I am not a huge graphic novel/comic book reader – I do get through enough of them to prove that I’m not one of those elitist snobs who disregard comics on principle, but not much more. This means reading mostly Alan Moore* and of course Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and a few other bits and pieces.

That said, I’m still kicking myself for not picking up Saga sooner than I did. It’s an epic, magical science fiction series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples and I KNEW I was going to love it: the people whose taste I trust loved it, reviewers who I agree with loved it, it has won several Eisner awards and a Hugo in 2013. In fact, the cover art alone should have been enough to make me buy it instantly. But it was never available where I lived and once I even did order it from Amazon, but it got lost. I thought we were not meant to be. Finally, I realised I can order it through my local Waterstones, so that’s what I did. And boom.

I loved everything about this book. I loved the setting, I loved the characters, I loved the story, I loved the art. Just for your info: as I’m writing this, I’m constantly trying to avoid using the word ‘awesome’ and believe me, this word is not a regular part of my vocabulary. I don’t want to give too much away, but in brief: the galaxy is at war and two soldiers from different sides fall in love and have child. This pisses off lots of very important people with resources, and the chase begins.

As this is the first volume, the world is only very broadly sketched, but everything about it is fascinating. It’s both high-tech and magical/mystical and has many races. The central characters (Alana from the tech-savy Landfall and Marko from the magical moon Wreath) are hugely lovable from the first moment onwards. There are a lot of strange creatures and ingenious devices – things that comics do better than any other genre, because they can both show and explain. Ghosts full of surprises, robots with rich inner lives, cats who can detect lies, spaceships made of wood and translator rings all get page time.

Maybe all this wouldn’t be that remarkable if it wasn’t built around the simple story of having a child and trying to give her a good life. Science fiction and fantasy heroes (and especially heroines) usually don’t have children, as they interfere with the plot. For the same reason, child protagonists in such stories are almost always orphans or somehow separated from their parents, because otherwise the stories would not make sense. Fantasy books often have romance, but it’s generally about finding love, not about what comes after.

Saga starts where most books end: after love is found, family is created, the child is born. As in real life, this is where the struggle begins. Despite the imaginary, larger-than-life backdrop, the relationship dynamics and worries and joys here seem more real than in most litterature I’ve read, although cooler. And Alana makes motherhood seem the most badass thing one can ever do, something I have never encountered in a book.

That it all comes across so well is thanks to the art work of Fiona Staples. It’s glorious. She is excellent when creating a mind-blowing but coherent future (or past?) world. She is even better at drawing characters and showing the nuances of them through facial expressions and body language. And, well, did I mention that everything looks cool? I thought I was long past falling in love with fictional characters, but apparently not.

I know that graphic novels and SF are not for everybody and despite its originality, Saga is very much both. Things happen that are just “not possible”, there is violence and sex and exaggeration and people with wings. But if you are even slightly open to reading these genres, I highly recommend giving Saga a go. I am going to order the next volumes as soon as I finish writing this.

*The literary porn comic Lost Girls he wrote with his wife is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever read. It’s genius, too, but it gets too hard-core for me by the third volume.