Saga #10

Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Art by Fiona Staples

I often find it hard to discuss each new issue of Saga.  I love the book, and most of the main characters in it, but issue after issue, I find I have little new to say about the comic.

Brian K. Vaughan picked the right title for this comic.  This really is a saga - a story so immense that the forward momentum of any particular issue does little to progress the larger plot.  In this issue, Marko and his mother find Izabel, the ghostly baby-sitter, Hazel loses her umbilical stump, a planetoid-egg hatches, and The Will finds our heroes.

What I found most significant in this issue though, was the flashback that showed us just how Marko and Alana fell in love, and the moment when she decided to free him from her people's captivity.  Time and again since the series started, we've heard reference to Alana's love for a romance novel; now we know that it is this same book that brought her and her enemy prisoner together.  I like how this metaphorical bodice-ripper is examined by the characters, and how it also reveals a few things about Vaughan's plans for this series, or so I imagine.

Fiona Staples's artwork is, as always, gorgeous.  I do want to say that the last page made me very unhappy, and I am hoping that the suggested character death we saw there is going to be resolved happily.