Comics

Comic Talk: Saga

It’s been quite some time since I wrote much on comics. As my tastes in nerdy things have changed and my love for RPG’s and board games has grown, my spending and reading of comics has gone by the wayside. I still really like to read comics and enjoy every chance I get to read them, but I just have other things I’d prefer to spend my money on, nerdiness wise.

However, there is one series that I still read when I get the chance. And that chance comes fairly regularly because it’s a series that both Kristen and I like. So once a year or so we’ll pick up a new trade paperback, so we’re behind a bit, but we are making our ways through the comic’s run.

Saga is an interesting comic because it isn’t your standard super hero comic, like people most often think of. In fact, there are no super heroes in the comics at all. Saga is a sci-fi comic about a war that has been going on for a long time, and two people who fell in love across the lines of that war and had a child and who are now on the run. Along with that, you get the story of the bounty hunters and those who are trying their best to chase them down.

Saga is not a happy comic series, the characters go through a ton of struggles in their lives, finding some peace, losing that peace, finding some improvement in themselves and then losing it. I don’t know that I would really call any of the characters in the books good, they are all just various shades of grey. And honestly, for most of the time, that works well. I am only going to say most of the time, because sometimes it comes across as depressing for depressing’s sake, versus for the furthering of the story.

Saga is also not a comic that is for kids. There is nudity and language and a lot of violence in the comic series. With the backdrop of a war, you kind of expect to see the violence and then language in there, but there is a lot of nudity and sexual situations that are shown in the series. In fact, there’s enough so that I’m going to wait until a later time when I’m not on a shared computer to get the images into the post. It would be awkward for everyone around me if I searched them, most likely. I put this out there, that it isn’t for kids, not as a detractor, but so that people realize what they are getting into. I don’t think I’d call much of anything about the nudity, language, and violence as not needed in the story, I think it helps with keeping all of the characters a shade of grey.

Since this is a comic, and I’ve talked a lot about the story that Brian K Vaughan is telling, I do need to talk about the artwork. The art is in a number of ways fairly standard comic book art. It hasn’t dropped into a more realistic style than you see in most super hero comics, which works well, because you’re dealing with odd looking aliens in the story. I will say that Fiona Staples artwork though does vary from the classic comic look, because the story is told much more in pastels and muted tones than the bright flashy look super hero books can have. This makes the artwork fit much better with the story. It’s not the heroic punching story, it’s people with problems on the run and trying to survive. The colors shouldn’t just be bright and happy, they should match the mood, and they do well.

This is a comic I clearly enjoy, and I would most definitely recommend. The storytelling is good in the comic series, though at times I think it bounces around a bit too quickly for the main characters. The art makes the book, and the overarching plot is very good, it the plot hiccups are at a lower level. Again, remember that it’s probably not one you’re going to watch a kid to get their hands on, so be aware of that.

Let me know if you’ve read the series and if you’re enjoying it? Who are some of your favorite characters? Let us know in the comments.

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