Christina Vasilevski

Title: Saga Volume 3
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Illustrator: Fiona Staples
Publisher: Image Comics
Format: Print
Rating: 4 out of 5

Note: spoilers ahead for both this and the previous volumes. You have been warned.

Saga is one of those stories where I gobble the installments up like goldfish crackers — chowing down on handful after handful, aware that I’m nearing the end of the current supply. And then, when I do hit that end, I think to myself: that’s it?

When I read volumes 1 and 2 last year, they were so fresh and inventive that they kept me in a perpetual state of delight. I would make assumptions about the world of the story only to have those assumptions upended, like so:

• This comic features people with horns and people with wings. That means that this must be an angels vs. demons kind of thing going on, right? Oh, and there’s a star-crossed couple, one angel and one demon, who have a kid, the existence of which poses a threat to both civilizations – does that mean it will be like Demonology 101? Cool! I love fantasy stories!
• Oh wait, there’s an intergalactic war going on. That means it’s space opera, not a fantasy!
• Oh wait, there’s this weird guy who looks human except for the fact that he’s got a TV for a head. Um…is this still space opera, or are we veering into satire?
• Oh, and there’s an assassin who’s half-woman, half spider, and there’s a planet devoted solely to prostitution, and then there are…romance novels? And ghosts who wander around, showing off their viscera? And now there’s a giant talking cat who can only say something when it knows you’re lying?
• Sweet lord, what the hell kind of world is this taking place in? And where can I get more?

Part of the fun of the first two volumes was seeing my SF reading protocols get tossed up and hurled at the wall to see what would bounce off and what would stick. Of course, there are the human elements of the story — Hazel’s retrospective narration, the amazing single-page panels used for emphasis, and Marko and Alana’s love story at the heart of it all.

But the third volume dispenses with a lot of the stuff-to-the-wall-throwing and instead tries to force a confrontation between all of the various parties at play — Marko and Alana’s family vs. Prince Robot vs. Gwendolyn and The Will and Slave Girl/Sophie. At first, I was looking forward to these confrontations. But then they got cut short and resolved too easily to be satisfying, like when Gwendolyn finally came face-to-face with Marko, her ex-fiance. I felt like this story was promising me I would climb Mount Everest, only to drop me off at the base of The Alps instead – still cool, but not as an extreme a trip as I was promised.

There’s a definite sense of table-setting coming into play with this volume. You’ve got the  introduction of the journalists chasing the clues that the government has hidden about Alana, Marko, and Hazel; the introduction of The Will’s sister; the kind-of-tacked-on burgeoning romance between The Will and Gwendolyn; and the introduction  of The Circuit, some kind of underground entertainment network that’s really an open secret.

This is all part-and-parcel with the fact that this is an ongoing series. The end is probably far away, since Brian K. Vaughan has stated that it will run longer than Y: The Last Man, which ran for 60 issues. My bet is that in the coming issues (which resume publication this month), Marko and Alana will join The Circuit and use their broadcasts as a way to inform the world about their relationship (and their daughter) by framing it as an anti-war allegory. But that is just what I want to happen. Staples and Vaughan have been very good at confounding my expectations so far.

That said, there are moments of beauty and grace in this volume, like when Sophie/Slave Girl and Lying Cat (Oh my god, can I tell you how much I love Lying Cat? I even have a shirt with her face on it!) share a moment on a hillside, with the former telling a series of truths and then a lie, only to have the latter interrupt with her trademark exclamation. Or when Marko’s mother, Klara, shares a conspiratorial moment with Oswald Heist over a board game. There are so many good moments here.

The problem, to me, is that these things are moments, not the sustained awesomeness of the opening volumes – the first of which rightly won the 2013 Hugo for Best Graphic Story. On it’s own, I would give Saga Volume 3 only 3 out of 5 stars. In context with the preceding volumes, though, I’m bumping my rating one higher. Here’s hoping that the next volume will get over the bump in the rode that this volume represents.