Comic Review: Saga #29

A lot of the previous issues of Saga have felt like setup, and I was feeling frustrated with how little it was really moving forward. This issue starts to really change that; we are close to the break, and things are starting to happen a little more quickly now than they were before.

To that end, the theme of this issues seems to be sudden deaths. The last issue gave Yuma (correction: I accidentally attributed this to Ghus before, but he is still alive and well) a rather slow, drawn out death, but now seems to be making up for that. In each of the three storylines going right now, there are deaths that, while not out of nowhere, are a sudden shift in how the story is being told. Some are major characters we have been following for a while, others are not, but they all have a very important impact on the story right away.

Even with those developments, it still feels like the story is setting a few things into place. Now that some characters have been killed, it's time to see how the characters react, and how the story changes from this point, since these are going to have major consequences.

What I am hoping for is that the future involves consolidating the plots a bit, not having to follow three different groups of characters, which has made the last few issues a little slow by needing to get everyone in each issue. I hate to pick on this so often, since this is still a great series, and even in its faults, it handles things better than just about anything else I've been reading recently. These problems only stick out because it's a bit of a dip, but for this series, a dip in quality is still better than just about anything else out there.

I also have to give Fiona Staples even more credit for the crazy imagery that this series is full of. Usually, there is a particularly memorable one page spread somewhere, but for this, she decided to make it a two page spread, involving the dragon that Sophie and company have been looking for. Trying not to spoil it, as the characters comment on, there is absolutely no doubt that the dragon they are looking for is a male, and it is perhaps the best thing she has drawn in the entire series, and the most memorable, if you want to remember it or not.

It's hard to know what to say about this series, since I can't just say that every issue is great and the little things just come out more and more. As I say each time, if you're already reading Saga, you will want to continue, and if you're interested, go back to the beginning, since jumping in somewhere in the middle is never going to work.