Saga

Publication history

Writer Brian K. Vaughan conceived Saga in his childhood, calling it "a fictional universe that I created when I was bored in math class. I just kept building it." He was inspired by such influences as Star Wars, Flash Gordon, and children's books, and has also invoked the awe and wonder of first seeing the Silver Surfer, which seemed an "incredible and different" concept to him. It was not until his wife became pregnant with his second daughter, however, that he conceived of the protagonists, the winged Alana and the horned Marko, two lovers from warring extraterrestrial races who struggle to survive with their newborn daughter, Hazel, who occasionally narrates the series. It was also at this point that the central theme that Vaughan wanted for the book emerged. Vaughan explains, "I wanted to write about parenthood, but I wanted to Trojan-horse it inside some sort of interesting genre story, to explore the overlap between artistic creation and the creation of a child." Vaughan, who intended to return to writing a comics series following the 2010 conclusion of his previous series, Ex Machina, and who notes that the publication of Saga #1 coincided with the birth of his daughter, saw parallels between the caution advised by colleagues against launching a new book in the poor economy and those who cautioned against bringing a new child into the world, observing:

I realized that making comics and making babies were kind of the same thing and if I could combine the two, it would be less boring if I set it in a crazy sci-fi fantasy universe and not just have anecdotes about diaper bags ... I didn't want to tell a Star Wars adventure with these noble heroes fighting an empire. These are people on the outskirts of the story who want out of this never-ending galactic war ... I'm part of the generation that all we do is complain about the prequels and how they let us down ... And if every one of us who complained about how the prequels didn't live up to our expectations just would make our own sci-fi fantasy, then it would be a much better use of our time.

Vaughan explained that the main characters' romance would be a major theme of the book. Touching upon the juxtaposition of the book's mature subject matter with its Star Wars inspirations, Vaughan jokingly described the book as "Star Wars for perverts."

The book was announced at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, and was billed as "Star Wars meets A Game of Thrones" in solicitations. Saga represents the first time Vaughan has employed narration in his comics writing, a decision influenced by the whimsical interaction between the text and images in the children's books he reads with his children, and by his desire to try something new that he felt would work well with Saga's narrator, Hazel. It is also his first series to be published through Image Comics, whom he selected as the series' publisher on the recommendation of the writer Jay Faerber, who cited the creative freedom afforded by that publisher. Vaughan elaborated on his selection of Image thus:

Plot

Each chapter of Saga is titled with a numerical Chapter, such as "Chapter 1" for the debut issue. Every six chapters make up a story arc designated as a "Volume" and are reprinted as trade paperbacks. Every three Volumes compose a "Book" and are collected as hardcover editions.

