Saga #61 finds our little family without a home, trying to hide from a war they can’t avoid. With art by Fiona Staples, writing by Brian K. Vaughan, and letters and design by Fonografiks.
Mark Turetsky: Hey Matt! It’s been a while. But only a few months this time, just the standard “between story arcs” break that has changed the game for creator-owned comics.
Matt Lazorwitz: Indeed! It’s good to be back. And, as is usual with the first issue of an arc of Saga, this one is setting the stage for what’s coming this time. Let’s get into it.
Strange Bedfellows
Matt: I don’t have kids, so I can’t speak from experience, but I’m pretty sure your kid walking in on you in bed with your kind of sleazy ex is up there on the list of parents’ worst nightmares.
Mark: It’s interesting to me how Staples and Vaughan seem to be setting up this second family as a reflection of Alana and her children. Gwendolyn and The Will are (currently) in positions of power, with Sophie able to attend a posh school. Of course, characters’ fortunes in Saga can rise or fall pretty precipitously; don’t forget the absolutely horrific situation in which we first met Sophie, on the planet Sextillion.
I’m particularly interested in Gwendolyn’s dream sequence that begins the issue, though: We see a bit of Marko and her past, at least her perspective on it. It’s interesting to see these younger incarnations of the characters. Gwendolyn is, as always, impeccably dressed, and Marko is an absolute shlub. But even though this is Gwendolyn’s dream, she doesn’t come across very favorably, does she?
Matt: Nope. Even before the nightmare part of the dream kicks in, Gwendolyn is being pretty hard on Marko. Now, granted, Marko is acting like a lovestruck puppy or the hero of some grand romantic epic, the latter of which absolutely fits with why he eventually fell for Alana, but still, he is about to go to the frontlines and she spends more time snarking at him and rolling her eyes at his romantic gestures.
Mark: When I first read it, I assumed we were seeing a holo adaptation of a romance novel based on Marko and Alana.
Matt: Then the nightmare kicks in, and that has to hurt. Gwendolyn is so composed all the time, these doubts and fears are never allowed to come to the surface, so I’d imagine when they do, it’s always a whopper. Now, how much of all of this is as it happened vs. what Gwendolyn remembers is ambiguous, and the nightmare Marko at the end clearly shows she has not gotten over his leaving her. And as my therapist and my partners often tell me, we are our own worst critics. “Nobody even likes you” is a harsh thing for an enemy to tell you; when it’s your own dream? That shows some deep-seated issues.
Mark: It also cleverly reminds us about the importance of Marko and Alana’s rings, both their magical and their sentimental significance, which becomes important later on in the issue.
Life on the Streets
Mark: The bulk of this issue focuses on getting us caught back up with Alana, Hazel and Squire. While the previous arc had Hazel hiding both wings and horns, here she’s openly displaying her wings, while keeping her horns hidden through the use of an enchanted choker necklace that magically hides them. You’d think that on a planet that’s been swept up into the war, they’d avoid any identifiable traits. But since she’s panhandling with a robot, it makes sense that they’d pick the wings; Squire has their “side” picked for them.
Matt: I want to say this is about the lowest we’ve seen the family when they’re all together, as separated and some imprisoned would still win the day for worst, but I don’t want to tempt fate (or Staples and Vaughan), because it can always get worse. They are currently unhoused, and Alana is working in a fulfillment center while the kids panhandle. They say busk, and the cover seems to indicate they are indeed playing music, but we don’t get shown that in the issue. Maybe something we’ll see over the course of the arc?
Mark: I can definitely see Squire getting some plastic buckets to drum on, but Hazel seems a long ways from being able to afford a guitar, as on the cover. Still, nobody says that she buys that guitar legitimately.
Matt: When they go to the black market shop, Alana very clearly tells Hazel to watch her sticky fingers, so her acquiring anything seems to be within the realm of possibility, since she doesn’t seem to have the most respect for the laws of ownership. Which, when you have had everything taken from you over and over, makes a degree of sense.
Mark: Issue #54 also begins with her stealing an album (“Assassins of Sadness” by Fartbox, of course). Still, I’m willing to chalk the cover up as a distraction, or possibly a misdirect.
Matt: The other important bit we get from that first scene is that it looks like Squire has picked up a new ability: the robot ability to make an arm cannon. That … doesn’t bode well for the next time the cops hassle them. The ACAB T-shirt absolutely says that he is getting less and less patient with the abuse the authorities show the unhoused, and he is becoming a living weapon. That’s a Chekhov’s arm gun if I ever saw one.
