It Was A Civil War Of Period: Saga #1 Review

The first thing I noted while reading Brian K. Vaughan’s and Fiona Staples’s Saga #1 was that, with every page – and sometimes every panel – this team was raising the required budget of any possible film adaptation by several million dollars. And movie studios simply don’t spend that much on an NC-17 flick.

The second thing I noticed was that this comic book is an imaginative, large-scale space opera that simultaneously hits all the expected and classic tropes of the genre, while chucking in enough weird and mad ideas to make Grant Morrison mutter, “Shit; nice one,” and tying the whole thing together with an out-front, genuine sense of humor about itself that you won’t find outside of a Star Wars parody. This is a very, very good comic book.

This comic is ambitious. First, the nuts and bolts: this is 44 pages of comics with no commercial interruption. For $2.99. So at the very least, this is the most comics you’re getting for your dollar this week unless you want to go diving with the silverfish in the quarter bin. And in those 44 pages, Vaughan and Staples introduce us to an interstellar war, fought with firepower and with magic, between multiple races (and giant monsters) with divergent motivations, on worlds where it is given possibility that rocketships might grow on trees. The sheer scope of this book shows that we are either witnessing a veteran comics writer spitting on his hands and pointing his bat at the left field wall, or a man with a typewriter who enjoys mescaline.

Vaughan clearly understands that he’s writing a space opera here, and he introduces all the elements you expect from the genre (Thank you, Star Wars!). We’ve got what is obviously a savior child born by the end of the third page, in a shitty garage no less… probably because either Vaughan thought that “Space Manger” sounded stupid, or perhaps a movie with that title is in development with Kirk Cameron attached. We also have magic users, a map leading to a quest, a hard-smoking rogue mercenary destined to play both ends against the middle before inevitably joining our hero(es), and an evil monarchy out to destroy the child. Let’s put it this way: George Lucas read Joseph Campbell… this book is like Campbell ejaculated on a King James Bible.

So yes, Saga fits the formula of a classic space opera. But Vaughan wraps the tropes in two things that make it unique and uniquely entertaining, and the first is just the plain spastic weird ideas he chucks into the mix. In the first five minutes of Star Wars, we meet a robot that looks like a gumball machine. In the first five minutes of Saga, we meet a man with a television for a head. How do we know it’s a man with a TV head and not a robot? Because Vaughan and Staples show us two of them fucking. Doggie style. So how do we know they’re not dogs with TV heads? Because the male doesn’t lick his balls. Which we see. We also see pet siamese cats the size of panthers, Gamera used as a tank, and Dame Judi Dench with a unicorn horn. It is all gloriously fucked and weird; it turns a standard Star Wars style story into Star Wars: Episode DMT.

The second thing Vaughan uses to differentiate himself from a normal space opera is a gleefully vulgar sense of humor. The two current protagonist, savior parents Alana and Marko, are both sarcastically and iconoclastically funny, like Han Solo with Tourettes Syndrome. The very first dialogue of the book comes from Alana, who is in the process of  giving birth to who is destined to become the savior figure of the book, where she screams, “Am I shitting? It feels like I’m shitting!” Compare that to Shmi Skywalker’s timid, “There is no father,” and decide where you want to spend your entertainment dollar. And let’s not forget: two people with television heads buttfucking each other. Bottom line: this is an irreverent and funny book, regardless of the genre.

The art by Fiona Staples is simply Goddamned beautiful, which is kinda interesting since on one level it is, for normal comic art, very simple… and on the other, there is a lot of interesting stuff going on. Staples’s foreground art is simple and straightforward; realistic figures (And yes, somehow that includes the two TV-headed people buttfucking. Just trust me), clear facial expressions, all with a minimum of fuss. There are no overdone, thinly-lined extra shading going on here; it is simple and evocative. And considering there is almost no one in this book who doesn’t have wings, horns, TV heads, or an exposed penis (And considering it’s the TV head’s wang, somewhere David Cronenberg has yanked himself blistered), that says something. She also chucks in a variety of monsters, giant cats, and furry midgets, and none of it looks out of place.

Staples also presents interesting, abstract and painted-looking backgrounds that make the foregrounds pops, and give the book and interesting, almost dreamy look. The panel layout is extremely simple, making the storytelling and the pacing clear and easy to follow. Interestingly, she crops the corners of some of the panels, making them look like mounted snapshots… which gives me a strange curious terror boner for where she got the photo reference for the TV heads buttfucking. But I digress.

Saga is a comic book unlike any other you’ll see on the shelves. On one hand, it is a simple and classic space opera that anyone who’s seen Star Wars can understand and hook into. On the other, it’s as Brian K. Vaughan sat down and said, “What if Star Wars was written for grown-ups? Grown-ups who like whiskey, and drugs, and visuals that don’t look like they were dooked out of Adobe After Effects?” And if none of that floats your boat, hey: people with television heads railing each other.

This comic is highly, highly recommended. Get to the comic store before it’s gone.