The opening Volume introduces the series' leads, Alana and Marko, two lovers from different worlds whose peoples are at war with one another. Alana comes from the technologically advanced Landfall Coalition, so named after Landfall, the largest planet in the galaxy, and Marko is from Wreath, Landfall's only satellite, whose people wield magic. Because the destruction of one of the worlds would send the other spinning out of orbit, the war was "outsourced" to other worlds. Although peace was restored on the two home worlds, the conflict spread across all the other known planets, whose native species were forced to choose a side. As Landfall and Wreath were on opposite sides, Alana and Marko met when she was assigned to guard him in a prison on the planet Cleave after he became a prisoner of war. They fell in love and escaped together twelve hours after meeting. In the beginning of the series' first issue, Alana gives birth to their daughter, Hazel, who narrates the series as an adult looking back on her life. Marko and Alana's respective people are incredulous when it is suggested that they have voluntarily mated and they are pursued by forces in service of both Wreath and Landfall, both because of the perceived betrayal of the two fugitives and to prevent knowledge of their pairing from spreading and damaging morale among their troops. On Landfall, Prince Robot IV of the Robot Kingdom, Landfall's closest allies, is sent to kill the entire family. On Wreath, a mercenary called The Will, along with his sidekick Lying Cat, a giant sphinx cat with the power to tell when people are lying, is hired to kill Marko and Alana and capture Hazel. However, when he learns that his ex and fellow mercenary The Stalk has been hired for the same job, he heads for Sextillion, a planet that appears composed completely of brothels. While following a map to Cleave's fabled Rocketship Forest, Marko, Alana, and Hazel are found by the Stalk. Marko is badly wounded, but the Stalk is scared off by the sound of encroaching Horrors, mysterious terrifying creatures that roam Cleave's woods. After the Stalk flees, the horrors reveal themselves to be the ghosts of children killed on Cleave. Their leader, Izabel, offers to help Alana find the snow necessary for the healing spell that can save Marko. Marko, delirious from his injuries, mentions an ex-fiancée named Gwendolyn. On Sextillion, The Will meets a six-year-old girl who has been sold into sex slavery. He kills her pimp, but does not manage to liberate her from Sextillion. Marko is successfully healed, and explains that he was engaged to Gwendolyn when he met Alana, but that they had grown apart as a result of his growing pacifism and her staunch patriotism. He also explains that the rings he proposed to Alana with, which also function as translators, were originally Gwendolyn's. Later, while nearing the Rocketship Forest, they are attacked by Landfall soldiers. Alana and Hazel are injured, sending the seemingly pacifistic Marko into a such a violent rage that Alana is forced to shoot him with a paralyzer before he goes too far. Prince Robot IV, having found the injured soldiers while following Marko and Alana's trail, encounters the Stalk. Having just learned of his wife's pregnancy, he is paranoid, and kills the Stalk. Moments later, the Stalk is called by the Will, asking for her help in rescuing the girl from Sextillion. Prince Robot IV answers and explains what happened. In response, the Will vows to kill Prince Robot IV and everyone he cares about. Marko and Alana reach the Rocketship Forest, but find it seemingly empty. Izabel reveals this to be an illusion created to protect it from outsiders. Learning that the Rocketship, essentially a giant treehouse, requires a sacrifice to be activated, Marko destroys his family's ancestral sword. Prince Robot IV, meanwhile, comes to suspect that Marko and Alana are headed for the planet of Quietus, where Alana's favorite author, D. Oswald Heist, lives. Indeed, heading for Quietus, Marko, Alana, Hazel, the Rocketship, and new babysitter Izabel, now bound to Hazel's soul, are in good spirits. The ship is soon attacked by a pair of armored Wreathans who mystically banish Izabel. They are soon revealed to be Barr and Klara, Marko's parents, and stand down upon seeing Hazel.

Characters

The family

This section describes the family, including its extended members, and its most prominent recurring allies.

Alana

The female lead of the series, Alana is Marko's wife and Hazel's mother. She is a native of the planet Landfall, and like all Landfallians she has wings, although her wings do not allow her to fly until Chapter #18. After joining her planet's war against the Wreathers (the debut chapter says she was drafted after flunking out of state college while Chapter 14 says that she joined the military a few months after her father remarried Alana's childhood friend, Even), she was subsequently reprimanded for "abject cowardice" for hesitating to kill civilians, and was redeployed to the planet Cleave, where as a prison guard she met Marko. She developed a friendship with him and when she learned he was to be transferred to a more brutal prison from which detainees never return, she helped him escape, just twelve hours after having met him. She later married him and gave birth to their daughter, Hazel, in the series' first issue.

Although skin color is not a part of racial ethnicity that is explicitly addressed within the books' dialogue, writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples have indicated that both Alana and Marko are people of color, and Staples designed Alana with darker skin. She envisioned her to be biracial, and her father as an Indian man.

