Saga #24 – Review

Last time we were here, commenter Joe informed me that I had misleadingly implied that #23 was the last issue of the arc when we had one more issue—this issue—left. Apologies for leading anyone astray, but at the time, with Alana and the rest of the family speeding off to parts unknown with Dengo, Marko helplessly watching on while Robot approaches, it did feel like we had come to the end of all the arc’s major plot threads.

And if this is to be the actual last issue of the arc, I find it a bit of an odd one to end on, even as an epilogue, because it opens up new storylines rather than closes them. Only Marko and Robot make a last-page reappearance here (together, intriguingly enough, with Marko carrying a sweet sword and shield); the rest of the issue features the Saga players we haven’t seen for six issues. In most respects, you feel like you’ve just started a new arc, not concluded one.

While the issue doesn’t exactly star The Will (who’s still catatonic several years later, apparently), everything in it revolves around him, reaffirming his high status within the series. Every character in Saga is to a certain degree complicated, which is a large part of its greatness, but Will is the messy kind of complicated you can’t really contain in a neat, archetypical box. In his flashback/dream of the Stalk, he’s clearly unnerved by her casual admission of maybe wanting kids someday. “You remember what we do for a living, right?” he demands.

“Unlike you, I’m more than my fucking job description,” she retorts.

But where does that initial freak-out come from? His later dealings with Sophie prove that he’s got good father qualities in him, that he liked playing dad to her, so why the anti-kid attitude in that moment? Actually, the scene reveals not so much how Will feels about kids, but rather how he feels about his job. If he can’t square the idea of raising kids around his type of work, he must see its brutality, which means he still has a moral compass despite the moral vagaries of Freelancing.

Maybe that’s what Gwen means when she tells The Brand, “I’ve just come to realize that The Will is the only person in your reprehensible line of work qualified to complete a singularly important job.” If the job is still to off Marko and Alana while sparing Hazel, Will may very well be the only professional assassin you’d trust to not go overboard and kill the kid, too. Or this could just be Gwen’s less-than-subtle way of hiding that she has feelings for him.

You do share Brand’s doubt that someone with a purely professional relationship to Will would go to such lengths to “fix” him. From the look of things, while Alana and Co. spent the last few years trying out domesticity, Gwen, Sophie, and Lying Cat have embarked on a “quest” (Sophie’s words, not Gwen’s) to mix up an elixir that can save him. Along the way, they’ve become a cohesive, formidable unit, with Gwen more proficient in attack spells and Will’s equipment, Sophie more confident and assertive (“I’m telling the truth, you evil B-word!”), and Lying Cat just being Lying Cat. It may have been a while since we’ve seen them last, but you’re ready to follow them into action once again.

Anyone who’s read any of Vaughan’s work knows that he can come up with some crazy ideas sometimes, so having an artist like Staples aboard his project is practically required. He needs someone with a centered, realistic view of the world to bring credibility to such items as a man and spider-woman having sex, a goblin soldier’s face melting and splitting apart, a tiny seal-man in coveralls herding a flock of lumbering walruses. Staples draws it all with a straight face, never letting on that she sees its often funny, occasionally disturbing absurdity.

– Next stop: Demimonde, for dragon semen and Stalk’s world

– Minhquan Nguyen