Note: Some spoilers within for previous issues in this series.

Saga tells the continuing story of the little family of (the late) Marko and his wife Alana - a mixed-race couple - and their daughter Hazel. The family struggled to stay together in spite of a war between their two races.

Alana is from the planet Landfall, where inhabitants have wings on their backs, and Marko was from its moon, Wreath, where all people have horns on their heads. The two defied all convention (and propaganda, viz: those people have horns on their heads!) and fell in love. Hazel was born with both horns and wings, and it is Hazel who narrates the story.

Marko and Alana just wanted to find a way to be safe and happy and live in peace, but it wasn’t possible. The three of them were pursued throughout the galaxy by a number of beings trying to exploit them or kill them (or first one, then the other).

In Volume 9, however, both Marko and Sir Robert - once an enemy but eventually an ally - were murdered. It is now three years later, and Hazel and Sir Robert’s son Squire are being raised by Hazel’s mother and a male named Bombazine, or “Bomba” for short. Squire hasn’t spoken a word since his father’s death, but they all get along fine.

(In this issue we make a brief story interlude to the Robot planet, where the parents of Sir Robot have just found out he had been murdered. The countess who brought them the news is ordered “to find his killer…and bring us his head.”)

In the previous issue (#55), we learned that Hazel is seriously into music, a theme that is expanded upon in this issue. The little group has been swallowed up by a pirate ship that looks like a giant skull. Hazel tells us, “Believe it or not, some of my best memories are form the time my brother and I spent aboard this thing. Hazel is introduced to the guitar by the aspiring members of a band who are part of the crew. Hazel has to ask, “What the heck is a guitar?” She then adds as an aside, “You never know when or where your first addiction might find you….but there’s a chamber of your heart that will have been waiting for it since the day you were born.”

Off in another area of the pirate ship, the skipper asks Alana to consider doing a side hustle for him. He wants her to make a drug delivery to the planetoid Perigons, where, if caught, drug dealers are put to death. He offers to keep the kids safe for her while she goes. But first, he asks her to take off her shirt, to make sure she’s not hiding a pair of wings under it, which of course she is. She resists, and the skipper says, “if you don’t show me some skin right the fuck now…I’m gonna haul your kids up here and rape them to death in front of you.”

The issue ends there….

Evaluation: This is an outstanding “saga” whether you like graphic novels or not. This is not by any means a series for kids but it is nevertheless a story strongly supportive of families - both the kind you are born with, and the kind you make as you go through life.

Note: If you are new to the series, be sure to read the books in order! ( )