Tag Archives: Ghüs

Jun 29 2018

Saga 53: Discussion

by Spencer Irwin and Taylor Anderson

This article containers SPOILERS. If you have not read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Spencer: In recent months our Saga coverage has focused quite a bit on how Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan have been taking their time, luxuriating in a slower pace and revealing more and more about their characters as they move pieces into place, setting up for a no doubt explosive finale. That said, no matter how much build up they have, grand confrontations don’t work the same way in Saga as they do in many other similar pieces of media; there’s no monologue-and-metaphor-filled matches of will, no intricately choreographed fight scenes, no thirty episode long battles as Namek slowly burns in the background. Instead, Saga’s finales reflect real life violence. They’re quick, brutal, often random, and care very little about the events that have led up to them or who’s right or wrong.  Continue reading →

Jun 4 2018

Thrillingly Putting the Pieces in Place in Saga 52

by Drew Baumgartner

Saga 52

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

In this game, Fischer (playing Black) demonstrates noteworthy innovation and improvisation. Byrne (playing White), after a standard opening, makes a seemingly minor mistake on move 11, losing tempo by moving the same piece twice. Fischer pounces, with brilliant sacrificial play, culminating in an incredible queen sacrifice on move 17. Byrne captures the queen, but Fischer gets far too much material for it – a rook, two bishops, and a pawn. At the end, Fischer’s pieces coordinate to force checkmate, while Byrne’s queen sits, helpless, at the other end of the board.

Bobby Fischer’s Breakthrough: The Game of the Century

When someone says a chapter of a story is “putting the pieces in place,” it’s usually meant to point out some emotional shortcoming. Putting the pieces in place is seen as perfunctory, a perhaps necessary prelude to the actual drama to come, lacking in any real emotional investment (and maybe even drawing our attention to the invisible hand guiding circumstances into position). But I think that attitude is entirely shortsighted, privileging the fallout of events more than the setup, and ignoring that the “pieces” and “places” are the raw materials for drama, so how and why they’re there are essential story elements. It’s the kind of attitude that would make Bobby Fischer’s famous “Game of the Century” is only thrilling in its final moments, as he finally forced Byrne’s king into checkmate, but any chess fan can tell you that the ending was set up 21 moves earlier, which in turn may have been set up six moves earlier still, reminding us that the simple act of moving pieces on the board is what drives the drama in a game of chess. Obviously, Saga isn’t a game, and the characters aren’t chess pieces (royalty notwithstanding), but it’s just a thrilling to watch them scoot into attack position — even when we can’t see the attack coming. Continue reading →

May 2 2018

Dread, Anticipation, and Waiting in Saga 51

by Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

The current arc of Saga has, in many ways, been a slower one. That’s not a complaint — Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples know exactly how to make even simple moments of domestic bliss, strife, or harmony absolutely riveting — just an observation. With Ianthe plotting in the background, and with Saga‘s track record of major twists and deaths coming at a fairly regular pace, there are likely some readers waiting impatiently to get to the next “big” moment and see exactly where this is all leading. Saga 51 brings us one step closer to a major reckoning, but it also reminds readers why these quieter issues are so essential to the series as a whole. Continue reading →

Mar 7 2018

You Always Hurt The Ones You Love in Saga 49

by Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Jane: You’re willing to have [your story] published and read by strangers, but you don’t want your best friend to see it?
Daria: Thank you for understanding.

Daria, The Story of D

I’ve never been all that good at communicating with my parents, especially when it comes to details about my life. It isn’t because I don’t like them or we don’t get along, but because I care so much about what they think about me that I’m terrified I’ll upset or disappoint them. It’s the same reason it’s easier for me to share my writing with, or even sing karaoke in front of, strangers than friends — people who actually know and care about you, whose opinions you respect, can hurt you far more than anyone else. Saga 49 finds more cast members than ever crammed into tight quarters, which makes the wounds they inflict upon each other all the more painful. Continue reading →

Apr 6 2016

Saga 35

saga 35

Today, Shelby and Spencer are discussing Saga 35, originally released March 30th, 2016.

Shelby: One of the changes I’ve been trying to make for myself these last few years is in improving my communication. So many problems in both the real world and in fiction can be solved with just some simple communication. Every time two big-name superheroes meet for the first time, there’s always an issue devoted to them punching each other; if they just took two seconds to communicate a bit first, we’d be spared those boringly inevitable stories. The real problem, though, comes in when characters cannot communicate and have to act anyway. Characters who choose to act first, I got no sympathy for; it’s the ones that couldn’t even if they wanted to that I find the most intriguing and the most sympathetic. If you’re at all familiar with Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga, you’ll understand this sentiment completely. Continue reading →

Mar 9 2016

Saga 34

saga 34

Today, Spencer and Ryan M. Patrick are discussing Saga 34, originally released February 24th, 2016.

