Saga #19

History

Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples conceived Saga as a fully creator-owned work at Image Comics — Vaughan has cited Image's contract terms as the primary reason for choosing the publisher, crediting publisher Eric Stephenson and Robert Kirkman with easing the transition. Vaughan met Staples through writer Steve Niles, for whom Staples had illustrated the miniseries Mystery Society, and he has described their collaboration as a natural fit for an ongoing series. Each arc of Saga follows an arc-then-hiatus rhythm: the creative team publishes six issues, pauses for a trade paperback to be assembled, then returns — a pattern established from the very first arc. Issue #19 therefore arrived after one such planned gap, which the Image solicitation copy acknowledged directly, billing the return as offering 'a new planet, new adversaries, and a very new direction.'

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published by Image Comics in May 2014, written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples; the issue is internally titled 'Chapter Nineteen.'
• First appearance of Dengo: an anti-monarchist Robot custodian (identified by a cathode-ray-tube television set for a head) from an impoverished village, whose son died from contaminated water due to lack of medical access — details that drove readers and critics to draw pointed parallels to real-world class inequality.
• First full introduction of the planet Gardenia as a recurring setting: a neutral world that never chose a side in the war between Landfall and Wreath, making it a temporary haven for Marko, Alana, Hazel, Klara, and Izabel.
• Alana is shown for the first time working as an actress in the Open Circuit — an underground, galaxy-spanning theatrical broadcast company — under the alias 'Zipless,' establishing the season's domestic-reversal arc in which she is the family breadwinner while Marko is a stay-at-home father.
• Hazel, born in issue #1, is depicted as a toddler in this issue — a meaningful narrative time-jump reinforcing Vaughan's stated intention to tell the series as a coming-of-age story anchored to her growth.
• The issue's final page features a gut-punch closing line from future-narrator Hazel — 'This is the story of how my parents split up' — alerting readers that the marital tension seeded here will escalate throughout the arc.
• Issue #19 is the lead chapter of Saga, Vol. 4 (ISBN 1632150778), the trade paperback collecting issues #19–24, released December 17, 2014 — the same day as the Saga Deluxe Edition Vol. 1, a hardcover reprinting the first 18 issues.
• Issue #19 also appears in Saga Deluxe Edition, Vol. 2, which collects issues #19–36.

Full credits

Key issues in Saga

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#1 1st appearance — Alana

Variants (1)