Fifty-four issues is a lot to catch up on, and this is not a comic you could pick up in the middle and have any sense of what’s going on. I can’t help but wonder, though, if it can still be that gateway comic for a new reader. Am I glad I’ve picked it back up? Absolutely.
Did I cry actual tears on the last page of Issue 54? Undeniably. The storytelling is still thoughtful and working towards representation the art is gorgeous and intricate and imaginative and the characters have tied themselves to my heartstrings and are tugging away. The amount of gore on the pages is now harder for me to stomach, but at least it feels purposeful rather than sensationalized, deliberate in its grotesquery. It’s not perfect, and on the reread I found myself noticing some things that rubbed me the wrong way the extremely limited representation of plus-size characters, for example, especially in the early issues. For me, this is both incredibly frustrating (I just want someone to blame! Make it easy for me, won’t you?) and incredibly important, because in this polarized world I need nuance and perspective now more than ever. But none of it is taken lightly, and Vaughan and Staples refuse to delineate “the good guys” and “the bad guys” - everyone is as good and as bad as their actions. So many horrible things happen to, around, or because of Alana, Marko, and Hazel - addiction, miscarriage, murder, sexual violence, imprisonment, abduction, death and more death. The themes of Saga are many, and all intense: the horrors of war and the meaning of peace racism, prejudice, and bigotry what it means to be a family, a parent, a friend how we deal with our own violence and that of others sex, in all its glorious and terrifying forms.
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