Saga
Volume One (#1-6).
2012
You’ll get
a kick out of this one, rubbing your hands expectantly while preparing to start
what seems like a real cool fantasy-space opera extravaganza…and it will prove
to be exactly that.
Teenage ghosts suddenly appear, so do weird-disgusting spider-women, romance lit’, robot guys, rocket trees…(you get the gist…), often without a hint of connection to each other. Rather, the weirder and more creative they get, the more they feel almost randomly splashed across the pages. It’s a good thing Brian K. Vaughan’s ideas are that “kitschly” charming and original because structure isn’t his strongest point. So much happens, in fact, that you’ll find yourself quickly breathless, yet frantically looking for any piece of backstory that might work as a clue to details of the past and the future within the narrative, fervently wanting to devour even more than you’ve actually been given to chew. Saga Volume 1 works as a hook, offering an array of storylines, mysteries and emotions, never dwelling too deep into them, letting them linger with you until the next volume, instead.
Fiona Staples’ artwork is amazingly realistic, its rendering of facial expressions and body movements making almost ludicrous characters credible, even close to us. The tone is right, though at its best with colour ranges diffusing an atmosphere of nighttime fantasy-sci-fi nightmare than when the action is in broad daylight.
Hazel and The Will are definitely the most stand-out characters, but, unfortunately, they’re not the main meal. The rest of the cast appear varyingly interesting but rather pale in comparison; though they prove enough to lead the story, they’re not the ones whom we wish would lead it. However, not complaining…This may actually work to the book’s advantage because it keeps you on your toes for appearances from the real stars of the show.
As for Alana, Marko and the lot, there’s a lot of wit and personality showing off in their one-liners, yet somehow it all feels a little rushed, a little too easy. Having spent the whole issue with the parenting couple, I’m still not quite sure I actually care for anything coming their way. They are said to have personality, they sound like they have personality, they are drawn beautifully, perhaps even a little too beautifully for the first-degree writing; still, they feel like actors losing their strong acting skills in witty but mild dialogues_ dialogues from which the main core is missing. What is it that Vaughan is actually trying to say?
So, yes, it’s luxuriously laden with stuff, a lot of elements catch your eye in Saga_ as they are designed to do_ but the real question is: will they prove more than mere baits to take the reader on a fan-generating trip through a vaguely moralist fantasy tale?
Having dropped all those nasty hooks with characters appearing more evil than doing evil (save from one very awful, vomit-inducing nightmarish scene), you half expect the narration to get deeper into the whole of it_ either in the Song of Ice and Fire style, showing how nasty the mind can be, or via a more mature outlook: diving into character motives, complex emotional network, backstory, or anything that should lie on the other side of the hook.
For that was the one thing that annoyed me persistently, though it didn’t prevent me from enjoying the read, at all: nothing really happens for nothing is really developed. A lot of things are said, shown or hinted at, but it almost feels, at times, as if the writer did not know while writing where his story would in fact lead him to. And that he’s making it up as he goes along is one thing, that we notice it is another. It’s possible that I’m utterly wrong on this but the fact remains that reading book 1 felt like reading the first tentative chapters of a longer piece: we haven’t even been given the middle, yet, and the comic book closes on a big ‘so what?’ All the while I’m enjoying this, a little voice within me is still wondering why I should actually care, and it becomes increasingly harder to shove it aside.
Now, I’m not one for going through authors’ interviews or anything where they express their intentions and opinions on their books as I firmly think a review works best when based on the material actually present in the book; hence, simply based on its content, Saga effectively comes across as a nice, light, attractive, entertaining, sometimes harsh, comic book that fully and unashamedly lives up to its name: it’s a saga, a darkly clever soap opera, and I’m not sure its first installment aims at more beyond that. It will draw you in, whether you’re half interested to start with or not, and you’ll remained hooked during the reading. However, you’ll notice you close that last page a little too soon, having witnessed a lot, having absorbed much less.
It’s fan-generating material, all right, and I can say I’m in to the extent I acquired the second book, but did so hoping it’ll do better than its first installment which presented more than it actually gave. Volume 1 won’t be a breakthrough or the revelation of the year (not if you’re honest with yourself), having you redoing scenes in your head while waiting impatiently for the next installment or anything like that (and if it does, perhaps you need to start reading better books). But it will please you, that’s undeniable.
