On one hand, I’m so pleased for my Cannonball review to be something I loved; on the other hand, how do I even review Saga Volume 4? It’s insane: suspenseful, heartbreaking, raunchy, funny, touching, and freaking gorgeous.
So, what happens in Vol 4, besides everything? Well, Marko and Alanna and family are still on the run from any number of people who want to bring them in for various politically-motivated reasons. While at first the outlaw renegade thing was kind of a turn-on, now it’s just stressful and driving a wedge between them (sob!) Alanna is acting on a soap opera that is pure cheddar, and Marko is a stay-at-home dad, feeling lonely and even further distant from his wife because of her refusal to ever talk in great detail about what’s going on at work.
Meanwhile, the royal Robot family is in disarray, because the Prince is still undergoing an extended reboot (that is to say: he’s sick) and he misses the birth of his son. Also, a rogue custodial robot is mad about social inequality and will do just about anything to seek justice. Here’s a funny note about the character design of the robots — they are pretty humanoid in overall shape, but their heads are different kinds of screens. Prince Robot IV has what looks like a sleek but still bulky (think original iMac shape) monitor for a head, while the lower classes of robots have black and white TVs — in fact, they’re derisively called “black and whites.” The King Robot, of course, has a gigantic flat-screen LCD TV for a head. It’s a really creative choice that also intelligently plays on concepts we totally grasp to denote class and station, such that even without explaining it, we would get it just by looking at the characters. The series is full of stuff like this — far enough removed from reality to be completely fantastical, but still drawing from cues that we inherently follow to strengthen the narrative.
I can’t say enough good things about this series. It’s awesome that it’s so out there, and yet so accessible even to people who don’t normally do comics (like me.) Does anyone who has read it not like it? (Don’t tell me; I don’t want my heart broken.)
Tl;dr: READ SAGA. Fin.
