After reading the first three trade paperbacks, I’m not sure whether Saga is a beautiful love story with a wartime setting, a brilliant war story with a love story as a plot device, or a perfect amalgam of both. One thing is certain: Saga is brilliant.
Saga is the story of war run amok, and readers are not spared from the practical horrors and visceral realities of proxy warfare. Two peoples, the techno-savvy winged warriors of Landfall and the spell-casting horned-headed mages of moon Wreath, are locked in a bitter feud with plenty of blood on everyone’s hands. Because the two worlds depend on one another to maintain a stable orbit, they fight their battles on other planets, essentially drawing the entire galaxy into their war. Horrific atrocities have been committed by both sides, and in some cases entire indigenous peoples on the proxy planets have been driven to extinction. And in the midst of this war, a baby has been born. A baby whose father bears the horns of Wreath, but whose mother has the wings of Landfall.
Alana of Landfall was previously a guard at a prison camp in which prisoners from Wreath are incarcerated. Marko of Wreath was one of her prisoners, one who surrendered peacefully after the grim realities of battle transformed him into a conscientious objector. The two of them developed a relationship after Alana shares a book with him, and eventually she decides to flee with him and start a life together. I appreciated the gradual development of their relationship (told in flashbacks after we’re already in the thick of the action with the characters), and I especially liked that writer Brian K. Vaughn didn’t resort to a lazy “love-at-first-sight” mechanic.
When we first meet the couple, Alana is about to give birth as platoons from both of their factions are closing in. It’s an intense beginning, and the pacing throughout the series is perfect. The supporting characters add a lot of depth to the story – bounty hunters who have their own interpersonal issues (often with one another), a ghost of an exterminated race, a veteran member of royalty who struggles with PTSD and wants nothing more than to go home to his family – and give the readers breathing room from the main characters when we need to take a break from the razor’s edge upon which they lead their lives.
Fiona Staples’ art is stunningly effective and each panel exists in perfect harmony between its story and the images she presents. Her illustration style is sometimes minimalistic and other times intricately graphic. Her storytelling comes through as mature and confident, not needing to render every single character in retina-splitting detail, but utilizing detail when it matters. This gives the battle flashback scenes of the character Prince Robot IV particular punch as we are forced to witness the horrors he experienced in full, explicit detail.
Saga is everything a mature comic book reader looking for a serious and original scifi/fantasy could want – interesting story, compelling characters who don’t fit the usual archetypal molds of space opera, and a stark look at the nature of war and its destructive influence. This is a galaxy where magic and technology have both been developed to a brutal and savage extreme, where life is cheap and easily lost. But still there is hope.
My favorite thing about Saga is how its characters know that the odds are against them, and yet still they continue to pursue the most defiant act imaginable: they live. At any moment, their entire world can come crashing down in a storm of laser fire, swords, and tribalist vengeance and yet they refuse to give in. This is a work in which the nights are dark as pitch, but they only make the daylight shine that much brighter. More than a book about war, more than a book about love, this is a book about hope. And hope is something worth spreading.