The posters promised one thing from Saga: it would be EPIC. The title itself immediately identifies itself as something large in scale, an important event, a major book. And a major work, too, which would be no small feat for a writer responsible for one of the most engrossing and popular books of the last 20 years, Y: The Last Man (which I may one day write about here). Usually such things cannot live up to what has been promised, but the cynics among us were proved wrong, as the book dazzled upon its release earlier this year, with the first issue going back for an unprecedented five printings.
Now on its sixth issue, it seems like the perfect time to reflect on what Saga has given us so far. Many readers have remarked that such a grand and detailed story lends itself to being read in trade format, and that buying monthly is a bit stop-starty. I totally get that, but I finf myself reading each issue two or three times each month, absorbing the tiny details and quirks that make it so good. However, a book must have an arc, and I think we just hit the end of our first. So what's it all about? Perhaps now is a good time for you all to jump into this beautiful world...
Marko and Alana are an odd couple. And really, that is the crux of the book in many ways and drives many areas of the narrative. First and foremost, they are a couple from very different races. She comes from the Coalition of Landfall and has wings, he from the planet Wreath and has horns. Sadly, these two factions are at war, and their union represents a great transgression. The story begins with their escape and subsequently the birth of their child, Hazel, who narrates the book with a series of childlike scrawls which appear floating over the traditional panels. Of course, their difference also drives the book in terms of their personalities - both are very well-crafted characters and their relationship is played out, intentionally no doubt, as a democratic partnership. Their debates are immensely enjoyable, the dialogue crackles, the comedy simmers through even in the most perilous situations.
Speaking of perilous situations, they are pursued by a number of equally different and wild characters, notably one main antagonist from each of the pair's kingdoms. In the red corner, from the Robot Kingdom, Prince Robot IV:
This guy is a huge douche. And he's got a TV for a head for reasons I can't explain. He's affiliated with Landfall, from which Alana comes, and is not very nice. And in the blue corner:
This is The Will, and he's a bounty hunter from Wreath. And that's his cat, er, Lying Cat. Kind of reminds me of Bubastis, Ozymandias' pet from Watchmen. Anyhow, you know that anyone named The Will is going to be a badass, but the reason he's my favourite character to have appeared so far is that he seems to have a moral code. The best sequence in the book so far, in my opinion, revolves around The Will's visit to a territory called Sextillion (more in a bit) where his objection to being presented with a child as a sex slave disgusts him to the point where he will jeopardise his mission and safety to protect the child (by essentially clapping the head of a pimp to bits)
Sextillion, which we encounter in issue four, is a perfect case study for us to examine the scope of the world Vaughan and Staples are invested in creating. It's a debauched free-for-all where anything goes. We have hookers who have heads and legs but nothing else next to... well actually, I don't want to spoil it because every turn of the page has 1,000 more ideas on it ready to blow your mind. Sorry I teased it, you'll just have to fucking buy it.
For all its otherworldliness, Saga has its roots firmly in our own conflicts, both large and small scale. It's a masterstroke that the universe depicted in Saga is full of liminal characters, blinding in their originality but themselves made up of amalgams of familiar motifs and tropes representative of our own world, where we may as well have TVs for heads or just be faces with a pair of legs. Hell even Sextillion isn't a million miles from our tabloid porn fests. Star Wars with a social conscience maybe? In the middle of it all, certainly, we can find community in the most unlikely of places - and from those places, hope can be born, like Hazel, a symbol of two worlds coming together.
Let's hope that the sales keep going the way they are, as Vaughan and Staples are clearly in for the long haul on this book, and so should we be - whether monthly, trades, in a year maybe hardbacks, in five years maybe this will all be collected in a tome that will outsell the fucking Bible!
In the meantime...
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