Auteur's library

Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples

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.

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.

Tags: planets, robots and space ships, flirting with metaphysical and pseudo-philosophical questions, interracial war and a mix of interplanetary political alliances thrown in-between, often funny "voiceover" interrupting clichéd romance fiction moments, big big jungle fever seeing how they're supposed to be war ennemies and all, sometimes a little too lighthearted to really let you get into it, magical horn-people vs. gun-crazy wing-soldiers, and their robots allies added to the mix or fantasy vs. sci.fi, a whole lore of indistinct, rather ephemeral creatures (seeing how they all quickly, and conveniently, die), ghosts, yes...ghosts, war, war, war...and love war,  a crazy world, full of stuff...you won't get bored!, a lot of naughty drawings, a fast-paced story made of quests and adventures, tendency to favourise an evil turn of events... so definitely not a happiness-inducing type of reading (beware, evocation of paedophilia!), and the whole of it organised around a not-so-familial saga

Auteur's library

Booth Tarkington
 

The Magnificent Ambersons

1918

The Magnificent Ambersons will take through a nostalgic journey to Midwestern America in the later part of the 19^th century. Written with certainty and fluidity, it recreates an epoch vividly, almost making you wish you were part of it, strolling along with them, with their false sense of glory but without the sunshade. If the story, centred on the social changes a family must confront in a growing town, is small and seems, at first, uninteresting, Tarkington’s astute style of storytelling will make you care effortlessly. It’s a book that is enjoyable to read, clever, honest and often illuminating.   
As you close the last page, you leave the early 20^th century with a feeling of not having read enough (for it is a small read), of wanting to know more, all the while knowing that some things are best left unsaid. You’re free to let your imagination wander now, and, surprisingly, you do. While you weren’t watching, you let yourself get attached to the seemingly distant and arrogant characters and you honestly wish them the best.
The only flaw in The Magnificent Ambersons, however, is a significant one: if never hurtful or unkind, Tarkington’s whole attitude towards Blacks still makes it very difficult for a 21^st-century reader to fully go past it. Of course, he probably didn’t mean for a black person to read it but the fact is we do, and for a book on society’s changes it is ironic that its author wasn’t able to envision such change in his readership. While providing some social and linguistic credibility to the story, his terminology (‘darkie’) and characterization of black characters (or lack thereof) lack the decency and effort he put in his white characters. In a book that otherwise excels as a comedy of manners and characters, Blacks are one-dimensional: either proud, lively or slavish, they seem cheerful all the time, so busy they are with humour, women, food and gin. As impersonal and unfeeling images stuck in time, they don’t seem to take part in the industrial world changes going around them, but remain immutable, a ready-made repertoire providing a good-natured background against which other characters move as they please.
That’s a real shame for this holds back your feelings uncomfortably, keeps you on ‘liking’ terms with the book when you could have loved it.

Tags: rapid growth and industrialization, sympathetic comedy of manners, late 19th century-early 20^th century, centred on one family in one town with several dramas, the idea of getting your comeuppance really explored here, money vs. land, doing. vs.being, when George confuses filial overprotectiveness with filial ‘overpossessiveness’, social changes in the busy US, courtship dance, yes, no, ye…maybe, but…no, well…, lack of proper characterization of black characters, town and characters across the years, the know-it-all young white man or when George teaches us all what it is to 'be', still shaping America