Marko

The male lead of the series, Marko is Alana's husband and Hazel's father. He is from Landfall's moon Wreath, whose people have horns or antlers and can wield magic. Marko was a foot soldier in his people's war against the Coalition of Landfall. He was raised from a young age with the knowledge of the atrocities that Landfall committed against their people. When Marko left Wreath as an adult, he was still "a gung-ho kid who just wanted to do [his] moon proud and kick some ass." This changed the first time he saw battle, after which he began to develop a less militant and more pacifist outlook. When he tried to share these misgivings with his fiancée Gwen, he realized from her unsympathetic and jingoistic responses that they had grown too far apart to continue their relationship. Marko surrendered to Coalition forces as a "conscientious objector" 18 months before the beginning of the series. He was a prisoner of war on the planet Cleave until his guard, Alana, escaped with him, married him and conceived their daughter, Hazel. Wreath High Command sent The Will after Marko because Marko "renounced his oath and betrayed The Narrative" by fraternizing with an enemy combatant. Though he is a pacifist who vows upon the birth of his daughter to never again use his sword, and dislikes the practice of owning firearms, he does so nonetheless when his family is threatened and is so skilled with a sword that he can dispatch an entire squad of enemy soldiers armed with firearms, for which he is referred to by Prince Robot IV as a "force of nature". He is fatally stabbed through the chest by The Will in the finale of the ninth story arc.

The family's pursuers

Prince Robot IV

A member of the royal family of the Robot Kingdom, assigned by Landfall as their primary pursuer of Alana and Marko in the beginning of the series when his wife is pregnant with their first child. Like others of his race, he is a humanoid with a small television set for a head, which Vaughan explains is influenced by a fascination with old televisions that he developed when he began writing for TV. He also has blue blood and the ability to morph his right arm into a cannon. In the beginning of the series, Prince Robot IV has just returned from a "two–year tour of hell" after which he had to be given a new leg following a brutal sneak attack. His brain "reboots" after he is injured confronting the family in the third story arc and he is still missing when his son is born in the fourth story arc. He is decapitated in the ninth story arc by The Will.

The Will

One of the freelance bounty hunters hired by the Wreath High Command to kill Marko and Alana and bring Hazel back alive, not only for Marko's betrayal but also to prevent news of Alana and Marko's coupling from spreading and thus threatening troop morale. The Will is accompanied by a Lying Cat, a large talking feline that can detect lies. Vez, the woman who hires him, says she hired The Will because he shares Marko's moral relativism. When he travels to the sexually permissive planet Sextillion and is presented with a six-year-old sexual slave girl, The Will kills her pimp. The Will was once the lover of The Stalk, a female spider-like bounty hunter who is also assigned to Alana and Marko until she is killed by Prince Robot IV, for which The Will vows revenge. He develops an attraction to Gwendolyn even as he mourns The Stalk. His sister Sophie, who addresses him as "Billy", and who introduced him to The Stalk, is another Freelancer who works under the name The Brand. In the third story arc, he decides to abandon his Freelancer life, but suffers a traumatic near-fatal injury from which a doctor says he will likely never fully recover.

Lying Cat

Lying Cat is a large female talking feline companion to The Will who aids him in his work. Green in color with yellow stripes, she has the ability to detect when a verbal statement is a lie, which she indicates by saying "Lying". Her power is limited to the state of the mind of the person speaking: she can detect deliberate deception, but cannot detect a falsehood if a given statement is believed to be true by the speaker. According to Izabel, Lying Cats always play by the rules, an allusion to the fact that a Lying Cat must also admit ethical truths as well as factual ones. When Gwendolyn, who becomes Lying Cat's ally, accidentally kills a man, Izabel says that they had no right to execute that man in his home, which Lying Cat cannot deny. It has been revealed that Lying Cat was the runt of her seven-kitten litter, a fact whose revelation causes her distress.

Reception

Sales and reprints

The first chapter sold out of its first printing ahead of its March 14 release date. A second printing ordered for April 11, the same release date as Chapter 2, also sold out, with a third printing arriving in stores on April 25. The issue ultimately went through five printings. By August it had sold over 70,000 copies in various printings. As of 2016, the collected editions of the series outsell those of The Walking Dead, another successful Image comic that has greater public visibility through the television series adapted from it.

