A re-read after more than six years. It's even better this time, for sure.
I maybe didn't like this fifth volume quite as much as the previous four, but it is still a pretty amazing volume. What an array of characters! It just feels like a kind of a "continuing" volume, getting us from A to B. More and more I see the Star Wars influence, with all the weird characters, though Vaughn is a much better writer than Lucas. Vaughn is really smart and clever and funny, and Fiona Staples' art matches his wit and invention. Vaughn and Staples are maybe as much about style as anything in the early volumes, but things turn a bit more serious in the three parallel stories, one with Marko, one with Alana, one with the kidnapped Hazel, as we proceed.
So to remind you, there's a war on between Landfall and Wreath, one each associated with lovers Marko and Alana. And they all want them both killed as traitors. And our narrator taken alive for some nefarious as yet to be named purpose. The three storylines: 1) Sophie, the little girl rescued by the contract killer The Will, and Gwendolyn (Marko's lover and maybe The Will's lover) are on a quest to save The Will; 2) while Marko and Prince Robot IV--two Dads--search for their respective families and 3) Badass women Alana and Marko's Mom seem to be in the most trouble as the double-kidnaping proceeds.
People we get to know die in this volume, and gets pretty violent from time to time. And there are a couple reunions we've been waiting for, but there's much unresolved.
Some highlights:
*Gwen and Sophie learn they have to have dragon sperm to save The Will's life, and apparently you can't just buy this on the internet (though this was published ten years ago; maybe things have changed with availability); so there's comic relief.
*I'm somewhat sympathetic with crazy kidnapper-of-Hazel Dengo, whose own kid was killed in the war, driving him over the edge.
*Marko speaks of his addiction to the very thing he took an Oath to foreswear: violence, as Alana deals with her drug addiction. But then Marko actually tries the same drug his wife tried. Not recommended approach for spouses of addicted loved ones. And again, though Marko wants to be a pacifist, to not participate in the horrors of war, he repeatedly is forced to because of his family.
*Within a page on two separate storylines, both Sophie and Hazel witness violent deaths, pointing to the permanent trauma from war on children. I mean, just in case you thought this series was just pure entertainment, a wild sci-fi romp (and it is!), Vaughn and Staples remind us of the serious implications of all this violence.