There’s A Moment You Know

My friend Tarra has turned me on to many wonderful things in my life: Welcome to Night Vale, the comics of Noelle Stevenson AKA Ginger Haze, putting an egg in oatmeal and swirling it around so it cooks in and gets all custardy and delicious. She’s a smart cookie and lately she’s been saying I should listen to The Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast (she’s also been discussing it on her own awesome podcast), so I gave it a shot and I just had the moment. You know: the moment.

I find that I either love shows immediately, or have a moment where everything clicks and I say “Oh yes. This shit is for me.” My best example is Doctor Who (another thing Tarra told me I should check out). I started from the beginning of the reboot and watched the first few episodes, and I was on the fence. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the cheesy effects and all the aliens and this Doctor guy who clearly had a lot of baggage, but not a ton of exposition so far. And then I got to “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.” Suddenly all the pieces fell into place. There were touching relationships! There was seriously creepy, seriously intriguing stuff happening. There was a pan-sexual Han Solo stand in! I was sold on the show forever.

It’s happened dozens of times, and it happened recently with The Trilling Adventure Hour. I’ve listened to a few and was not quite sure what to make of them. I mean, the ideas are clever, but the execution is a little goofy. There’s not a ton of women, and there’s clearly jokes from the live shows that you miss on the podcast. But then today I listened to episode #10 Beyond Belief “The Devil and Mr. Jones.” And oh man am I sold. Beyond Belief was already my favorite of their little shows within the show. It’s basically a Noel Coward play but with ghosts. What’s not to love? But today’s show was basically architecturally designed to make me fall in love. I mean, this episode has:

1. Noir
2. Alcoholics with wit as dry as their martinis
3. Patton Oswald playing a noir detective
4. A Pterodactyl
5. A strong, witty, whimsical, villain-outsmarting heroine
6. A invisible Pterodactyl named Harvey in obvious reference to the play. (Theatre references are an almost 100% guarantee that I will love you. Boys take note.)
7. An amazing amount of meta-commentary on the Noir genre
8. Irish jokes
9. Have I mentioned how much I adore Sadie Doyle?

But really it’s all about the moment. And when Patton Oswald said he was a ghost detective at the most haunted hotel in New York City and Sadie Doyle said in her arch, high-brow accent “I would watch that TV show.” Well, that’s the moment I knew.

The Saga Begins/I Begin Saga

At this point, basically anyone who’s following comic books has probably told you that Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga series is amazing. Words like genius, brilliant, and “one of the standout comic books of the last decade” have all been thrown around by people a lot smarter and faster on the uptake than me.

So after devouring Volume 1 & 2 today, I’m going to try not to say all of those things, and say instead that I think comic books like this one are exactly what we need in order to get people into comics.

The whole point of this blog is that I’m working on educating myself about parts of nerd culture I’ve missed, and front and center in that curriculum are comic books. I didn’t read my first graphic novel until a friend handed me Watchmen in college. Frankly that was the first time comic books entered my orbit. I was a young girl in the world before the Marvel Comic Universe took over our lives and multiplexes, comic books weren’t really a thing for me and my friends.

But lo how the world has changed in the last twenty years. Comic books have blown up in a big way, and I’ve slowly found myself getting closer and closer to their orbit. But how do you even begin to approach a medium you hardly understand? I think it’s telling that the comic that brought me to comics is Lumberjanes. “Hold the phone,” I can hear you saying, “I thought this was a review of Saga.” I’m getting there.

Lumberjanes was my first title because I had been following Noelle Stevenson for years, and if she’s writing it, I was damn sure going to read it. But Lumberjanes was also my starting point because it was accessible. As an independent comic book, it doesn’t have all the intimidating history and weight of a DC or Marvel comic. There aren’t really ground rules you’re supposed to go in knowing. It’s just good clean fun, and that’s what I also find appealing about Saga.

Saga is a story that you don’t have to know anything about comics to enjoy. Brian K. Vaughan is creating a fantasy world that’s totally new and fresh. It doesn’t have baggage, and basically no matter how big of a nerd you are, we’re all starting from the same place. And what a place to start. The first moment tells you so much you need to know. A woman with wings is freaking out because she thinks she might be pooping on her horned husband while giving birth to their daughter, who has both wings and horns. Welcome to the world of Saga, where the facts are preposterous and fantastical, but the human emotions are familiar. And really, that’s the second piece of brilliance in Saga – the emotions and real and accessible. I may not have wings or children, but I know what it feels like to be freaked out and embarrassed by what my body is doing. I may have never been on the run from magical creatures or robot-headed armies, but I know what it’s like to feel cornered, singled out, and out of control of my own life. Who doesn’t? And that’s the magic of Saga.

Saga is so accessible, but that’s not the only thing that’s making it my official comics recruitment tool. Saga also has amazing, diverse, and well-rounded characters. From the good guys to the bad guys, these people are complex, contradictory and human (even when they’re actually floating teenage ghosts, or robot-headed royalty). This story screams come one, come all. This is a world with a place for you in it. A violent, sarcastic place, but a place nonetheless.

Finally, let’s get down to the real reason that this is the comic for you to give to that friend who never got your comics obsession: this story is COOL! Saga gets that part of the joy of comic books is that they connect you to your inner child. Comics give you crazy awesome things you won’t find anywhere else, and Saga provides that in spades. There’s a spaceship that is also a giant treehouse. WHO DOESN’T WANT A TREEHOUSE SPACESHIP? Finally, the art is stunningly beautiful, and sure to make those new to the medium understand how powerful it can be to wed words and glorious images like these to tell a story.

So if anyone tells you they might be interested in picking up a comic book for the first time, don’t try and catch them up on the 70 year history of the Dark Knight, or give them a comic book continuation of their favorite movie or TV show. Show them the full power and fun of comics by giving them the wide, wild, welcoming world of Saga.