“I’m grateful to my mother for many things, but mostly that she never let me see my father like this.”
Keep reading for a review of Saga #62.
Spoilers below!
My main takeaway from this issue is that I need to give Alana some freaking credit.
Last issue a black market vendor told her that with the right materials and a lot of money, she could bring Marko back to life. I immediately pictured Alana throwing away everything she’s worked for to make that happen, and in the end getting ripped off for nothing.
But, spoilers, I should have expected better of her.
The issue starts with a flashback, and I thought we were going to see that moment, the moment where she finds Marko’s dead body. And that’s sort of what happened, except it’s long enough after the murder for his body to decompose a bit, and she already knew he was dead. She just wanted to bury his remains.
The flashbacks are slowly working their way back to that moment, though. We’ve seen Alana talk to the werewolf doctor about Marko’s death, when she asked to have her wings removed. The flashback this issue is before that, because she still has her wings, and we also learn what the falling out between her and Petrichor was about. (And if you know anything about Petrichor you’ll know why she looked so touched when Alana called her “an extraordinary bitch.”)
Alana refuses to get sucked into some suicide revenge mission, and it makes complete sense. Almost every horrible thing she and Marko have gone through was because someone just couldn’t let something go, whether it’s whole planets in a never ending war or individuals looking for some kind of payback.
And Alana is so good at figuring out what she really needs to do, and letting everything else go. She chopped off her wings because they were useless anyway and likely to get her killed, she literally burst out laughing at the idea of getting revenge for Marko’s death, and now she’s smart enough to know that anybody saying they can bring someone back to life is crazy or lying or both. She wasn’t tempted even for a second.
Hazel, of course, is upset, but I think she believes Alana that bringing the dead back to life is just make believe. Squire, though, that’s going to be a problem. I’d almost forgotten how he’d told Hazel he loves her, I’d hoped maybe he’d get over that since she doesn’t like him that way, but the look on his face as he’s leaving…I think he wants to make Hazel happy more than he wants to believe what Alana’s saying. There’s layers and layers of heartbreak waiting for him no matter what he does.
Meanwhile The Will and Sophie have a very sweet talk about what he’s going to do with Marko’s ring (can’t wait to see what Gwen thinks about that plan) and then we see what Special Agent Gale is up to.
Again, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples are masters at making a character we just haaaaaaaate, and then giving us reasons to maybe (almost?) care about them. Gale is a psychopath and a douchebag, but the look on his face in the final panel, you can tell this mission is getting too depressing even for him, but he doesn’t really have much choice.
Speaking of Staples’ art, it’s the expressions that really stood out to me this issue. Alana giggling helplessly over Marko’s body, Sophie’s face when she said “Lying.” (and don’t think I missed the fact that she said it, but Lying Cat didn’t), Hazel’s snarl when Alana used the word “retarded,” and the final panel of the bat-woman Gale fought with, they’re all just perfect.
Question: does anyone know what Brian K. Vaughan meant in his intro to the letters page, when he said he and Staples had a “major evolution in our storytelling style”? He mentioned a controversial door-chime “inset” and he was definitely talking about this issue. He finished up the letters page with saying he just learned what an “inset panel” is. (That’s when a panel sits inside another panel or overlaps it, right?) It was a great issue from start to finish but nothing stood out to me as being a big switch in pacing or plotting. I’m sure he was being tongue in cheek, but I didn’t see any inset panels did you? I wonder what he meant.
EDIT – Kathryn found it: when they’re in the pawn shop there’s an inset panel of a door chime ringing. Fiona and Brian were just having a giggle about never using that design element before.