Tag Archives: Gwendolin

Sep 27 2013

Saga 14

saga 14

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing Saga 13, originally released September 25th, 2013.

Shelby: One of the big parts of growing up is learning that you can’t always have what you want. As a kid, when your parents tell you that you can’t have something, you pitch a fit in the middle of the Jewel-Osco, but as you grow up you learn to more appropriately deal with disappointment. It’s a process that never stops, because we constantly have things we want taken away from us. Sometimes we have to choose between two things we want, knowing that we’ll always be a little disappointed for the option we didn’t take. Sometimes we have to face the hard truth that we can never again have what was lost, no matter how badly we want it.

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Aug 19 2013

Saga 13

saga 13

Today, Patrick and (guest writer) Brandon are discussing Saga 12, originally released August 14th, 2013.

Patrick: At the midnight Saga release party at Meltdown Comics over a year ago, Brian K. Vaughan said that he wanted to tell the story of a normal family stuck in the middle of an interstellar war that they wanted nothing to do with. The series itself bears this idea directly – Marko and Alana are combatants from opposite sides of an endless war that find each other through their shared belief in peace. From a storyteller’s perspective, War is much easier to write than Peace. In war (metaphorical or otherwise), there is an objective: no matter how messy and dark it gets, conditions for victory are clear. Saga 13 finds our characters searching blindly for what they’re ‘supposed’ to do next. It’s a meditation on the hope buried in hopelessness and the origin and influence of values. That’s right – welcome back to motherfucking Saga.

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Feb 27 2013

Saga 10

Alternating Currents: Saga 10, Drew and Patrick

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Saga 10, originally released February 20th, 2013.

Drew: I owned a lot of magic sets when I was a kid. That is to say, I enjoyed magic, but I wanted to understand how it was done. In may ways, this is the approach that I’ve taken towards art — I love being amazed by good music, movies, writing, etc, but I desperately want to know the techniques (the tricks, if you will) that make art so enjoyable. In general, that has been a very rewarding approach, allowing me a much deeper appreciation for how art works than I might have otherwise, but it has its limits. Ironically, I’ve never been able to really apply that approach to magic — partially because the techniques there are guarded as a matter of course, but mostly because I simply can’t get over how dazzling the effect is. Reading Saga leaves me similarly flabbergasted. Continue reading →

Jan 22 2013

Saga 9

Alternating Currents: Saga 9, Drew and Shelby

Today, Drew and Shelby are discussing Saga 9, originally released January 16th, 2013.

Drew: My trumpet teacher used to talk about the “Ascending Spiral Groove Thang,” the notion that you can gain a lot from an idea by returning to it after you have different experiences to relate it to. He was using it as a (valid) justification for retreading the same lessons for his advanced players that he gave to his beginners, but I often think about it in terms of appreciating narratives. Many stories that I enjoyed well enough as a kid became significantly more meaningful once I had my own experiences with loss, heartbreak, or leaving home. Of course, I’m a far cry from having seen it all, and nothing reminds me of that more than parenting stories. Whether they feature uptight professionals (or lazy slobs) whose lives are turned upside down by an adorable street urchin, or a good old-fashioned “we’re having a baby!” story, the moral is always the same: having a kid changes everything. I suspect these stories keep being told because artists keep experiencing it — a kind of “no, seriously: HAVING A KID CHANGES EVERYTHING” — and because the stories themselves can never really do the experience justice, all of which leaves me feeling like I’m probably missing something all parents just get. Fortunately, that ignorance doesn’t prevent me from enjoying said narratives, as Saga 9 so ably demonstrates. Continue reading →

Dec 26 2012

Saga 8

saga 8

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Saga 8, originally released December 19th, 2012.

Patrick: Shelby sometimes thinks we are a little bit too detail-oriented around here. But by and large, our assignments are “write about what you find interesting in this issue,” and details can be damn interesting. Saga 8 is one of those issues where what’s good about the experience of reading it might not be the same as what’s interesting about the issue. Heads up, I’m about to lose sight of the forest for the trees. But that’s only because I see some really neat trees and we already know the forest is amazing.

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