Saga #42

Previously in Saga #41

While not my favorite arc in the Saga series, the time spent in Phang dealt emotional blows like no arc before it. It began with the death of Izabel, and didn’t let up through Prince Robot’s demons causing him to question his ability to be a good father nor through the brutal reunion of The Will, Gwendolyn, and Sophie. And all of this while we knew Phang was heading for certain death.

The arc came to a gut-wrenching end in this issue. Tipped off by Petrichor, Alana and Marko prepare to flee, but can’t convince Jabarah, Kurti, and the other members of their new extended family to come with them. Jabarah remains sure that their faith will see them through and that Phang will endure as it always has. Oh, if only that were true.

Petrichor sacrifices a hand to launch the fuel source into their ship so they can take off before Phang enters the timesuck. Alana takes a nasty fall and loses the baby in the process. Meanwhile, The Will’s past catches up to him in the form of a bullet to the gut, fired by someone avenging the death of one of The Will’s targets.

Saga has always unapologetically shown the horrors of war on small scales. Save for a few flashbacks, we’re spared massive battles on the field. Instead, it focuses on the haunted soldiers, the separated families, the communities (planets, comets) caught in the middle. This makes for very few happy endings, but this one is particularly painful. Izabel has been a victim of the war twice, Marko and Alana lose their baby, and Prince Robot is still suffering from PTSD and no closer to finding his son.

Good on Vaughan for giving us a few final pages of nothing but silence so we could process what we’d just experienced. We’ll be feeling it for awhile.