By Zack Quaintance — When is Saga comic back, or when will the Saga comic return? is a question I hear all the time, what with my site having dedicated literally 55 posts to Saga, the sci-fi family drama comic from writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples. The educated guess for a while now has been that Saga is coming back this year, based on the two most recent public appearances Vaughan has made at major comics events.

At New York Comic Con in October 2019, Vaughan appeared at a panel celebrating the completion of another recent project, Paper Girls, during which the last question turned to what he was working on now. “Writing all Saga all the time...” was his immediate answer, noting that he wasn’t ready to announce a return date just yet. That same month, Vaughan also appeared at Baltimore Comic Con, this time at an all-purpose spotlight panel, where he noted again that both he and Staples were hard at work, but that they don’t want to schedule or announce a return until they have the entire next story arc completed, which seems likely to mean they have to do six full issues, given that every other arc that makes up the book has spanned that length.

With all that in mind, my guess for sometime now has been that the book would return in July 2020, which would limit the hiatus to a neat two-year timespan, given the last issue of Saga (you know, the emotionally devastating one) hit stores in July 2018. That’s also a seven months and change lead, minimum, factoring the time from last year, which just about fits and then some.

The problem now, however, is that the coronavirus pandemic has upended the entire comics business. We’ll update this post as more info becomes available, but as of this writing, Diamond Comics Distributors is currently not accepting new product indefinitely, with smaller and mid-size publishers (including Image Comics) refraining from even digital releases while the Big 2 (Marvel and DC Comics) both move forward with releases in that format. In addition, a number of smaller publishers are pushing back the new comics they’d planned to release in April, May, and June further into the summer months.

Short of Image Comics going all the way under, however, this all seems unlikely (from the outside) to effect the release of Saga, which now that The Walking Dead has ended is the publisher’s top seller. Indeed, whenever Vaughan and Staples have Saga ready, the publisher will want to get it back and get that cash flowing, both to them and the many local comic shops (all of which are being smashes business-wise by this crisis) that depend on Saga for sales.

Basically, imagine this: It’s July, life in America is finally starting to normalize again, and Image Comics has the first new issue of Saga to ship in the past two years, or even just to announce for pre-orders. Given all that, our new educated guess is that Saga will return this year, with the absolute earliest month being July but no latter than November, upping that foot traffic for shops just in time for the holiday season.

And yes, I realize this post is mostly speculation, but there is, after all, a quarantine on. Speculation is all we have, and this variety is a lot more fun than wondering about the death and economic repercussions. And on that note, I hope you all are staying safe out there.

Revisit our Saga Re-Read Project here!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.