What do you think?
Rate this book
Saga #10-12
Saga, Book Four
488 pages, Hardcover
First published June 3, 2026
About the author
Brian K. Vaughan
1,065 books14.3k followersBrian K. Vaughan is the writer and co-creator of comic-book series including SAGA, PAPER GIRLS, Y THE LAST MAN, RUNAWAYS, and most recently, BARRIER, a digital comic with artist Marcos Martin about immigration, available from their pay-what-you-want site www.PanelSyndicate.com
BKV's work has been recognized at the Eisner, Harvey, Hugo, Shuster, Eagle, and British Fantasy Awards. He sometimes writes for film and television in Los Angeles, where he lives with his family and their dogs Hamburger and Milkshake.
BKV's work has been recognized at the Eisner, Harvey, Hugo, Shuster, Eagle, and British Fantasy Awards. He sometimes writes for film and television in Los Angeles, where he lives with his family and their dogs Hamburger and Milkshake.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 11, 2026
love saga forever
Review of advance copy
Saga is one of the first ongoing comic books I ever started reading, and since then I have lost count of the number of times I decided it was de facto cancelled or never coming back from a hiatus. Despite my lack of faith – and following up the most heart-rending cliffhanger I’ve ever read with a hiatus of years – it has defied expectations and continued its unsteady, intermittent journey towards a planned 100-and-change issues. Flaws and foibles aside, it remains not just one of the best comics but probably one of the best pieces of genre fiction I have ever read – certainly considering its being published serially.
Book 4 collects the first 18 issues after the series returned from its half-decade-long hiatus. In it, Alana (deserter from one side of a galaxy-spanning race war, former pseudonymous soap opera actor, occasional scam artist, small-time thief and drug dealer) and her children Hazel (adorable preteen, considered a genetic abomination in need of immediate murder by both sides in that aforementioned galactic race war) and Squire (lost son of the redeemed-in-death black sheep prince of a politically influential civilization of TV-headed robots (adopted)) as they grope around searching for some kind of secure, stable life and come to terms with increasingly having no one but each other to really rely upon. They do so in a galaxy battered about by the currents of a war that has spread across and defined it for centuries, where whole stratagems and intrigues leave whole worlds nothing but graveyards – and one where any hope of survival or happiness seems to rely upon staying well beneath the notice of anyone who matters.
The comic also continues to be about a positively sprawling supporting cast of characters whose lives at one point intersected with Hazel’s, and who the story retains an abiding interest in following as that time together permanently shaped them (even at one or two steps removed). The skill and care with which it does so is a very large part of why I continue to love Saga so dearly. The comic is as a matter of absolute principle dedicated to showing everyone it can as a real, complete person with their own traumas, dreams, loved ones, and failings both petty and grand. It is so dedicated that it accumulates a truly vast cast of likeable, endearing characters who you are (I am, anyway) at least a bit invested in the futures of – and then, because War Is Hell and it is a fallen universe full of pain and hate – it is absolutely ruthless in pruning them off in ways that should really have stopped surprising me by now. Some characters die at the end of what feels like a complete and satisfying (if bleak and tragic) arc, others feel like they have whole stories yet ahead of them only for chance and fate to deal them a bad hand. There are exactly two characters in the whole story I’m not at least slightly worried for whenever they appear on screen, and I really can’t think of a single other piece of fiction that is so reliably able to make me choke up with how it treats its cast.
Which is not to say that this is a story about luxuriating in nihilism and just watching bad things happen to good people on loop (as much as a loud fraction of the letters column for any given arc seems to think it is). This is, at its core, a story about love, forgiveness, and human (well, sapient) vulnerability and connection. People find peace, people make lives together, people genuinely become better and leave the wounds and crimes of their past behind them – it’s just very, very hard.
Stories about the importance of vulnerability, forgiveness and finding peace in a cold and dangerous world aren’t exactly thin on the ground – frankly they usually tend toward platitudes and sermonizing (at least to my dead and withered heart). Saga is near-unique because it actually makes those platitudes land, and actually makes you hope that all (well, most) of these broken, brutal people make something better of themselves and find something like peace. The fact that a great many of them don’t makes the ones who do (even just for a time) feel all the more precious.
The ‘for a time’ is important, especially in the issues covered in this collection. An adult Hazel has always been the narrator of the story, but this is the first time where she is actually old enough to be a character in her own right rather than an adorable child-shaped plot device who mostly matters insofar as she shapes the lives of those around her. This means her narration has gained a lot more personality and direct relevance to what’s going on on-panel, instead of mostly being framing and vague foreshadowing. This has the odd effect (to me, anyway) of emphasizing exactly how shifting and transient Hazel’s life is and will remain, and how the fact that the stretches of peace and happiness never last hardly makes them any less precious.