Mark: Well put! Looking ahead at the cover of #63, Alana has a job working for a clear Amazon analogue. That she has a full-time job and yet can’t afford a roof over her family is, uh, quite the indictment of the world’s biggest online retailer (and coincidentally, this issue comes out on the heels of Amazon’s massive ComiXology layoffs).
We also get to meet Vitch, the latest in a long line of friendly ties to the greater underworld. I think Alana has been burned enough times by figures like her that, as unguarded as she seems around Vitch, she’ll never completely trust her. Just call it a hunch. I also like that the trading license that seemed so important that Alana get in the previous arc is now a complete non-issue, since they don’t have a ship to smuggle with. Here, Alana is after a different bureaucratic MacGuffin, some papers to get off-planet in search of a better job.
Matt: If Alana hasn’t been burned by these too-nice-by-half underworld types one too many times, I certainly have in the world of Saga, because every red flag alarm in my head went off when we met Vitch. And it’s even more clear after she says she knows a way to bring Marko back from the dead. Yes, they live in a “universe of fuckin’ magic,” but resurrection seems like the kind of grift that you’d run on people who need papers and have no recourse. And I think Alana is smart enough to know that. Young Hazel, on the other hand …
Mark: As far as cliffhangers go, I’ve read 60 other issues of Saga, so I know not to take this entirely at face value. Good call on Hazel maybe getting taken in by the promise of having Marko back. If baby dragon hearts are powerful enough to resurrect the dead, they’d be a valuable commodity that Vitch would be auctioning off to the highest bidder, not to a war widow living on the streets.
Trying to Muster The Will
Matt: Well, we’ve gotten the answer to what one of our missing friends is up to, and a why, too. How she reached this point, though, remains a mystery. Petrichor is hunting The Will, to make him pay for Prince Robot IV’s death. But Narrator Hazel is fuzzy on what went down between her and Alana.
Mark: I went back and had a look at issue #54, the final one before the long break, just to remind myself of where we had left Petrichor. She had been sleeping with Prince Robot IV and they had planned to run off on their own. That is, until The Will killed Prince. Last we saw Petrichor was in the moments right after Marko’s death. She was still with Upsher, Alan, Ghüs and the kids on the beach. As to the “falling out” alluded to in the narration of this issue, I think it might be fairly obvious: Petrichor seems to have become some kind of revenging angel (she’s got two Wolverine claws! And an all-black ensemble!) while Alana wanted to lay low and protect the children. At least, that’s my theory as to what went down between them.
Matt: Makes sense. And she has certainly been at it for a while. The gap in comic time matching the gap in real world time means she’s been after The Will for 3+ years now, and does not seem to have any qualms about hurting whoever gets in her way. Meaning, I expect, she has left a trail of the wounded, if not the dead. And that also would complicate matters when it comes to a reunion with the family if she is, say, being hunted by other freelancers. And we know she’s on Gale’s radar, so I’m expecting bad things heading her way.
I was also interested in the way Erving thinks about freelancers; the idea that they keep the war from planets. We’ve really only seen freelancers as bounty hunters and assassins, and I suppose that can have wider rippling effects, sure, but I would be curious to see them working in other capacities, to see what other gigs a freelancer might take. It’s the kind of fleshing out of the world we get in this book.
Mark: Or it’s how a scumbag like Erving justifies being an agent for assassins. Kind of akin to someone trying to get laid bragging about being a military contractor. Speaking of, it’s nice to see the previously dapper Erving now spending his retirement on a “cheap-ass cruise,” wearing a less-than-chic ensemble. Also nice that when bragging about how he was a force for peace in his career that his own son just plain doesn’t respond for long enough that Erving assumes they’ve been disconnected. Sounds like, in what might well be his final moments, Erving can’t find anyone who likes him, including his own son. Way to live, Erving.
Saga, Etc.
- The Petrichor scene begins with Erving’s cruise ship flying away from what appears to be the pyramidal planet that Alana, Hazel and Squire are currently on, so she’s in the same cosmic neighborhood.
- I’ve been recording best insult of the issue down here, but there weren’t any particularly evocative ones this issue. “Ungrateful peasant” is the closest we got.
Mark Turetsky
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
