Saga, Volume 4
Saga, Volume 4 by Brian K. Vaughan
Illustrated by: Fiona Staples
Published: 2014
Publisher: Image Comics
Length: 144 pages
Collects: issues #19-24
Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples know how to open a volume with a bang. You’re off running right from the first page with a close-up of an alien birth in action. They’re excellent at having little shocks in their books in an age where it’s difficult to shock anyone. I love that I just don’t know what I’m going to get when I open these pages.
The story jumps ahead a bit here. The crew is somewhat settled now, and it turns into an odd slice of life comic with the other storylines picking up steam in the background. It feels a bit like a setup arc, catching everything up and setting the groundwork for a big next volume, but the writing still holds up and makes it a great read. My only real complaint is that it started to get a little Degrassi High. Every sitcom in the 80s and 90s had to have their ‘Drugs are Bad’ episode, in which a character gets too easily roped into drugs and it turns too easily into a major problem, and this felt eerily similar to one of those. It’s probably the first complaint I’ve had in the whole series, though, so that’s a pretty good track record.
The panel layout and art is deceptively simple, but it has the effect of being very cinematic. I love the little touches of detail they add. There’s an alien cyborg race with televisions for heads, and up until this volume I think they’ve all looked the same, but here we see a commoner of this race with a black and white CRT for a head and a king with a giant LCD screen for a head. They’re great at taking these bizarre ideas and gradually giving them more flesh as the story progresses.
This was probably my least favourite of the four volumes, but I still really loved it. Saga has easily become one of my favourite comic series.
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dragonsandzombies
So far, this has been my least favourite as well. I couldn’t stand all the family drama and as you mentioned, the involvement of drugs didn’t really have to be in there. At least not the way they introduced it. Alana for me is a stronger character who wouldn’t fall so easily.
I wasn’t a fan of the whole space opera theme either.
But luckily the following volume was better again 🙂
Rob
Yeah, I feel like this was a low point for the series, and it’s been getting better and better again since this.
dragonsandzombies
That’s great to hear! I am about to start volume 6 and very much looking forward to it.