Spencer: Every once in a while, a long running series will introduce a new concept and try to say, “hey, this has been important all along!” This can be frustrating when it isn’t true (see: all the various retcons in Star Wars) or when the concept changes the entire dynamic of the series. Yet, when a new idea seamlessly integrates itself into the structure of the story, helping to express and define concepts that have been there all along, it can be absolutely enlightening. That’s what happens in Saga 34, where Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan use the idea of “diversity” to dig into both the causes and the solutions to all the problems plaguing the world of Saga. Continue reading →

Jun 16 2015

Saga 29

Alternating Currents: Saga 29, Drew and Spencer

Today, Drew and Spencer are discussing Saga 29, originally released June 10th, 2015.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Drew: Written in the wake of the first World War, “The Second Coming” features some of the most vivid images in modernist poetry. The second stanza takes on a more biblical tone, name-dropping the titular second coming, but the first stanza, quoted above, features no hint of the divine — this is pure horror of war stuff. Of all the concepts Yeats evokes, the notion that “the best lack all conviction” might actually be the scariest to me. If war can change our values and convictions, what are we actually fighting for? Curiously, we talk about becoming a parent in similar ways: our values and priorities shift around when we have a child to care for. Saga has always existed at the weird intersection between war and parenthood, but issue 29 makes its exploration of the values we sacrifice in the name of either a bit more explicit. Continue reading →

May 15 2015

Saga 28

Alternating Currents: Saga 28, Drew and Patrick

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Saga 28, originally released May 13th, 2015.

Drew: There are few things more depressing than studying altruism at a biological level. In a world driven by survival, what could possibly compel an individual to risk life and limb (or, more modestly, share food and shelter) with another? For sexually mature individuals, the most obvious answer is reproduction — helping your mate or your offspring survive increases the chance of your genes, and thus, the behavior of protecting your mate and offspring, will be carried on to future generations. But what about other relationships? Well, in 1964, W.D. Hamilton proposed that we help others for basically the same reason we protect our offspring: because we share genes with them. Importantly, we only share genes with those that are actually related to us, and a key part of Hamilton’s formula was the “relatedness coefficient” — essentially, you’re more likely to help your sibling than your cousin because you’re more related to them, or, more precisely, because you’re more likely to share genes with them. Which is to say, we don’t help people at all, we help their genes, and only because their genes are our genes. From that perspective, “altruism” doesn’t exist at all — we’re all just working in service of totally self-interested genes.

Of course, we’re not entirely driven by our genes. If genes give us our hardware, culture gives us our software, allowing us to do all kinds of things our genes wouldn’t dream of, from taking vows of celibacy to covering a live grenade to protect our platoon. Those are some extreme examples, but I think they become more relatable when we think of those acts as protecting family. Sure, a religious congregation or military unit aren’t technically families, but they can act as families for those who need it. It’s exactly these types of makeshift families — and the sacrifices they elicit — that Saga 28 is all about. Continue reading →

Apr 13 2015

Saga 27

saga 27

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Saga 27, originally released April 8th, 2015.

Grace comes home drunk some times / and beats on the doorway to my guts. / I fumble with the locks / ’til the wound opens up. / She falls in, laughing: “Honey, I’m home.”

I wince as she stumbles up my spine / leaves a trail of bruises on my ribs. / I choke on her dancing on my tongue / she kicks out a tooth. / “Honey, I’m home.”

She lights a cigarette inside my head / blows all the smoke into my eyes / until she sees a tear. / Then she sighs: “just what I thought — another fragile Buddha”

Stuart Davis, “Grace”

Patrick: The language of love and the language of violence are uncomfortably similar. I’d also argue that they are two cultural constants we never really understand. The impulses to nurture and destroy are down deep in the human subconsciousness, ungoverned by rationality. Bryan K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples explore this through Marko’s bad fadeaway trip in Saga 27, suggesting that pacifism may mute more than Marko’s passion for violence, but all of his passions. He wakes up with a clarity, but is that a clarity to be celebrated or to be reviled? Continue reading →

Feb 10 2015

Saga 25

saga 25

Today, Ryan and Patrick are discussing Saga 25, originally released February 4th, 2015.

Ryan: Pop culture loves rebels. We hang posters of them in our dorm rooms, whether they have a cause or not. We wear red graphic t-shirts emblazoned with their likeness, not very concerned about some of the more morally ambiguous acts this person committed. Luke Skywalker played figurehead for the Rebel Alliance and may be the most popular and beloved rebel of all time, despite the fact that the blood of 322,951 Death Star personnel (not to mention the oil of 400 thousand plus droids) stains his non-synthetic hand. Saga 25 adds another variable into the mix with the introduction of a third side to the outstanding war between Landfall and Wreath, while also providing another complication to the Dengo child-heist. Continue reading →