The Strange and Beautiful Brilliance of Saga in 15 Images

Saga improbably sits at the center of the Venn diagram of “comics that get really weird” and “bestselling comics,” and it’s a beautiful thing.
If you haven’t yet jumped onboard (though even if you have, stick around), we’re going to make the case for it right now, and with as few words as possible—just in time for you to binge-read all the way through to volume 7, out next week..
Saga tells the story of Alana and Marko, star-crossed lovers from different worlds and different species. Their people are at war. The story begins with the birth of their daughter, Hazel, the first of her kind, and follows the funny and often moving misadventures of a family on the run.

It’s written by Brian K. Vaughan, but is also very much a collaboration between him and superstar artist Fiona Staples. It might seem redundant to call a graphic novel series “visual,” but Staples’ breathtaking, beautiful, bizarre, and sometimes disturbing art accounts for at least 50 percent of the series’ greatness.
Examining some of Staples’ iconic imagery is a pretty good way to make the case that you need to be reading it. The art stirred controversy before the first issue even came out—the now iconic cover of the first issue featured the shocking, scandalous image of Alana *gasp* breastfeeding her newborn.
The internet being what it is, it set off a flurry of concern about the depredations of a culture that would countenance such things as a baby eating on the cover of a comic that just anyone might stumble across. A certain legendary comics artist (who we’ll leave nameless here) even got in on the outrage.
[caption id="attachment_16611" align="aligncenter" width="577"] Avert your eyes![/caption]
To make matters worse, that first story included EVEN MORE BREASTFEEDING. Also childbirth.
[caption id="attachment_16612" align="aligncenter" width="577"] It’s perfectly natural.[/caption]
Readers would have been well-advised to stop reading if any of that was too much. Realities of baby-rearing aside, it’s a book definitely geared more toward grown-ups. Vaughan himself once described the book as “Star Wars for perverts.”
[caption id="attachment_16613" align="aligncenter" width="577"] If I had a hammer, amirite?[/caption]
He was mostly (partly) joking, but there is a fair bit of sex. Much of it healthy, fun, and sexier for involving the two leads.
[caption id="attachment_16614" align="aligncenter" width="577"] Real love. Really, really real.[/caption]
Much of it also not-really-showable here. It’s actually the rare story in which the lead couple are allowed to be wildly in love with each other, shown to be caring parents, and also get to have some moderately dirty sex. There’s a bit of violence, as well.
Also: weird sex. Super weird strange alien sex between bizarre creatures that could’ve only come from the combined imaginations of Vaughan and Staples.
[caption id="attachment_16615" align="aligncenter" width="577"] How does that even work.[/caption]
There’s a lot of weird here, actually, but it all works because the creators ground all of it in a funny, moving, sometimes tragic, story of a family. But, still: weird.
[caption id="attachment_16616" align="aligncenter" width="577"] There’s a modern media joke in here somewhere.[/caption]
The couple also appreciates reading, which is not an easy habit to cultivate while living on the run in a galaxy on fire.
[caption id="attachment_16632" align="aligncenter" width="577"] Secret Sexy Book Club.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_16618" align="aligncenter" width="587"] Good family activity. Would partake.[/caption]
One of the most iconic characters in Saga, and in modern graphic storytelling more broadly, is Lying Cat. We’d be remiss to go much further without mentioning the grumpy cat whose only dialogue is to reveal spoken deception.If there’s a character that’s a better fit for our times than Lying Cat, I can’t think of one.

[caption id="attachment_16620" align="aligncenter" width="577"] Aw.[/caption]
Best of all, the book has some truly incredible female characters. And that’s no slight to the men-folk that populate the Saga, but the women who we encounter are all incredibly multidimensional: women are wives, daughters, lovers, fighters, villains, sex workers, and even freaky spiders.
[caption id="attachment_16621" align="aligncenter" width="577"] Momma’s pissed.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_16622" align="aligncenter" width="577"] But seriously do you have to kill ALL the darlings?[/caption]
They can also be trans.

There’s no question that Saga’s been one of the best (and bestselling) books on the stands for quite some time now. It’s the incredibly imaginative collaboration between an artist and a writer working together brilliantly, and clearly having quite a bit of fun. In a sense, Saga is some of the very best of what comics can do: it’s bold, bright, beautiful, fun, weird, and sometimes heartbreaking. To sum up in a final pair of Fiona Staples’ images:
[caption id="attachment_16624" align="aligncenter" width="577"] SKISH.[/caption]
Awww. And, finally, my own personal favorite:
[caption id="attachment_16625" align="aligncenter" width="577"] Are we fired?[/caption]
Saga, Vol. 7 is available April 4.