The first trade paperback collection, Saga, Vol. 1, which collects the first six issues, was published October 10, 2012, and appeared at Number 6 on the New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller list the week of October 29. As of August 2013, it had sold 120,000 copies.

Although Chapter #7 sold out, Image Comics PR & Marketing Director Jennifer deGuzman announced in a December 12, 2012 letter to retailers that it would not reprint select comics, such as that issue. DeGuzman explained the move as a result of decreasing orders on well-performing titles like Saga, despite critical acclaim and consistently selling out at a distributor level, and pointed to orders on Saga #8, which decreased 4% from orders on Chapter #7. Rather than invest in second printings, deGuzman explained, Image would instead focus its attention on ensuring that the first printing garners the sales desired. This move displeased some retailers, which prompted Image Publisher Eric Stephenson to announce the following day that Image would indeed publish a second printing of Chapter #7 at a considerable discount, but cautioned that the publisher would not be able to reprint every chapter of the series indefinitely, and implored retailers not to under-order the series.

The second trade paperback collection immediately appeared at the top of the New York Times graphic books best-seller list.

Critical reception

The series was met with wide critical acclaim and is one of the most celebrated American comics being published (as of October 2018). It holds an average score of 9.0 out of 10 at the review aggregator website Comic Book Roundup. This score is held by both the regular series and the collected volumes.

The first chapter was widely acclaimed in publications such as Publishers Weekly, MTV, Ain't it Cool News, Complex magazine, Comic Book Resources, iFanboy and ComicsAlliance; they all praised Vaughan's ability to incorporate elements of different genres, establishing the vast setting and mythology, and introducing characters that engaged the reader. Multiple reviewers likened the book to a combination of sci-fi/fantasy works such as Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings and classic works of literature such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and the New Testament. AICN singled-out the use of the newborn Hazel as a lone individual to chronicle large-scale events from a past perspective, and Alex Zalben of MTV Geek remarking that he could hear a John Williams score as he read the book. Multiple reviewers also lauded Vaughan for beginning the story with Hazel's birth rather than hurting the story's pace with copious exposition of Alana and Marko's initial meeting and courtship. Todd Allen of The Beat approved of the book's unique "flavor", singling out the characters' motivations, the immersiveness of its surrealist setting, the strangeness of the story's various oddities and the timely nature of the story's political undertones. Both Alex Evans of Weekly Comic Book Review and P. S. Hayes of Geeks of Doom called the series a "classic"; Hayes also praised Image Comics for publishing such an "original" series. Also widely praised was Fiona Staples' artwork, which was characterized as "glorious", with Zalben predicting that readers would "fall head over heels in love" with it, and Greg McElhatton of Comic Book Resources positively comparing it to that of Leinil Francis Yu, specifically her use of delicate lines to frame characters with large, bold figures and Staples' mixture of the familiar and the foreign together in her character designs to create a visually cohesive universe. AICN singled out Staples' handling of grand, sweeping space shots and other genre trappings, as well as her mastery of facial expressions – which AICN felt was perfectly suited to Vaughan's subtle dialogue. Todd Allen of The Beat wrote that Staples' landscapes at times play as much a part in the story as the foreground.

The subsequent issues that made up the series' initial six-issue story arc also garnered similarly positive reviews, with three printings ordered for Chapter #2, and second printings ordered for issues 3 – 6. The series was included in IGN's 2012 list of "The Comics We're Thankful For This Year" and took the #1 spot in CBR's "Top 10 Comics of 2012". In August 2013, Douglas Wolk of Time magazine referred to the series as a "breakout hit", calling it "mischievous, vulgar and gloriously inventive."

