Look, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. I’ve been accused of going with the mainstream or just “liking what I recognize” because of my continued love for Saga. Well, you know what? I wouldn’t continue to love this book as much as I do if Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples didn’t continue to churn out brilliant issue after brilliant issue. It’s still the best comic book space opera hitting the stands, and we just got an entire line of great Star Wars books from Marvel this year. That has to say something about the quality of this book.
At its core, Saga is character driven. It’s a massive, galaxy spanning epic of a monstrosity, but it remains grounded in its cast of characters. A cast, I may add, that I’ve spent nearly my entire comic book reading life with, and my interest in them has never once wavered. Some of them have been to hell and (are on their way) back. It’s not my favorite phrase, but in this case, I find it appropriate.
After thirty-two issues, it would be fair to assume that a book would lose some of its luster. It would stop being able to deliver the same level of emotional gut punches week in and week out. But Saga is. That’s how engrossed I am with the characters and the story, and 2015 continued to solidify that. 2015 may not have seen Saga really come into its own as a masterpiece, like some of the other series on this list, but that’s only because it’s pretty much always been one.
I mean, what else would you expect when you put two of the best creators in the business together on one book? Brian K Vaughan is easily in the short list of best comic book writer of all time, and I think Fiona Staples has really entered the discussion for best comic book artist of all time, largely because of her work on Saga. It’s a meeting of two brilliant minds, and it has never once failed to be the book I most look forward to reading each month, and at the end of every month in which an issue comes out, Saga is likely my favorite book of that month.
