Saga Volume 12 is out now, two years after the last trade paperback version of the epic space opera from Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples hit shelves. While the series has racked up a dozen Eisner Awards and won the Hugo Award for its first trade collection in 2013, it still flies under the radar. Its biggest pop culture moment came in 2016 when it appeared on The Big Bang Theory, having been picked up by a character intrigued by a woman with wings breastfeeding on the cover.
Some retailers refused to display the comic because of that cover. Comixology briefly banned an issue that had images of gay sex in it because they expected it would run afoul of Apple’s policies for its app. But there’s much more to the series than Staples’ explicit art.
Saga follows the story of Alana, Marko, and their newborn daughter Hazel, with narration from Hazel’s adult self. Alana was a soldier from the technologically advanced planet of Landfall, where everyone is born with some form of wings, while Marko fought for Landfall’s moon, Wreath, where everyone has horns and magic is common. Alana was guarding Marko when he was a prisoner of war, but they bonded over their love for a radical romance novel, ran away together, and got married.
The series basically opens as Romeo and Juliet by way of Star Wars. The fight between the wings and the horns has spread throughout the galaxy and Alana, Marko, and Hazel are pretty much constantly on the run. They’re pursued by both sides of the conflict, who see their relationship—and especially their child—as dangerous.
Each of the volumes collected in trades contains six chapters, forming a somewhat contained story that often ends on a cliffhanger. But there are constant callbacks to characters and plots from past volumes. The series is deeply ambitious, traveling across numerous planets and introducing a rich cast of characters, including an arachnid bounty hunter, robot royalty, a ghost babysitter, and merfolk tabloid journalists. Fan favorites include Lying Cat, a giant green cat who responds to attempts at deception by saying “lying,” and Ghüs, a seal-man Staples came up with who is adorable but hints at having a violent past. It’s easy to get attached to the characters, which is a problem because Vaughan isn’t shy about killing them off.
Beyond having a heavy body count, Saga deals with just about every dark theme imaginable, including genocide, child sexual abuse, miscarriage, and drug addiction. But it is also a beautiful tale of resistance, pacifism, love, sacrifice, and redemption. The series went on hiatus in 2018 after a major cliffhanger, only returning to publication in 2022. The break marked the halfway point in what Vaughan has planned, so there’s still plenty ahead even if you’re just getting into the series now.
Vaughan has a proven track record of penning long-running comic book series. Running from 2002 to 2008, Y: The Last Man followed the aftermath of the spontaneous death of all mammals with a Y chromosome. It shares some similarities with Saga, following a young man and his pet monkey as they are pursued by scientists, soldiers, and radical feminists while they travel around the world trying to understand what caused the cataclysm and discovering how women around the world have adapted. The series earned multiple Eisner Awards.
In 2005, Vaughan, Tony Harris, and Tom Feister won the Eisner Award for best new series for Ex Machina, which ran from 2004 to 2010. The series is set in an alternate universe where Mitchell Hundred, a civil engineer and aspiring superhero, uses his power to communicate with machines to stop the second plane from hitting the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His heroism leads to him being elected mayor of New York. The series combined political drama with superhero mystery—a plot about the debate over marijuana legalization would be followed by Hundred dealing with his animal-controlling nemesis.
That year, Vaughan won the Eisner for best writer for his work on Ex Machina, Y: The Last Man, and Runaways. Part of a push to bring young readers to Marvel Comics in the lean years before the launch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Runaways introduced a group of teenage children of supervillains, including mutants, alien invaders, and time travelers. When they learn the truth about their families, they run away to learn about their own powers and try to use them to do good. Vaughan and his co-creator left the series after 24 issues, but the first arc is a masterpiece with a killer twist. Runaways became hugely influential for Marvel, which rebooted it in 2017 and has used characters from the series in other projects. Most recently, teen witch Nico Minoru appeared as Peter Parker’s best friend in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
Staples hasn’t been in the industry as long as Vaughan, and most of her acclaim has come from her work on Saga, which mixes cute creatures, graphic violence, highly expressive characters, and awe-inspiring starscapes. She has worked on comic versions of the J.J. Abrams series Fringe and partnered with Mark Waid on the reboot of Archie.
Saga is published by Image Comics, the third-largest comic book publisher following Marvel and DC. Adaptations are often the key to getting bigger audiences for comics, and Image has had great success in that realm. The Walking Dead became a TV powerhouse that has spawned multiple spin-offs, Kick-Ass got two movies and video games, and Invincible has a highly successful and critically acclaimed animated show.
Animation would probably be the best way to go for a Saga adaptation in order to allow it to maintain its distinctive visual style and tell its ambitious story within a reasonable budget, but Vaughan and Staples have been understandably reluctant to pursue that. Shows produced before a writer has finished their work often come to disappointing conclusions—see Game Of Thrones or The Umbrella Academy.
Vaughan also has a particularly bad track record with adaptations. The Y: The Last Man show received good reviews, but was cancelled after one season and can no longer be streamed in the U.S. after Hulu removed it from the service. Hulu’s Runaways adaptation got three seasons, but is radically different from Vaughan’s story, putting too much emphasis on fleshing out the parents at the expense of the teens and their arcs. So if you’re curious about Saga, you should pick up a book and dive in rather than wait for it to come to the screen.
