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 #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 #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.

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 #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.

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #2 – Review

By Gerard Way (writer), Gabriel Ba (artist), Dave Stewart (colorist)

The Story: Who and where is Number Five?  These are the questions everyone wants answered, from Hazel and Cha-Cha, two psychotic assassins with a penchant for baked goods, to Kraken, Rumor, and Seance, who would all rather look for the answers on their own than work together as a family.  Unfortunately, following the massacre at the dog track from the previous issue, Number Five is in no mood to talk, and has gone into hiding to indulge in some truly unusual relaxation.

The Good: The Umbrella Academy is so delightfully absurd it’s hard not to like.  I mean, come on, if you can’t take a look at the cover to this issue and not grin, not wonder what the heck is going on inside its pages, then I feel sorry for you, my friend.  Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba are entertainers and storytellers, skillfully moving from horror to comedy to cop drama in the same issue.  Of course, it helps having the talents of a colorist like Dave Stewart in your corner.  I don’t think I’ve ever been as impressed with the use of color in a comic as I am when I see his work in Umbrella Academy, and I’m grateful he’s on board.

The Not So Good: We’re now two issues into this storyline and I’m still not sure what it’s actually about.  This issue had a lot of great moments, but nothing holding them together — no plot that I could see.  One third of this story is now over and if the plot doesn’t come out soon then there is a serious problem here that needs to be addressed.  I expect the next issue to rise to the challenge and get to the point.

Conclusion: Despite a vague, elusive plot, The Umbrella Academy continues to entertain due in large part to the artistic talents of Gabriel Ba and Dave Stewart.  However, Gerard Way has proven he is a faithful student of Grant Morrison’s madness and we are made all the better for it as readers.

Grade:  B-

-Tony Rakittke