Saga, Vol. 1

We meet Marko and Alana the day their daughter is born. In the back of an old body shop, on a star called Cleave, little Hazel is born to parents who were once on opposite sides of an ages old war. Now, with the birth of their hybrid daughter, Marko and Alana's old armies have even more reason to find the new family and end them. . .Marko is from planet Wreath. He was a prisoner and Alana his guard; she was from planet Landfall. Both of them decided their love was more important than continuing to fight in a war that neither planet can remember the origins of.But now Hazel has been born, and there is a buzz in the Landfall Capital. Prince Robot IV is being taken out of his peaceful reprieve and sent to hunt down Marko and Alana - making sure to end them before word gets out to either side of their AWOL treachery in the name of enemy `love'. Meanwhile, Wreath's people have hired freelance assassins to kill the dissenting parents, and return with baby Hazel alive. On the case are two of the galaxy's most successful assassins - The Will, along with his trusty Lying Cat. Then there's The Stalk - who never misses her target.`Saga' Volume One is the first graphic novel instalment in a new intergalactic series, with story by Brian K. Vaughn and art by Fiona Staples.I am a fan of graphic novels - but I admit, I've been very conservative in my graphic reading habits. I tried to get into the spin-off `Buffy' comic series back in 2007, because it was touted as being Season eight and I was still feeling the `Buffy' void after the show's end. But I just couldn't get into it - Joss Whedon's particular brand of snark works best for me on TV. So then I limited my reading to graphic adaptations of the book series I already loved - Diana Gabaldon's `The Exile' story set in her `Outlander' universe. I love the graphic adaptations of Paricia Briggs's `Mercy Thompson' and Gail Carriger's `Parasol Protectorate' series. I journeyed outside my comfort zone when I read the brilliant children's graphic novel `The Deep: Here Be Dragons' with story by Tom Taylor, and art by James Brouwer. So I was well and truly ready to delve even deeper into the graphic novel world, when a blog I frequent by the name of Jezebel wrote up a glowing piece on this new series called `Saga'. It sounded dark, smart and complex - but it was mention of a (literal) star-crossed lover's story that really hooked me.`Saga' is so, so, so good! I was laughing from the first page - and from the first panel glimpse of Marko, I was swooning. The story begins right in the thick of action - with Alana giving birth to Hazel and soldiers from both Wreath and Landfall breaking in to take the family down - because word of enemy's falling in love and starting a family would be one hell of a bad PR campaign for this war of no end.The series is very clever and makes societal and political commentaries that are reflective and relevant to the modern-day. It's in the things like Landfall royalty, Prince Robot IV, having a television for a head - that, I think, says something about corrupt media's tyrannical hold over society. Then there's the pornographic planet, Sextillion, where hired assassin The Will travels when he's down on his luck hunting the new parents and wants to drown his sorrows in sex. Sextillion is all bright lights, paid flesh and beautiful depravity - but, as The Will soon discovers, it has a sick and seedy underbelly . . . again, this is no doubt commentary on the sexualisation of our own society - and in a particularly horrendous scene, Vaughan will really have you thinking about the slippery slope of carnal consumerism.I did appreciate how very, very clever `Saga' was - for all that's between the panels, if you will. But what made this graphic novel so brilliant was the story. In particular, I loved our narrator; an older Hazel is recounting the story of her parent's love and her birth from somewhere in the future. She peppers her reminiscence with references to life now. At one point she muses; "From my very first day, I was pursued by men. All of them tried to hurt me, but only one managed to break my heart . . . Sorry, getting ahead of myself." I loved that Hazel had a voice in this novel, it means that though she's an adorable (but silent) baby when this story starts, we do get a sense of her personality through her omniscient narration - more than that, her hints about what the future holds makes me very, very hopeful for a long, epic series in which we eventually catch up in the story to follow an older Hazel.