Saga, Book One (2014) by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples

Which covers Volumes 1-3, or Issues 1-18.

I’ll be honest. The first time I saw covers of this series and it showed people with ram’s horns and donkey ears and whatnot, my first reaction was: that’s lame! Is this supposed to be races of people in space and they have animal parts? Can’t you come up with real aliens? That so lame! For the next 10 years, the internet repeatedly told me that I was a mooncalf and a smoothbrain, so now I’ve finally given this comic a chance. And you know what? This is… this is kind of funny.

 “Am I shitting? It feels like I’m shitting!”

What a perfect start to a story of a newborn babe. A famous opening line, for sure. Not only is it the perfect moment to start the story at – the moment from which all hell breaks loose – but it also represents Brian K. Vaughan’s irreverent, witty writing and the way he shapes his characters with their lively quibbling. And it makes clear that the story is brought in a raw, frank manner. And that is perfect for the kind of chaotic, emotional family saga that we’re getting here. An interstellar family saga. Diaperpunk?

They say that everything is political. That’s even more true when you are the lovechild of parents who stand on opposing sides of an armed conflict that spans the entire galaxy. From the moment Hazel is born, she and her parents are hunted by soldiers and hitmen from both sides. Here is the first brilliant thing that Saga the comic does: doesn’t it feel like the whole world is turned upside down when your first kid is born? Well, in this case it is true. The entire galaxy is indeed freaking out over it, which makes for a lovely first weeks. In their flight, Hazel and her parents encounter enemies and friends, one of whom becomes their nanny. This is certainly a unique way to start a family; and a space epic. 

Saga strikes a perfect balance between total craziness and the heartwarmingly familiar. The universe it presents is completely insane. Every few pages something outrageous happens, and it’s a great source of comedy and invention. But the only way to make such a story work is to anchor it in a basic, understandable and strong emotional journey, and that is provided by Hazel and her parents Alana and Marko. So while we are confronted with people with monitors for heads and tree-spaceships and giant swinging ballsacks, we also have the very typical story of Marko’s parents wanting to see their grandchild and interfering with how things are run, and so on. That is the part of the story that grounds us, so that we don’t end up lost in the craziness of the rest of it.

There are some side plots, one of which develops into its own thing, with twisted and emotional events. It involves a hitman named The Will who is running after Marko and Alana. He seems loosely modelled on Jodorowsky’s Metabaron character, and he collects a whole group of characters around him like a found family. Some of the most memorable characters and moments in the series are actually part of this side plot. The Will has a sidekick named Lying Cat which is hilarious and he rescues a little slave girl, and so showing more and more emotional conflict that doesn’t really fit the psychology of a hitman.

I am slightly confused by the signals Vaughan put in to differentiate the two warring factions. The Landfall people seem modelled after the US, with a focus on military and technocratic thinking, whereas the Wreath people speak Esperanto and operate on a myth and fairy-tale kind of logic and technology. It isn’t immediately clear whether Vaughan wants to make a point with this by putting these worldviews against each other, but it simmers at the back of the story. Also, the confrontation at the end of the third volume I found confusing. Some characters took really questionable actions and it is unclear what they tried to achieve or what happened on accident, or what they knew would happen. And there lacked an emotional processing of these events afterwards, leaving the readers in the cold. That was the only time that the comic stumbled for me.

By the second and third volume I got more and more impressed by how consistently entertaining this series is. I loved it. Onwards to Book Two. Highly recommended.

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