Saga #15 is a kind of fill-in issue, but that’s not a bad thing. Not every issue of Saga can be a mind-meltingly amazing experience. Sometimes Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples just have to take a step back and move the story along on an issue-by-issue basis. We’ve got plot, we’ve got sub-plot, we’ve got a few fun character moments, and most importantly, we’ve got another good issue of Saga. The story is moving along at a nice little pace, so there’s no harm in Vaughn taking a break to enjoy his world for a moment.

Saga #15

Saga #15 is kind of a way station in the ongoing story. Marko, Alana and the gang are enjoying their time in Heist’s lighthouse, while The Will and his team have their own concerns. The larger narrative takes a step back this issue so that we can enjoy the little things in life.

Comic Rating: 7/10 – Good.

I read both of Vaughn’s previous comics – Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina – in tpb form, and that was an excellent way to read each series. Vaughn is a man who writes to the bigger picture. His comics aren’t the typical, never-ending superhero dramas. They have beginnings, middles, and, most importantly, endings. So I’m fairly certain Vaughn already knows the general strokes of where Saga is going and how it’s going to end. So maybe the best time to read Saga is when it’s all over, like a novel. But because I’m such a fan of his work, I decided to go issue-by-issue, and while I’m not disappointed, it does lead to issue like this one.

Again, this is in no way a bad issue. It’s Saga‘s usual greatness. But we’re still no closer to the cliffhanger at the end of Saga #12, which I’m really excited to see resolved. Instead, we pause for some R&R. It’s good, enjoyable R&R, but it’s rest and relaxation nonetheless. I’m also a little surprised/confused by the developments for The Will’s team. I’ll get to it in the synopsis, but for now, I’m just not sure what it means for the story as a whole. The Will deserves his own stories, but is this an example of Vaughn writing for the single issues? Or is this new twist part of the larger narrative?

Read on and we shall see!

Once again, we open with Upsher and Doff on their quest for the greatest story of their careers. This time, they’re interviewing Countess Robot X out in some war-torn cityscape. She’s another member of the robot royal family, and was Alana’s first commanding officer in the war. Countess Robot X is the one who transferred Alana to Cleave in the first place. Alana was a gunner, but she pissed off the Countess when she wouldn’t immediately bomb a bridge. Alana was worried about the innocent commuters on the bridge, but the Countess was only concerned with the bridge’s wartime value. Alana eventually pulled the trigger, but the Countess was still pissed off enough at Alana’s hesitation to transfer her to a backwater planet like Cleave.

Then Upsher gets shot.

Right in the journalism!

The Countess calls in the artillery to take out the sniper while Doff checks on his friend – though when Upsher calls him ‘honey’, I get the feeling that they’re more than work colleagues? Hard to say. But Upsher is fine (thank god), and the sniper gets blown to kingdom come. Maybe they’ll get a journalism award out of this.

Elsewhere, on Quietus, everybody’s playing some strange variation of Pictionary.

Looks like Lindsay Lohan to me

Alana enters the room and is introduced to the game, Nun Tuj Nun, a muli-layered board game from Marko’s childhood. Heist calls it the greatest board game in the universe – board games being one of the only three forms of high art (the other two are children’s books and symphonies). There are three rounds, and now that the art round is over, it’s time to wrestle. Klara rolls up her sleeves.

Out on The Will’s little paradise planet, he’s an asshole to the spaceship repairman.

Foxmen are naturally curious

It’s OK though, Sophie is a little nicer. She gives him a bite of her shish-kabob.

Gwen shows up to convince The Will to continue their mission, and The Will agrees – against the wishes of his Stalk hallucination. The Will tells Gwen that he’s going with her to continue the hunt for Marko and Alana. But before they can leave, they notice that Sophie is missing. Gwen and Lying Cat go off to find her while The Will readies the ship for take off.

Turns out Sophie is in the forest picking berries and having psychotic visions about her mother. But we’ll get back to that later.

Back on Quietus, Alana wins the arm-wrestling round.

His wife beats his mom in a form of physical combat – super metaphor?

This leads to a discussion about Klara’s views on Alana’s parenting. Klara believes that Alana has become too much of a housewife since arriving on-planet. She’s always doing Marko’s laundry for him, when she should be in the workforce. Heist says he agrees with Klara. He’d love to host them all indefinitely, but that’s not a realistic option. Sooner or later they’re going to have to move on, which means they’re going to have to get jobs to support themselves. Alana thinks he’s being hypocritical, because she thought the entire point of his book was to convince people to just sit back and hang out – though Heist disagrees. Even Marko tries to make the point that they can’t just sit back on the rocketship tree and never show Hazel the big, wide universe.

With everyone against her, Alana runs off for some time alone, but Marko follows and they have a nice conversation about what they can do with their future.

Personally, I hate doing dishes

Heist and Klara are watching from the lighthouse, and Heist says he may know some people who can help them get a job.

On the other planet, The Will looks around the ship and notices that Gwen isn’t back yet. Neither is Sophie. Then he gets a call from the fix-it agency. It seems that when their two repairmen returned home, they started experiencing vivid hallucinations. They think they were infected by a strange kind of host parasite from The Will’s planet that uses hallucinations to trap its victims.

Uh oh.

She’s got the crazy eyes

Psychotic Sophie stabs The Will in the neck. He stumbles out of his chair and falls onto the floor. Then we see the hallucination standing above her, telling Sophie to stand on his neck until he stops moving. We also see that this hallucination was not only Sophie’s mother, but also The Stalk visions that The Will has been seeing for several issues.

Talk about crazy! First of all, I don’t think The Will is dead. Why else have Sophie stand on his neck until he stops moving? It looks bad, but he’s not dead – not to say Vaughn doesn’t have the power and motivation to randomly kill off any character he wants at any time. Seriously, every single character – with the possible exception of Hazel – could take a dirt nap at any time. Such is a story like Saga. But I think The Will is still alive.

Secondly, what’s up with this parasitic hallucinatory alien monster? Where’d it come from and what does it have to do with anything? Is it just an excuse for Vaughn to stretch out The Will’s story? Or is it eventually going somewhere? Obviously the answers will come eventually, but for right now, I just got the odd feeling that this was his attempt to fill Saga with smaller, issue-based stories. Like it’s not enough to tell just the big story anymore, he wants to add little episodic encounters. The eventual confrontation between Marko’s family and The Will is going to be a big deal, but I guess Vaughn doesn’t want to rush into it.

The conversations held between members of Marko and Alana’s family were fun, but mostly they were about moving the story along. Where do they go after Heist? I assume Vaughn has something in mind, but the characters don’t, so we get a few scenes of them talking about leaving Quietus and getting jobs. It’s clearly an important conversation for the characters themselves, but it doesn’t make for that thrilling a narrative – other than the fact that any scenes of this family hanging out are already awesome. Vaughn has created some truly enjoyable characters, so even scenes where they sit around playing board games are fun to read. But overall, this issue is more concerned with smaller scenes, and while that’s not bad, it’s not as powerful as some of Saga‘s bigger themes.