Best of the Decade: 2012 // Best of the Year

Welcome back to You Don’t Read Comics Best of the Decade! Our daily retrospective of the best comics this decade had to offer in celebration for the new year. Please refer to our post highlighting the criteria used to determine each year’s entry. We hope you enjoy today’s piece and encourage you to come back tomorrow. 

You Don’t Read Comics’ best comic of 2012 is Saga.

An epic collaboration between writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples, with lettering by Fonografiks. Saga is a story that follows the lives of an unlikely family just trying to survive as war rages across the galaxy, a war that wants them dead. 

Alana and Marko should never have ended up together according to their respective homeworlds. Alana's homeworld Landfall, the home of the "wings," has been at war with Marko's homeworld, the home of the "horns," for countless years. And no one remembers why. It's explained early on in the book that the war is no longer occurring on either of these planets but has instead spilled over onto other planets involving innocent parties and claiming innocent lives. 

The story opens with Alana giving birth to her and Marko's daughter, Hazel. And it doesn't shy away from showing how hard and raw childbirth can be- especially when giving birth in an abandoned garage with the threat of discovery and death hanging over one's head. While Hazel is born healthy to loving parents, she's also delivered into incredible danger. With both horns and wings, she'll never fit in with either society if she even manages to survive to adulthood. Born into a war she has no stake in and already the target of bounty hunters, Hazel's inheritance will be bloodshed and pain. 

Bounty hunter The Will remarks, "What kind of assholes bring a kid into worlds like these?" when he discovers that Marko's own people have put a bounty on the family. But Hazel isn't the only child that's been hurt by the war. On the planet Wreath, Hazel's birthplace, the family meets Izabel, a child who was killed stepping on a landmine after the war came to her planet. On Sextillion, a world whose name gives away its purpose, The Will meets a child, no older than six, who was sold by her own family to pay legal debts after her brother was arrested on false charges for involvement in the war. Another victim of a conflict far beyond her control. 

Saga is narrated by an older Hazel, looking back on her life. This gives a unique and emotional perspective to the story. One memorable passage is when Marko and Alana have just finished running from a group of soldiers sent for them; Hazel says, "I started out as an idea, but I ended up something more. Not much more, to be honest. It's not like I grow up to become some great war hero or any sort of all-important savior… but thanks to these two, at least I get to grow old. Not everybody does." Vaughan's writing will leave you feeling thoughtful long after you've finished the comic.

Saga is a very graphic and intense comic. But Staples doesn't use violence and gore gratuitously, it drives home the idea that this story takes place during a war, and war is a very ugly thing. And war forces people to make difficult and often terrible decisions. Alana threatens to kill Hazel to prevent her from ending up as a prisoner of bounty hunter The Stalk, and Marko renounces his vow of nonviolence to defend his family from soldiers. This is just the beginning of the sacrifices they'll have to make to keep their daughter alive and safe.

(It's also important to note that Saga is that is NSFW (Not Safe For Work), and not for readers under 18.)

With its incredible art and storyline as well as profoundly emotional writing, Saga was an easy choice for the best comic of 2012.

Honorable Mentions for 2012:

Swamp Thing

Daredevil

Fantastic Four

TMNT