The couple are running because, being from different races, some oppose their union and the child that stems from it, Hazel. Heist’s book, A Nighttime Smoke, serves as a catalyst for Alana and Marko to seek him out in hopes that he can help them survive as they flee their pursuers. To drive the point home that Vaughan and Staples view Saga as a means of commentary and I would even argue instruction, they introduce the character of D. Essentially, Saga is a text that provides commentary on a myriad of topics, and in that way it exists in the same vein as Jack Kirby and Stan Lee‘s work, Dwayne McDuffie‘s, Christopher Priest’s, and countless others. Instead, I want to focus on one aspect that really stuck out to me, the use of literature as political commentary and protest. Saga tackles issues such as xenophobia, racism, sexism, war, and a myriad of other topics that I cannot dive into here. The story is engrossing, and the connections that arose in my mind as I read the story of Marko and Alana fleeing war with their daughter Hazel keep me going. However, once I started reading, I couldn’t put the books down. All of this, initially, kept me away from Saga because I am not necessarily a huge science fiction fan. There are cats who can tell if you are lying, aristocrats with CRT televisions for heads, characters with horns, characters with wings, planets that are actually eggs. Time and time again I would put it back on the shelf because it looked, in essence, crazy. On almost every trip to the library to find new books, I would pick up Saga and flip the pages. Crazy and unexpected! That is the only way I can truly describe what I experienced when I first started reading Brian K.

Saga graphic novel