The second issue of Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga hit stands earlier this week and, as a follow up to the sold-out first issue, it doesn’t disappoint. In my review of the first issue of “Saga”, I commented on the immensity of the world the reader is thrown into. While it felt a bit overwhelming, Vaughan’s masterful writing successfully ignites the fuse on the plot and shoots his new comic into hyperdrive, even while presenting multiple story lines.

One of the things that has made Game of Thrones wildly successful is Robert R. Martin’s ability to fully engage the reader with the fate of multiple characters. While Martin’s characters are spread far and wide, creeping slowly towards each other over vast seas and wide swathes of land, Vaughan has made his characters speed towards each other through muthaf***ing SPACE! Only two issues in, and it is already exciting to anticipate what will happen when their varied paths collide.

The second issue has definitely trimmed down its scope and presented the three main character/story lines (I can definitely see additions to this number in future issues). This allows the reader to really get a feel for he character’s personalities, and how they are going to act/react as Vaughan begins to pull the intricate strands of fate he has connected to each of them. While the narrator of the story is the super important (for unknown but totally cosmic reasons) baby Hazel, her parents, Alana and Marko, are really the main characters. While in the first issue we got a lot of background on them, this issue let’s us see them in a little more depth: Marko has his unshakeable vow of not taking up arms, and Alana (as it becomes clear) also has unshakeable willpower and is a little kinky. It is how these things come through in Vaughan’s writing and Fiona Staple’s artwork that are going to combine with the genre-blending universe to make this an epic comic.

The other two characters that this issue focus on are the bounty hunter named, The Will, and the definitely neurotic prince of the Robot Kingdom. On the outset it seems that the only character who is going to introduce a little uncertainty as to what is going to unfold is the bounty hunter. Heis already starting to have doubts about his mission to kill Marco and Alana and capture the baby, and you just don’t know if he is going to take his fully loaded credit card to Sextillion, and “Max this thing out on whores.” And while I am sure that Staples would brilliantly depict that type of a scene, I get the feeling that it is more likely that The Will will end up helping out the troubled parents, rather than harming them or whoring on Sextillion. Speaking of sex, it is precisely the sex scene in the first issue that quite forcibly makes the reader pick up on the Robot Prince’s neuroses. This is only reinforced in the second issue when he loses his cool and a fiery demon face pops up on his old school television head. I think I love this detail more than anything so far in the book. It is such a raw look into a character’s innermost thoughts, as portrayed visually, not with writing. The Robot Prince is definitely going to keep everybody guessing as to what he is going to do. “Saga” is off to a great start. Go pick up your own copies today, that is if it’s not already sold out.

5/5 skulls

– TheSandMan (Paxton)