Review:: Saga, Volume 4, by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples

Title: Saga, Volume 4

Author: Brian K. Vaughn

Artist: Fiona Staples

Format: Collected Comics Paperback

Rating: ★★★★★

Previously:

Volume 1

Volume 2
Volume 3

I only had one minor quibble with Volume 4: not enough lying cat. But oh, oh, oh, when she showed up... Volume 4 is a bit of a time skip. We get to see Hazel as a toddler and Sophie as a kick-ass 8-year-old. The time skip felt like the right thing to do for the plot at this point. Oh, and Volume 4 made me literally cry.

Again, we get to see families struggling with real world issues. We get to see the strife between Hazel's parents, as Alana has to work as the "breadwinner" and Marko pretty much takes on caring for her on his own. There's a lot of cuteness, but the struggle and the pain are far more predominant in this volume.

There are also some fucking fantastic lines (from narrator!Hazel) that hit me hard. It shows that even going forward, she's well aware of the dark and gritty of the world she was lucky enough to grow up in.

We see issues with drugs; we see issues with poverty. We see class struggle that finally brings the robot plotline somewhere more interesting. And we see a lot of pain, fear, and backlash.

After all, Hazel tells us pretty quickly: this is the story of how her parents split up.