Issue 54 of Saga Absolutely Wrecked Me
SPOILER WARNING IN THE LARGEST OF DEGREES
Seriously. If you haven’t read the latest issue of Saga, leave. Right now. I’m about to go off the cuff on the happenings of the latest issue because I am shooketh. Unless you want some big shit spoiled for you, run away!
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I’m not kidding. Get the hell away from here if you aren’t fully caught up.
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Okay. If you’ve gotten this far, I assume that you’ve read Issue 54 of Saga and are as broken as I am right now. So let’s just rip that band-aid off straight away.
Marko is dead, guys.
I knew coming into this issue that it would be explosive. But I didn’t think it’d be this explosive. I mean, we had just lost Prince Robot IV in the previous issue, so things couldn’t get that much worse, right? Boy, was I wrong.
Even as the issue progressed, I didn’t really see this coming. When Marko chooses not to kill The Will, I was just like “this makes sense given Marko’s aversion to killing.” Sure, I was kinda wishing he had just gone for it since The Will is pretty despicable and had just killed Prince Robot. But I still didn’t see that next panel coming.
I read the issue this morning at around 2am since I was up to do some Korean League of Legends editing (gotta love esports!) and I audibly gasped and said “WHAT THE FUCK?!” when it happened. I was actually worried that I was gonna wake up Kayla and have her be concerned as to what I was exclaiming about. I can’t really think of a time in which I’ve been that moved by something that happened in comic. Issue 100 of The Walking Dead comes to mind, but I read that one much later than its initial release, so I knew that something was coming during that issue. This issue of Saga was different in that I had no idea it was coming.
The fact that I was reading this one on release is probably why I was hit so hard by this issue. Saga is the first comic series that I’ve kept up with from Day 1. I remember reading about the series before its first issue came out and being incredibly into the concept. Space opera filled with unrequited love and forbidden romance? Sign me the hell up.
From that very first issue, I was hooked. I hadn’t really read anything like this before. The story by Brian K. Vaughan coupled with the gorgeous art style of Fiona Staples created a product that I was obsessed with. As such, I’ve been with these characters for six long years. Through the ups and downs of Alana and Marko losing Hazel and getting her back to Alana getting pregnant and losing the baby in what has previously been the most devastating panels of the series before Marko’s death. We’ve been through the ringer with this galactic romance, but it’s been an incredible ride.
Throughout the entire ride, though, things have stayed the same. The characters never wavered in their stances and never compromised their virtues. Even until the very end of this issue.
I had forgotten about something that Hazel said about The Will all the way back during the first issue of the comic.
“Like every Freelancer I had the misfortune to eventually meet, he was a fucking MONSTER.”
If only we knew how true that ended up being. From the first time we met his character, he basically existed just to try and destroy our beloved family. He was a contract killer. That was his job. But this was Alana and Marko, we’re talking about. Nothing can hurt them. There’s no way that The Will would actually carry out his task.
That’s what we were led to believe for almost 54 full issues. The Will had gotten close, but never managed to get there. I didn’t think he‘d ever get there. I suppose that was a bit foolish to think, though.
Throughout those 54 issues, Vaughan had shown us that nothing at all is sacred. No one is truly safe here. From the deaths of Izabel and D. Oswald Heist (among a host of others), Alana’s miscarriage, and everything in between, we were conditioned to take nothing for granted here.
That was especially true given Prince Robot IV’s death at the end of Issue 53. But in a way, that death made us feel safe. At least it made me feel safe. With one of the main characters getting killed in the penultimate issue of arc, surely no one else major would die, right? Vaughan wouldn’t completely rip us apart like that, right?
Again, how wrong we were.
Even in death, though, Marko stuck true to himself. When he escaped from the Wreath army with Alana and basically swore off all violence (except in situations where he needed to directly save his family), he gave it all up for good. Even when he had the chance to kill the man that had been hunting family for YEARS. I absolutely hate that he chose to not kill The Will, but I understand it. From a character development standpoint, it makes perfect sense. Killing The Will in that instance would have compromised everything that he has stood for during the 54 issues of this series. But fuck does it suck that he stuck to his laurels in this instance and ended up dead because of it.
And if it wasn’t enough that we had to deal with the death of Marko, Vaughan then hit us with the double whammy in announcing during the letters section that they would be taking a hiatus of at least a year instead of the normal 2–3 months they usually take off after each arc. Now apparently this had actually been announced all over the internet on Tuesday night, but I was napping before the aforementioned Korean League of Legends death shift and didn’t see the news. So I was hit with a wave of emotions two times over.
While some people will undoubtedly be upset with this hiatus, I’m actually okay with it. This cliffhanger is one that leaves me feeling so empty that I’m okay with not reading anything new from this series for a year. I think we’ll need the time to recover here. Plus, every break that Brian and Fiona have taken over the years has been paid off and seemingly kept the series feeling fresh. I can imagine that Marko’s death scene was incredibly hard to write and to draw, so they surely need a break, too. Not to mention that it’s clear this death will send Saga into new territory. We’re in the end game now, to quote the homie Dr. Strange. With the year break, there should be plenty of time to get the story crafted and planned out to keep the rest of the saga (he he, see what I did there) feeling fresh. Let’s just hope this doesn’t turn into a George R.R. Martin-type hiatus lasting for years and years, though. But given the track history of Saga, I don’t think that will be the case.
So yeah, it’s been almost a day now since I read the issue and I’m still reeling from it. Damn you, Brian K. Vaughan for crafting such an amazing story and wrapping me up in it so much!
Now to figure out what comic to sink my energy into for the next year….