3 out of 5

I started to hate Saga on the opening page of issue 15 – one of the characters saying something vulgar to someone off-panel depicted via splash page.  It wasn’t, at all, the crassness of the dialogue – ‘Saga’ in general has a dirty mind, and as a Johnny Ryan fan, scatology certainly isn’t an instant offense to me.  Rather, this was my first time feeling like Brian was falling back on a device, akin to the opening page of Garth Ennis’ ‘Boys’, a madly violent image that just sorta’ set the tone as typical Ennis and I could never shake the feeling that all the ranting and raving were dialed in on some level…  Now hold up next to this that the content is heartfelt (assumedly), and we’re into the realm of an artist becoming, ahem, predictable.

Garth was able to dispel my worries that that was a forever curse with work on some other series, so I think he backed himself into that role on Boys, and I suspect the same of Vaughan with ‘Saga…’ except that Garth’s journey was been peppered with spurts of more or less surprising or predictable, whereas I see ‘Saga’ as an extension of the path which Vaughan has been trekking, from the youthful boast of Y to the mature and sprawling Ex, and now, the ‘wise idiot’ opinions of ‘Saga’.  I’m a cranky old man who doesn’t take kindly to wise anythings, so I’m bias, but: harumph.

When his plots are anchored to concepts, Vaughan succeeds.  Y pretended to be character driven, but Yorrick’s girlfriend took a backseat for most of the series while Brian explored gender concepts and a killer central mystery.  By the time the relationship elements began to flourish, they felt wrapped up in the story.  Yorrick himself wasn’t the most compelling character; the same smirky everyman who finds himself a place in Bri’s stories, but again, since the focus was on the story, you can smile at his jokes and ignore attempts at “deep” dialogue while you form your own opinions.  Ex Machina balanced things beautifully, again using a plot core to wrap his characters around.  The difference was that these didn’t all feel like exact offshoots of one sarcastic male personality and one strong female personality.  Hundred had his jokes, but he was not Yorrick, nor was anyone else in the book.  The social exploration this time was politics, and was bravely confronted with a realistic acceptance of a lack of black and white, which very much crossed over to his character’s decisions.  Somewhere around here you get ‘Runaways,’ which is important for how it reflects the style of ‘Saga’.  While ‘Runaways’ has its plot – our parents are villains – it quickly turned into a WB comic book.  This isn’t a bad thing, really, it just is what it is: pandering.  These were teen characters written so teenagers would say “that’s just like me!”  And now to ‘Saga,’ the letter pages of which are littered with ‘That’s just like me!’ fuck-lubbers, for whom the book is written.  So Brian can fall back on his style of humor and pacing, because the audience is already there.  Meanwhile our plot – lovers from two different sides of a war try to forge a new life with their baby – is open-ended enough to let this drag on forever.  This is a character driven book.  And I don’t find Vaughan’s characters particularly interesting.  It’s easy to read, and at times funny, but it’s also like a revisionist response to Y: Brian already kowtowed to femmes in typical indie boy fashion, but now ‘Saga’ has no doubts in proclaiming women and mothers as the saviors of everything where Y tried to question lovable male guilt.

(So aside from being cranky and old, you can once again toss that misogynist tag my way.)

“He hates it!”  And yet, three stars.  Because I accept that much of this is personal.  However, I still don’t think this book pushes out Vaughan’s best qualities; I maintain that it gets a pass because of his writing history and the type of people that will now pick up his books, who will loves the age-appropriateness of the topic as well as the slightly dirty feel (that it has been frequently described in mash-up terms ‘Star Wars’ meets ‘Game of Thrones’ in the last Comic Shop News, for example – is very telling).  Plus, as mentioned, it’s not difficult to read.  The characters are pretty, and one plus of getting away from story-centric is that this actually fixes some of Brian’s pacing problems – married to story arcs, he always falls on the odd one-shot or filler issue that’s so much obvious padding.  But ‘Saga’ wanders freely and is better for it: something of interest has happened in each issue.  The book also looks appealing from a design standpoint.  The solid, varying color back covers are marvelous looking all stacked together and Fiona Staples computer art reads well and she definitely has a knack for unique designs, although, similar to Tony Harris, I feel like there’s not much ‘shock’ after the first page – her style is very noteworthy from the get-go, so splash pages just feel like another beat and each new and inventive character is on par with the previous one.  So it’s consistently good looking, but not very dynamic.

‘Kay?  This is one I’d actually care to debate with other people, but I’ve got too much masturbating and being lonely to do.  Toodles.