Saga #2
Image Comics
Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples
I had the chance previously to review Saga #1, the new series by Brian K. Vaughn the creator of Ex Machina and Y: The Last Man and I wasn’t disappointed at all. It hit all of the right elements for the start of a new series, great storyline, memorable characters, and absolutely beautiful artwork. And while I enjoy reading the collected editions of the other two series I can’t wait that long to read this one, so I continue my journey with Saga #2 and what a journey it is. So hang on for a wild ride in this new adventure.
Marko and Alana have escaped their own people to try to make a life together with their newborn daughter Hazel…but there are complications. Both sides want them dead and bounty hunters are on their trail. One, The Will, has braved the challengers the society through in his face and is eagerly tracking the couple…before he finds out The Stalk is also on the trail of the couple and he gives up hope. Meanwhile Marko, Alana, and Hazel are making their way through the Endless Woods to try to find a ship to escape the planet. The woods where creatures worse than bounty hunters reside, where The Horrors call home. And where soon both The Stalk and The Horrors catch up to the young couple and Hazel. Will they be able to survive?
One of the things that I’ve always liked about Vaughan’s other works, Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, is just how well the artwork fits with the story and breathes life into the characters, even with the different art styles. And this series is no exception. As I said in the review of the first issue I’ve not seen Fiona’s artwork before, but I’ve quickly become a fan of her style and design. And how can you not be? Take a look at the front cover of this issue. It’s a relatively simple layout of just two hands touching each other, but captured at that one perfect moment where they just touch. And the colors and line art are spot on. No big heavy black lines to denote folds in the hand or joints in the fingers, it’s done instead by lights and shadows. And that’s just the front cover! Just like the previous issue Fiona focuses more on breathing life into the characters vs. trying to add overwhelming detail to background objects. The background objects are recognizable, but they tend to be more muted in color, less detail, which really helps put the focus on the characters themselves, which is something that I really enjoy. My favorite scenes in this issue involve The Will, one of the freelancers chasing after Marko and Alana. He just seems…normal. Well more normal than the rest of the characters, but there’s just something about his character and his design that stand out to me. I don’t know what it is yet, but…maybe I’ll figure it out at some point.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere Brian K. Vaughan is one of my favorite writers of all time. He has this amazing gift for creating a world that is just out of focus of ours, and yet makes the characters and their experiences relatable to what we experience and what we know. And that’s what I love about this story in particular. Sure it’s a world that we aren’t quite familiar with, but the characters and the situations that they’re placed in are familiar to us. And we can relate to them easily enough, that sense of wanting to protect someone, even if it means our own death, that sense of fear at not quite being sure what’s real and what isn’t it. Brian captures human emotion extremely well, far better than many of the other writers out there. He also has a great sense of humor, such as Alana telling a secret that she likes the taste of her own breast milk. When Marko asks how she tasted it she reveals that Hazel spit up in her mouth the previous night. One of my favorite aspects of this particular story is the fact that the daughter is narrating, telling us what will happen and giving us glimpses into the future. We don’t yet know much…but hearing her narrate gives the reader a bit of hope, that even though she talks of the darkness and destruction, that she and her family survive. My one main issue with this issue…it ends all too quickly. I just want a few more pages and I want to know what happens next!
I love the start to this series and I can’t wait to read the next issue and see what will happen next. I highly recommend this series for fans of Brian Vaughan, Star Wars, Firefly, Fables…in short if you like sci-fi this series has something in it for you.