Awards

In 2013 Saga won the three Eisner Awards it was nominated for: Best Continuing Series, Best New Series and Best Writer. That same year, the Vol. 1 trade paperback won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. The series was also nominated for seven 2013 Harvey Awards and won six of those: Best Writer, Best Artist, Best Color, Best New Series, Best Continuing or Limited Series, and Best Single Issue or Story.

In 2014 the series won all three Eisners that it was nominated for: Best Painter/Multimedia Artist, Best Writer, and Best Continuing Series.

In 2015 the series was again nominated for the same three Eisner Awards it won the previous year and won two of them: Best Continuing Series and Best Penciller/Inker. That same year the fourth volume was awarded the Goodreads Choice Award for Graphic Novels & Comics in 2015.

Censorship

On April 9, 2013, media reported that Apple Inc. had prohibited the sale of Chapter 12 of Saga through iOS, because two panels that depicted oral sex between men in a small, in-set image violated Apple's restrictions on sexual content. This resulted in criticism by artists and writers, who pointed to similarly explicit content in previous issues and in other works sold through iTunes. William Gibson and others suggested that the restriction could have occurred specifically because the drawings in question depicted gay sex. A day later, digital distributor Comixology announced that it had been that company, not Apple, who had chosen not to make the chapter available based on their interpretation of Apple's rules, and that after receiving clarification from Apple, the chapter would now be sold via iOS.

In 2014, the series was included on the American Library Association's list of the ten most frequently challenged books that year. It had been challenged for containing nudity and offensive language and for being "anti-family, ... sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group."

Merchandising

In 2015, Skybound Entertainment began taking pre-orders for an 8" tall, hand-painted Lying Cat resin statue, which retails for $75.

In February 2016, Essential Sequential began taking orders for a posable, 19-inch tall plushy Lying Cat doll that says, "Lying" when its collar is pressed, scheduled to ship that May. Later that June, Skybound announced that at the following month's San Diego Comic-Con, it would debut action figures based on the two lead characters, Alana and Marko, by McFarlane Toys. The five-inch figures are issued together in a two-pack, and are paired with a mace and a sword. The company also teamed with Yesterdays, a Southern California collectible enamel pin company, to produce Skybound's first ever pin set, which includes two pins of Lying Cat and a pin of Ghüs, also to debut at that Comic-Con. The Ghüs pin is priced at $10.00, and the Lying Cat set at $15.00, and both were limited to 1000 units each.

In October 2017, Image Comics announced the introduction of Pop! Vinyl figures of Lying Cat, Alana, Marko, Izabel, Prince Robot IV and The Will from Funko and Skybound Entertainment, available in February 2018.

In other media

Although interest has been expressed in adapting Saga for film or TV, Vaughan and Staples reaffirmed their desire not to do so in an August 2013 interview, with Vaughan stating that the point of Saga as he conceived it was "to do absolutely everything I couldn't do in a movie or a TV show. I'm really happy with it just being a comic." Vaughan has stated that they are open to the possibility, though it is not a priority for them. However, merchandise based on the series has been produced, including a line of T-shirts featuring Lying Cat, which have become visible in popular media. In "Pac-Man Fever", the April 24, 2013 episode of the American TV series Supernatural, the character Charlie Bradbury (played by Felicia Day) is seen wearing a Lying Cat T-shirt. Day, who has referred to Saga as the "best comic EVER", indicated that show writer Robbie Thompson picked out the shirt.

The controversial cover of the comic's first chapter was referenced in "The Meemaw Materialization", the February 4, 2016 episode of the American TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory. In the episode, Claire (Alessandra Torresani) is reading the first trade paperback of the series (which features the same cover as its first issue), and Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar) observes that "not a lot of comics have a woman with wings breastfeeding a baby right on the cover." Though The Big Bang Theory is often criticized for its portrayal of comic book fans, according to Comic Book Resources, a Twitter search indicated reaction to the scene by fans of Saga readers who saw it was mostly positive.