Saga
Star-crossed soldiers Alana and Marko flee a never-ending galactic war to raise their daughter Hazel — Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Eisner and Hugo-winning space opera/fantasy epic.
📖 Image Comics • Started 2012
Somewhere at the edge of an endless war, a baby is born with her mother’s wings and her father’s horns — and the entire galaxy would kill to make sure she never grows up.
Saga is the epic space opera/fantasy series written by Brian K. Vaughan with art by Fiona Staples, published by Image Comics since March 2012. It opens the way all stories do — with a birth — as Alana, a winged soldier from the technologically mighty planet Landfall, and Marko, a horned deserter from Wreath, Landfall’s magic-wielding moon, bring their daughter Hazel into a universe that has been at war with itself for so long no one remembers how it began. Their only crime: falling in love across enemy lines. Their only hope: running.
A Family on the Run From Everything
What follows is a road trip across the most inventive galaxy in comics — part Star Wars, part Romeo and Juliet, and entirely its own thing. Hazel narrates from the future, an adult voice remembering her parents’ flight from bounty hunters, secret agents, a TV-obsessed robot prince, and a freelance assassin with a lying cat who only says one word. Vaughan packs every issue with razor dialogue and genuine heartbreak, while Staples draws creatures, worlds, and faces so alive they feel drawn from memory. The series won three Eisner Awards in 2013 — Best Continuing Series, Best Writer, and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist — plus a Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story, a run documented by Publishers Weekly, and The Beat has chronicled its two legendary hiatuses and triumphant returns.
A Planned 108-Issue Epic
Saga is plotted for 108 issues, and Vaughan and Staples bank issues during their breaks so the book can keep its famously low $2.99 price point — a promise Vaughan reaffirmed when the series returned in January 2022 after a three-year hiatus. It has sold over seven million copies, been translated into twenty languages, and refuses to be anything but a comic: Vaughan has said he has never received an adaptation offer that felt “additive” enough to accept.
Saga is unflinching about sex, violence, and parenthood, and it is all the more beautiful for it — Publishers Weekly called Volume 1 “a completely addictive, human story.” Perfect for fans of The Sandman’s literary fantasy, Preacher’s creator-owned audacity, and the Image Comics revolution — start at the beginning with Saga Volume 1, and try to put it down.
