WARNING: NOT FOR YOUNG CHILDREN (Violence, Nudity, Colorful Language)

WARNING: SPOILERS

The comic series Saga seems to be a great series that I may get into. After reading the first issue, the abnormality of the theme took me by surprise. Unlike most comics, the narrator wasn’t some some disembodied voice; she was an actual character involved in the plot-line speaking about the past. She was the child of a foot soldier from the planet “Cleave,” a man with ram’s horns, and a woman with wings on her back who was assigned as a guard in the prison where he was being kept. They escaped together and had a baby: the narrator, whose name had not been decided yet.

The first aspect to look at is the story. The circumstances in which the reader begins reading are intense; there’s been a heated war going on for a long time, and a couple who have just had a child and two runaway soldiers from opposite sides in the war are trying to escape. The scene opens at a warehouse in where the woman is giving birth to a child. After the child is born and a few touching words are exchanged between the couple, robot soldiers come bursting through the door. There’s shooting, smoke, and deaths, but the couple and child survive. A dying (speaking) ape, whom the couple seems to have known from somewhere, was the one who reported their location to the monarchy of robots. Now apologetic about his decision, he gives the couple and child a map to a rocket, so they can use it to escape Cleave. At the end of the first issue, the couple discovers the bridge marked on the map. As the robots hunt them down, and they wander through the night, trying to avoid the horrors of the dark (vicious creatures known for killing wanderers in the night) without picking up a blade, they find hope that they can escape for the sake of each other and their brand new child.

The overall tone of the comics is very mature. With graphic illustrations and some nudity that isn’t really relevant to the story, the series isn’t for the immature or young. It’s obvious that these comics are for adults; the vocabulary, themes, and plot would be hard for children or people with no knowledge of comics to understand, so this isn’t a good series for someone who’s not familiar with comic books.

All in all, if you’re looking for a good series to get into, Saga has my endorsement.