Fiona Staples Reveals the Secrets Behind 10 of Saga’s Weirdest, Most Wonderful Characters

We’re obsessed with Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga around here. This ongoing comic series, three volumes of which are collected next week in a new hardcover omnibus edition, Saga: Book Two, is a wild space opera, a tale of star-crossed love, a family drama, a tour of a gonzo galaxy, a breathless action thriller, and so much else, and we didn’t think we could love it any more…until we got Fiona to reveal a bit of the process that goes into creating some of the strangest characters to ever land on the New York Times bestseller list. Read on, and learn the secrets of Lying Cat, Ghüs, and many more. 
Since I’ve been creating Saga with Brian K. Vaughan, one of the most common questions I’ve been asked is, “Who comes up with the character designs?”
This being comics, possibly the most collaborative medium out there, the answer is: “both of us.”
But that answer is short and unsatisfying, so I’d like to show you exactly what Brian calls for in his scripts, and how I interpret it. Here to serve as spoiler-free examples are 10 of my favorite weirdos from our first two hardcover volumes.
1.Battle Stomper
Brian’s notes: A GIANT HORNED TURTLE with three-story tall GIRAFFE LEGS… The turtle is firing deadly LASER BEAMS from its eyes.
These things made an appearance in our very first issue and went far in helping me understand what kind of book we were making, and what my job was going to be. My mission was to tell a serious, gut-wrenching story in a world with giant laser-eyed tortoises and make it look reasonable. We were pretty much abandoning “realism” and “world-building” as I understood it, so I just had to focus on giving Saga some kind of internal consistency.

2. The Stalk
Brian’s notes: Walking out of the dark treeline is a BEAUTIFUL WOMAN unlike any we’ve ever seen. She has porcelain white skin and chiseled facial features, but also EIGHT RED EYES in two rows of four going down her face. She’s very tall and thin, but she was born with NO ARMS, so she looks like the Venus de Milo incarnate.
She’s completely topless, but her breasts are mostly obscured by her long platinum blonde hair. Her only article of clothing is a long BLACK SKIRT that completely covers her lower half. This skirt billows in the wind as impossibly as Batman’s cloak.
Whatever this woman is, she’s both captivating and terrifying.
This is one of the more detailed descriptions I’ve been given, which turned out to be a good thing, because I wouldn’t have taken The Stalk in this direction on my own! Given the directions above, I think most artists would have come up with something similar to what I did.

3. Sextillion Hostesses
Brian’s notes: These hostesses appear to be just oversized human heads resting on top of impossibly long female legs that seems to grow directly out of their NECKS. These genetically modified monstrosities have no torsos, arms, or sex organs, but that’s not stopping them from flashing huge sparkling smiles here. One of the hostesses is white and wearing black fishnet stockings, the other hostess is black and wearing white stockings. Creepy.
Sometimes characters don’t have to be likeable or relatable or even plausible. These two just serve to introduce us to the planet Sextillion’s disturbing flesh market.

4. Mama Sun
Brian’s notes: Feel free to go in a completely different direction, Fiona, but I’m picturing this sexily dressed Sextillion owner as a 30-something humanoid woman with purple skin, Marilyn Monroe curves, long vampire fangs, and a sun-shaped MASK.
Brian always says I should feel free to disregard his character ideas, but I almost never do. I’m not here to just draw whatever I feel like; I’m here to make a comic with somebody whose ideas I trust. If I were left to my own devices, I’d never produce anything like the characters we design together. I’d probably just draw Dragon Age fanart.

5. Countess Robot X
Brian’s notes: Okay, it’s morning on a new planet called Mota, where a busty female android named COUNTESS ROBOT X is standing on a runway in front of the massive corpse of a recently slaughtered DRAGON (whatever kind will be most fun to draw, Fiona). Countess Robot is dressed in royal garb like Prince Robot IV, but the Countess’ uniform is GRAY, and she’s just changed her “morphing” right arm into a huge steel SWORD.
Our robots have no faces, so it’s other details that make them identifiable—uniform style and color, body shape, and the type of TV they have for a head.

6. The Brand
Brian’s notes: The Brand is a brunette “human,” a stoic woman who almost looks like she could be The Will’s slightly older cousin or something (hmmm). But unlike The Will, The Brand dresses like your version of a futuristic film noir detective, Fiona, maybe a tasteful necktie and a trenchcoat with some sort of unique high collar?
Brunette human wearing a tie and trenchcoat… that’s pretty open, and there are a lot of ways you could go with The Brand. I was itching to draw a more masculine-presenting woman who was cool and sexy and looked like a real professional.

7. Grappler
Brian’s notes: A three-armed masked human who also has three nipples on his three ripped pectorals (he’s shirtless, but dodging Zipless’s blasts with the aid of his old-fashioned JETPACK).
A very brief and straightforward description, but I still forgot to draw the mask. At least I got all the nipples, though.

8. Ghüs
Brian’s notes: We’re now on the planet QUIETUS, where your impossibly adorable SEAL CREATURE (who I’ve temporarily dubbed GHUS) is leading (or riding?) his WALRUS BUDDY across a FOGGY ALIEN TUNDRA (or whatever background is easiest/least unfun to draw!).
Ghüs is unique because he’s just an idea out of my sketchbook that I sent to Brian one day, hoping he’d get a cameo appearance or something. I had no idea he’d join our main cast! And I don’t know what manner of creature would have filled that role otherwise.

9. Lying Cat
Brian’s notes: A spotted alien panther.
This could look like almost anything, so I went for a blue, overgrown Sphynx cat (I thought it would be cute if she was bald like her buddy, The Will). I gave her some armor that made her look battle-ready and also implied higher intelligence.

10. Noreen
Brian’s notes: An alien female who I imagine being a praying mantis/humanoid hybrid in sort of the way that The Stalk was a spider/humanoid hybrid. Will that be too weird, Fiona? Unlike The Stalk, this woman should be modestly attired. And I don’t think she should look like Zorak from Space Ghost (the most famous “praying mantis character” I found online), but I like the idea of her having abnormally large and expressive eyes, and a scarily thin upper body and long lower body. And maybe she should be some color other than green, if only to help set her apart from Yuma, etc.?
Brian only asks “Will that be too weird, Fiona?” because he knows the answer is “no.” These directions kind of encapsulate our basic approach to supporting character design: combine a person and an animal, make it look different from other comics and cartoons that have done the same thing, and try to use a unique color. We are a factory that smoothly churns out cute/horrifying anthropomorphic animal aliens.
The challenge is in making characters with strange bodies look both viable and likable. Noreen has to look like she can move about her classroom, do her job, and just generally exist in the universe as convincingly as the more humanoid characters do. Her facial features and body should be exaggerated in a way that enhances her expressiveness instead of being distracting or off-putting.
Saga: Book Two is available on May 2.