If you don’t like Saga, you probably hate puppies and democracy.
Since issue one, Saga has been nothing but magic. The story of forbidden love. Parents trying to protect their taboo newborn from a world that would see them all beheaded. Dangers from bounty hunters, dead spider women, ex-wives, and a planet full of weird sex stuff.
Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples give you twenty plus pages of fantastic story perversion that leaves you wanting more. Marko and Alana try to rekindle hot lover moments while planing their next move. We get a glimpse of Alana’s military past and it all ends with a shocker for The Will. Lesser books would fold under the stress of so much characterization and plot movement but Saga uses all this to buttress its overall story. These characters have the distinct voices of people we know in our actual lives. We all knew a wordy writer with weird ideas about love or had a friend who married someone everyone said was totally wrong for them. It’s what makes the sci-fi and fantasy elements of this story so down to earth and relatable.
Fiona Staples has that “it” that made Jim Lee a superstar in the 90’s. Her design and work in and around the pages is so unique. This world is layered so deeply that it warrants several read throughs just to get the full spectrum of its visual goodness. There’s nothing as visually stunning as Saga on the shelves. The quality she achieves month in and month out is astonishing. Science needs to figure out how to clone her so we can get more books that are this pretty.
Saga is fantastic. It’s hard to come up with new ways to praise this book every month. I have a sister who doesn’t read comics at all, but I made her read issue number one and now every month she makes me pick her up one. It’s one of those rare –every ten year– books that comes along and reminds everyone about the legitimacy of comics as a storytelling medium.