`Saga' is very much an adult graphic novel (if the mention of Sextillion wasn't enough of a tip-off). There are graphic sex scenes, and violent deaths. It's also scary as all get out . . . when I turned the page and saw an image of spider-like assassin The Stalk I felt my palms begin to sweat. It's really a testament to Fiona Staple's utterly beautiful, detailed and sometimes creepy artwork. She's amazing - and I think I will have to trawl through her backlist and read absolutely everything she's put her artistic licence to.The fact that `Saga' is so adult is also why I liked it so much - it's complex and far-reaching, set on an epic scale and concerning AWOL lovers, broken-hearted assassins and royal soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. This is really a series to sink your teeth into.I will also say that `Saga' has a very cinematic quality to it. I have high-hopes that because Brian K. Vaughan has a Hollywood history (he was a writer/producer on TV show `Lost') that there is every chance this brilliant series could be adapted . . . I'm especially elated to discover that Vaughan wrote for the Buffy season 8 comic series, because while reading `Saga' I kept thinking that it had a Joss Whedon quality to it - with hints of `Firefly'. It's in Alana's snarky comments, a tangled back-story between The Will and The Stalk and a clear long-reaching story arc.I love, love, loved `Saga'. I'm now officially addicted. Issue number seven has recently come out, with instalment eight due later in November. I need it - seriously! It has become a delicious drug, delving into this intergalactic love story and I just can't wait to go back. . .

SAGA by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples is a rare achievement in comic books for several reasons! Crucially, Vaughan and Staples have mastery of the medium, so they weave their tapestry with unforced world-building expertise. Volume One is told in six chapters. In Chapter One, our narrator Hazel is arriving in a rented-out mechanic's garage, "I was born on a planet called CLEAVE, an ancient ball of mud circling a faded old star." This female voice puts SAGA in the literary tradition of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but also the science-fiction category of A WRINKLE IN TIME. Getting out of that garage takes a bit of doing, but we manage to make it to Chapter Two, "Actually, against all odds, I'd been alive three whole days." Hazel's parents Marko and Alana are being pursued as deserters from an interplanetary war and are under constant threat from governments, vigilantes and a hostile environment. Hazel observes in Chapter Three, "My mom once said the hardest part of parenting is knowing when to ask for help." SAGA builds its worlds very carefully but is brilliant in reminding us that our protagonists are people first and vulnerable to the same distractions as any of us are. In Chapter Four, "With the help of our new sitter (Izabel, a ghost cut in twain with her intestines hanging out), my parents and I had traveled halfway across the planet Cleave in search of a miracle." Under threat of death with an infant in tow, SAGA becomes a chase story across the stars, and it still rings true. In Chapter Five, after Marko's berserker rage has felled a squadron, Alana fires a warning shot and tells him, "Dear. That's enough." Marko is a street fighting man, but Alana; even with Hazel on her hip; is also a trained fighter and not to be ignored. SAGA is populated with admirable female characters, a quality precious few comic books can claim. In Chapter Six, "Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid." Izabel has brought our little family to a an abandoned rocket ship saying, "It's not an earthquake, it's ignition!" Hazel realizes, "Most of my childhood was spent clinging to the feathers of a dulled arrow blindly fired across a starless night. It was heaven." Fiona Staples has convinced us that finding a rocket ship in the middle of nowhere and shooting into space is not only possible but inevitable, but Brian K. Vaughan delivers another twist, "And then my grandparents came to live with us." Ouch! Every time SAGA has a scene of operatic violence or takes us to a distant planet, it then returns to mundane matters like changing diapers or how to burp a baby. SAGA blends the fantastic with the mundane, the philosophical with the practical, and it always remembers to go to the second star on the right. Yes, we all need to grow up, SAGA knows that. But SAGA is about the kid in us who gave equal importance to everything even as the adults around us were protecting us and being compromised and wanting to be kids again themselves! SAGA is Space Opera and Kitchen Sink Melodrama and the most humane comic book ever. Behold the miracle given to us by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples :D