"Kel, when in your writing, when in your life have you ever worried about sounding weird?"
"Point taken. "
One of my favorite feelings in the world is when someone or something gets under your skin. The moment you realize that you've been thinking about a person or a book or a song for hours and that even if you wanted to, you couldn't stop it. Obviously, it's most enjoyable when it's a person who gets under your skin (Correction: it's most enjoyable when it's a person who gets under your skin and you know they feel the same way about you.) but I certainly still appreciate the sensation when it's a song or a book.
Right now, I can't stop thinking about Saga.
Of course I can't stop thinking about Saga. It's exactly the kind of story to catch my attention. It's a love story set in space in the distant future. There's a large puma(ish) cat that can detect when someone is lying and lets its owner know. The spaceships are made out of trees (a change Brian K. Vaughn made because Fiona Staples (*swoon*) hates drawing mechanical things). There's a character named Prince Robot IV who is drawn just like a person except he has a television for a head.
Is this all sounding a little too weirdly grand?
It is. It's a completely mad, brilliant story. Everything that happens is completely improbable and it requires more than a normal comic book suspension of disbelief. But if you allow yourself that suspension of disbelief and crawl into the story (a process made SO much easier by Fiona Staples's art) you wind up with a story that is, well, it could be the plot line to almost any romance novel ever written. Girl meets boy. Girl and boy fall in love. Girl and boy overcome tremendous obstacles to be with one another.
The problem, of course, is that Saga is still in production, and Brian K. Vaughn is second possibly only to Joss Whedon for killing off characters you adore, so I'm certain that at some point I'm going to end up on Nick and Victoria's couch crying like an idiot.
It'll be worth it.
There are so many things I adore about this comic. The originality of the characters, the gorgeousness of the artwork, the way Vaughn makes a (let's face it) somewhat tired storyline feel fresh, the fact that ohmygod there are moments when Alana is talking that I feel like he's been poaching things from my brain.
I frequently get sort of frustrated when reading or watching something that depicts couples who have been together for years, or couples who are married, or couples who are anything except just starting out. How often are those couples depicted and either estranged or as madly in love as they were when they first started out?
It's a dichotomy I wouldn't notice if I wasn't surrounded by so many people in long-term relationships (many about to close out their first decade of coupledom) but because my immediate circle of friends is made up primarily of people in long-term relationships (and because we are all ridiculously involved in one another's lives) it's something that stands out to me. None of their relationships are perfect, but they're not miserable either.
It's what I love about Saga, it's what makes Alana and Marko stand out among comic book characters I've encountered over the years. I know how this sounds coming from a self-professed socially awkward nerd, but they have the kind of relationship I want, the kind of relationship I see in the couples I hang out with regularly.
They're a couple that's obviously deeply, crazily in love with one another. They also get pissed at one another, and fight, and fuck and make up and make one another laugh. Their relationship is sexy as hell and not just because of smutty bits (although, Holy Jesus). It's because their relationship is complex and complete. It's a real relationship, drawn and written into comic book form.
It's the kind of relationship, the kind of story that gets under your skin.
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