is classic stuff—and that is perhaps the one and only flaw with the tale Vaughan wants to tell here.  We can all recognize this story, and we can all sense its general direction, especially since a vital character reveals from the start a large chunk of the end game.

But again, even the oldest story in the world can be made like new by its execution, and Vaughan executes masterfully.  Despite the exotic, breathlessly imaginative world we’re dealing with, we recognize it because Vaughan starts us, appropriately enough, with the most fundamental, universal, human experience of all: the birth of a child of love.  That alone is not enough, however.  To immerse you into the scene, Vaughan does not spare you even from its less attractive parts (“It feels like I’m shitting!” mother Alana cries; father Marko cuts off the umbilical cord—with his teeth).

Saga #1 – Review

by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Fiona Staples (art), and Fonografiks (letters & design)

The Story: Two lovers of warring races welcome a child into a futuristic world torn apart by strife.

The Review:   I read quite a few comics.  At least 9 new singles and a trade, usually more than that…  What Saga offers, however, isn’t just a comic or just another part of your weekly stack.  Rather, Saga is an experience.  In only one issue, it has introduced characters we care a great deal about by issue’s end, a fully realized and unique world, and the beginnings of what looks to be one massive story.  That latter point really is a Brian K. Vaughan hallmark and is readily seen in the first issues of Y: the Last Man and Ex Machina.

Vaughan elegantly balances introducing his narrative’s world, plot development, and character work; frankly, it’s amazing, even in a double-sized issue, just how much he gets done on all three fronts, which are, by issue’s end, equally well developed.  You will care about characters, their world, and be dying to get to the next episode of the plot.  Essentially, in one issue, Vaughan accomplishes what takes other new series up to a full arc to manage.

The world Vaughan creates is sure to please sci-fi fans and has all the hallmarks of an epic landscape.  It’s politically nuanced and well-developed and clearly a LOT of thought and world-building was done in the pre-release development of this title.  Different races, politics, military conflicts, racial tensions, it’s all there.  I especially love how between the two races at war, one is a sci-fi force with futuristic guns and robots while the other is a fantasy style group with mages and enchanted swords.  It’s a world that I loved spending time in.

Vaughan’s introduction of the two main characters is brilliant.  They’re instantly sympathetic and their relationship feels real.  Indeed, another hallmark of Vaughan: his lead characters feel distinctly human.  They’re personalities are realistic and sincere, natural, and yet they remain multi-faceted, compelling characters.  The supporting cast on offer are also nuanced, conflicted (or with the potential to be conflicted), and each is very cool in his or her own unique way and will leave you wanting to see more of all of them.

Story-wise, I enjoyed the air of tension and desperation throughout and the cliffhanger was perfect.  Moreover, I was surprised at how real and…conscious (?) the comic was.  It is far, far from being a “political” comic, and yet real world issues are there in the subtext if you pay attention.  It enhances the read overall and makes it feel smarter, denser, and more meaningful.  If you choose to read the book with an eye to these issues, you’ll find that Vaughan only asks questions, but never comes close to preaching.  Without fully going into what these issues are (word limit!), I’ll just say that I found the issues relating to race, gender, duty, war, and the detachment of the average Joe from his politicians to be nice little brainteasers here.

Mystery Society #5 – Review

by: Steve Niles (writer), Fiona Staples (art & colors), Robbie Robbins (letters) & Bob Schreck (editor)

The Story: The Mystery Society clears Nick Mystery’s name and retrieves Edgar Allen Poe’s skull.
What’s Good: Really good final issue and really good ending to a fun series.  I would really encourage everyone to give this comic a try if you like something that has a bit of a BPRD or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe, but is completely continuity free.  In this final issue, the gang’s leader (Nick Mystery – billionaire scoundrel with a good heart) has been imprisoned by US Army and it is up to the rest of the gang, now the they’re procured Edgar Allen Poe’s skull, to save him.  The gang is made up of Anastasia (Nick’s wife), Secret Skull (a real life ghoul), Jules Verne’s brain (controlling a humanoid battle suit of sorts) and the Atomic Twins (two ~10 year old girls with teleportation abilities). Everything in the series is just a bit whacky (but never silly) way and in the end, they save Nick, triumph over the Pugsley-esq villain and get to use Mr. Poe’s skull for a neat ceremony.  Very fun.