Teenage ghosts suddenly appear, so do weird-disgusting spider-women, romance lit’, robot guys, rocket trees…(you get the gist…), often without a hint of connection to each other. Rather, the weirder and more creative they get, the more they feel almost randomly splashed across the pages. It’s a good thing Brian K. Vaughan’s ideas are that “kitschly” charming and original because structure isn’t his strongest point. So much happens, in fact, that you’ll find yourself quickly breathless, yet frantically looking for any piece of backstory that might work as a clue to details of the past and the future within the narrative, fervently wanting to devour even more than you’ve actually been given to chew. Saga Volume 1 works as a hook, offering an array of storylines, mysteries and emotions, never dwelling too deep into them, letting them linger with you until the next volume, instead.
Fiona Staples’ artwork is amazingly realistic, its rendering of facial expressions and body movements making almost ludicrous characters credible, even close to us. The tone is right, though at its best with colour ranges diffusing an atmosphere of nighttime fantasy-sci-fi nightmare than when the action is in broad daylight.
Hazel and The Will are definitely the most stand-out characters, but, unfortunately, they’re not the main meal. The rest of the cast appear varyingly interesting but rather pale in comparison; though they prove enough to lead the story, they’re not the ones whom we wish would lead it. However, not complaining…This may actually work to the book’s advantage because it keeps you on your toes for appearances from the real stars of the show.
As for Alana, Marko and the lot, there’s a lot of wit and personality showing off in their one-liners, yet somehow it all feels a little rushed, a little too easy. Having spent the whole issue with the parenting couple, I’m still not quite sure I actually care for anything coming their way. They are said to have personality, they sound like they have personality, they are drawn beautifully, perhaps even a little too beautifully for the first-degree writing; still, they feel like actors losing their strong acting skills in witty but mild dialogues_ dialogues from which the main core is missing. What is it that Vaughan is actually trying to say?
So, yes, it’s luxuriously laden with stuff, a lot of elements catch your eye in Saga_ as they are designed to do_ but the real question is: will they prove more than mere baits to take the reader on a fan-generating trip through a vaguely moralist fantasy tale?
Having dropped all those nasty hooks with characters appearing more evil than doing evil (save from one very awful, vomit-inducing nightmarish scene), you half expect the narration to get deeper into the whole of it_ either in the Song of Ice and Fire style, showing how nasty the mind can be, or via a more mature outlook: diving into character motives, complex emotional network, backstory, or anything that should lie on the other side of the hook.
For that was the one thing that annoyed me persistently, though it didn’t prevent me from enjoying the read, at all: nothing really happens for nothing is really developed. A lot of things are said, shown or hinted at, but it almost feels, at times, as if the writer did not know while writing where his story would in fact lead him to. And that he’s making it up as he goes along is one thing, that we notice it is another. It’s possible that I’m utterly wrong on this but the fact remains that reading book 1 felt like reading the first tentative chapters of a longer piece: we haven’t even been given the middle, yet, and the comic book closes on a big ‘so what?’ All the while I’m enjoying this, a little voice within me is still wondering why I should actually care, and it becomes increasingly harder to shove it aside.
Now, I’m not one for going through authors’ interviews or anything where they express their intentions and opinions on their books as I firmly think a review works best when based on the material actually present in the book; hence, simply based on its content, Saga effectively comes across as a nice, light, attractive, entertaining, sometimes harsh, comic book that fully and unashamedly lives up to its name: it’s a saga, a darkly clever soap opera, and I’m not sure its first installment aims at more beyond that. It will draw you in, whether you’re half interested to start with or not, and you’ll remained hooked during the reading. However, you’ll notice you close that last page a little too soon, having witnessed a lot, having absorbed much less.
It’s fan-generating material, all right, and I can say I’m in to the extent I acquired the second book, but did so hoping it’ll do better than its first installment which presented more than it actually gave. Volume 1 won’t be a breakthrough or the revelation of the year (not if you’re honest with yourself), having you redoing scenes in your head while waiting impatiently for the next installment or anything like that (and if it does, perhaps you need to start reading better books). But it will please you, that’s undeniable.
P.S. I
found Hazel’s comments not always well enough synchronized with the images they
commented to really give you that witty, startling effect they intended.