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.