Saga #30

Fiona Staples's cover for this 2015 installment of Brian K. Vaughan and Staples's celebrated space-opera series is quietly arresting: a single vivid flower — petals radiating in blues, greens, oranges, and pinks — floats against a white background increasingly overtaken by dark crimson bloodstains. The contrast between that fragile, luminous bloom and the spreading darkness around it says everything about what makes Saga so compelling — beauty and violence in constant, uneasy tension. Chapter Thirty is exactly the kind of issue this series does so well, wrapping something deeply human inside a universe that can turn brutal without warning.