Given the immense time span the book has been written over, it’s incredibly impressive how consistent – and consistently amazing – the quality of the art has remained. Staples’ art does absolutely vital work getting across a fantastical and occasionally absurd science-fantasy universe full of so many different forms of life that you really just have to take every new one you meet in stride. The sheer number of instantly memorable and distinct character designs that I still remember when they show up for the first time after a dozen issues is also just load-bearing to the narrative working at all. Even more importantly, the art actually manages to sell the emotional beats the story runs on, and which could easily end up feeling like cheap melodrama otherwise.
The production issues Saga has gone through could probably be their own book at this point, and I will at this point be mildly surprised if the story actually finishes before part of the creative team retires or dies. But they do have a plan and know where the story is going, and at this point I’m ready and willing to follow the road as far as it will go. I should buy some merch.
Book 4 collects the first 18 issues after the series returned from its half-decade-long hiatus. In it, Alana (deserter from one side of a galaxy-spanning race war, former pseudonymous soap opera actor, occasional scam artist, small-time thief and drug dealer) and her children Hazel (adorable preteen, considered a genetic abomination in need of immediate murder by both sides in that aforementioned galactic race war) and Squire (lost son of the redeemed-in-death black sheep prince of a politically influential civilization of TV-headed robots (adopted)) as they grope around searching for some kind of secure, stable life and come to terms with increasingly having no one but each other to really rely upon. They do so in a galaxy battered about by the currents of a war that has spread across and defined it for centuries, where whole stratagems and intrigues leave whole worlds nothing but graveyards – and one where any hope of survival or happiness seems to rely upon staying well beneath the notice of anyone who matters.
The comic also continues to be about a positively sprawling supporting cast of characters whose lives at one point intersected with Hazel’s, and who the story retains an abiding interest in following as that time together permanently shaped them (even at one or two steps removed). The skill and care with which it does so is a very large part of why I continue to love Saga so dearly. The comic is as a matter of absolute principle dedicated to showing everyone it can as a real, complete person with their own traumas, dreams, loved ones, and failings both petty and grand. It is so dedicated that it accumulates a truly vast cast of likeable, endearing characters who you are (I am, anyway) at least a bit invested in the futures of – and then, because War Is Hell and it is a fallen universe full of pain and hate – it is absolutely ruthless in pruning them off in ways that should really have stopped surprising me by now. Some characters die at the end of what feels like a complete and satisfying (if bleak and tragic) arc, others feel like they have whole stories yet ahead of them only for chance and fate to deal them a bad hand. There are exactly two characters in the whole story I’m not at least slightly worried for whenever they appear on screen, and I really can’t think of a single other piece of fiction that is so reliably able to make me choke up with how it treats its cast.
Which is not to say that this is a story about luxuriating in nihilism and just watching bad things happen to good people on loop (as much as a loud fraction of the letters column for any given arc seems to think it is). This is, at its core, a story about love, forgiveness, and human (well, sapient) vulnerability and connection. People find peace, people make lives together, people genuinely become better and leave the wounds and crimes of their past behind them – it’s just very, very hard.
Stories about the importance of vulnerability, forgiveness and finding peace in a cold and dangerous world aren’t exactly thin on the ground – frankly they usually tend toward platitudes and sermonizing (at least to my dead and withered heart). Saga is near-unique because it actually makes those platitudes land, and actually makes you hope that all (well, most) of these broken, brutal people make something better of themselves and find something like peace. The fact that a great many of them don’t makes the ones who do (even just for a time) feel all the more precious.
The ‘for a time’ is important, especially in the issues covered in this collection. An adult Hazel has always been the narrator of the story, but this is the first time where she is actually old enough to be a character in her own right rather than an adorable child-shaped plot device who mostly matters insofar as she shapes the lives of those around her. This means her narration has gained a lot more personality and direct relevance to what’s going on on-panel, instead of mostly being framing and vague foreshadowing. This has the odd effect (to me, anyway) of emphasizing exactly how shifting and transient Hazel’s life is and will remain, and how the fact that the stretches of peace and happiness never last hardly makes them any less precious.
Given the immense time span the book has been written over, it’s incredibly impressive how consistent – and consistently amazing – the quality of the art has remained. Staples’ art does absolutely vital work getting across a fantastical and occasionally absurd science-fantasy universe full of so many different forms of life that you really just have to take every new one you meet in stride. The sheer number of instantly memorable and distinct character designs that I still remember when they show up for the first time after a dozen issues is also just load-bearing to the narrative working at all. Even more importantly, the art actually manages to sell the emotional beats the story runs on, and which could easily end up feeling like cheap melodrama otherwise.
The production issues Saga has gone through could probably be their own book at this point, and I will at this point be mildly surprised if the story actually finishes before part of the creative team retires or dies. But they do have a plan and know where the story is going, and at this point I’m ready and willing to follow the road as far as it will go. I should buy some merch.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews