The Saga Re-Read: Saga #53, where it all starts to go even worse

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By Zack Quaintance — Re-reading Saga has been a dual exercise in clarity and familiar feelings. The clarity comes with the reminders of what has happened in this story and why, both of which are liable to get lost when you read a comic monthly. The familiar feelings are a bigger surprise, in that I find myself being moved by this story in almost the exact same ways I was the first time through.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #52 is ominous as all get out

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By Zack Quaintance — So, it’s been a while since the last installment of the Saga Re-Read, which we posted way back on Sept. 20...like six weeks ago! To be totally honest, I thought we’d have an announcement of a return date by now, especially with writer Brian K. Vaughan appearing at New York Comic Con. Part of me thought his presence at the show was all about announcing a Saga return.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #46, ‘#*$& your mercy in the face’

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By Zack Quaintance — One of the qualities I find impressive within Saga is the way the series can both linger with you for the scope of its massive (and defiantly coherent) narrative, while also consistently landing some of the best individual moments in comics. For example, I remember this stretch of issues as the abortion arc, a somber aside that fit into the larger story because it sort of settled the question of whether Marko and Alana would have more kids. Upon losing and subsequently terminating the pregnancy to save the mothers life, they realize they won’t. It’s a vital part of the massive story going on here, if a bit of a side quest, so to speak.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #45 is as heartrending and suspenseful as this book gets

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By Zack Quaintance — Saga #45 put us directly into the heart of a story arc in which Marko and Alana must go to a wild west planet in search of a discrete medical procedure to help her with the baby she lost in the last story arc. This sounds silly for me to say, but as I re-read it, this story arc is proving to be much darker than I remember. I think that has to do with reading it with weekly breaks, rather than with months…

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #44 is a story of miscarriage, abortion, and a pro-life posse

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By Zack Quaintance —  And like so many things on the site this week, today the Saga Re-Read is making its (triumphant?) return. It’s been a nice break, in the sense that now we just might have an announcement about the book’s return before this whole thing is over, although I still think the smart money is on it coming back in November, following the release of that super-mega-first-half-of-Saga hardcover.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #43 is an accessible encapsulation of what this book is all about

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By Zack Quaintance — So, this is an interesting issue, in that it was discounted to $.25 and aimed at attracting new readers to a long running title. I like these sort of things and comics like this. I came up reading books that were 400-some issues into their numbering and still working hard to summarize what had been going on lately on the off chance it was even just one reader’s first issue. This harkens back to that just a tad.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #42 really ups the bleakness

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By Zack Quaintance — One of my favorite things in monthly comics is when a long-running series has become so comfortable with its characters and plot, that it can start to center entire chapters around theme, rather than knocking things out it has to do to hit big dramatic flourishes. Phew. Anyway, Kurt Busiek is a master of this, but Brian K. Vaughan has some pretty strong chops as well.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #41 is a return to a central Saga theme

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By Zack Quaintance — Here we are at the penultimate chapter of The War for Phang, which concludes neatly next week with its sixth part. First, however, there is more fighting and more suspense. Giving into violent urges a theme that is as central to this book as those about family, and we see it here thoroughly unpacked.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #39 drops an interesting clue about the book’s future

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By Zack Quaintance — We’re roughly at the midway point of the War for Phang storyline, and, as is in keeping with the rest of Saga, we really haven’t seen all that much warring. Instead, our central characters have remained at the margins of any actual fighting. The war is still a threat to them, but none of our main cast are all that invested in how it’s going or who wins. They just want to be rid of it, which I think is…

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Top Comics to Buy for May 1, 2019: The Green Lantern #7, Paper Girls #28, and more

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By Zack Quaintance — This was a big weekend for pop culture, with Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones: The Battle of Winterfell marking a massive concentrated culmination of the zeitgeist's ongoing concerns for the past decade. This is all a fancy way to note that this Monday morning I am very tired. Yet, here we are as always just two days away from new comics. Commerce must go on, even more so than Thanos or…

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The Saga Re-Read: We say goodbye to a beloved character in Saga #38

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By Zack Quaintance — The War for Phang story arc has been billed as a self-contained event for Saga, and so as you’ll see in a moment, that means teasing the death of a character. Indeed, in modern comics no event is complete without loss, and even indie-minded Saga capitulates to…

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #37 starts THE WAR FOR PHANG (scary)

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By Zack Quaintance — Here begins Saga’s self-contained The War for Phang event story, which I remember being a tad bit disappointed with at the time. In retrospect, it’s really more on me than it is on the creator’s of this comic. Saga is not and has never been that kind of comic, the one to play up grandiose warfare into some kind of marketable event. Besides, have you seen the rest of…

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #35, in which A LOT happens but still no reunion

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By Zack Quaintance — One thing I’ve noticed often during this re-read is that there are almost two distinct types of Saga issues. The first is a surface level rapidfire burst of action and plot. The second is a slower, more emotional sort of issue that uses a lot of metaphors to get at deep truths about love, family, and relationships. This series is so grandiose (look at its title), that it certainly has room for both…

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