Ship of The Week: Alana and Marko

Two Star Crossed Lovers…with Robot-Space-Sex. This is the majesty of a ship that eminent comic book scribe, Brain K. Vaughn, has given us in the science fiction fantastical epic Saga. With issue nine’s released this week and its complete absence of our favorite champions of love, I decided to fill my Alana and Marko void with a tribute to what has only been the beginning of their amazing adventure.

It’s hard maintaining a relationship when your families aren’t supportive, but how do you make that magic happen when your entire respective planets can’t seem to play nice? In less than ten issues published, the apparent answer is with a ghostly teenage baby-sitter, a tree-rocket ship, and a bit of luck in being one step ahead of deadly bounty hunters. How obvious.

If you’re familiar with Vaughan’s work, you’re familiar with bad times and heartbreak. Naturally then this ship can only be headed toward some rough waters…actually it started there. Although one of the more lackluster soldiers hailing from the planet Landfall, Alana’s first encounter with Marko, a magic wielding and horned “Moonie” from Wreath, involved a more or less unpassionate exchange between Alana’s gun and Marko’s face. Oh and Marko? Not always the conscientious objector we’ve come to have cuddly feelings for.

Wreath and Landfall’s bloody and near endless war has spanned hundreds of years and galaxies, but somehow Alana and Marko worked their shit out. How you ask? Well the comic, narrated by their daughter Hazel (born in issue #1), doles out answers to these questions with excruciating slowness and an almost miserly glee. We do know now that Marko, while in love with Alana, has a bit of a past that includes a fiancé he kinda-sorta just forgot about. Perhaps less sordid (or perhaps not wink wink) was the revelation of Alana’s past dalliances with cheesy romance novels. Scandalous, I know.

Still, you just can’t help but root for the horned Romeo and his Juliet with wings. A classic trope embedded in a high fantasy and science fiction universe, the book is less about forbidden passion and more about parent’s struggle to nurture and protect the life they’ve created from their love. Hazel has a rough road to grow up on, but Alana and Marko aren’t prepared to throw in the towel and lock themselves away in the name of protecting their daughter. There’s a whole universe out there, the majority of which wants them super dead, but they want to show it all to little Hazel as a family.

We last saw the couple zooming through space with Marko’s parents, who are not so very fond of their new daughter-in-law and forcibly former eternal enemy, towards the home of her favorite writer. In pursuit of the young couple is the feared Freelance bounty hunter The Will and Marko’s understandably pissed off ex, Gwendolyn. Chapter 10 comes out next month and I certainly hope you’ll join Saga for what Brian K. Vaughan promises to be an epic of every and all proportions.

Until next issue, tide yourselves over with some ship swag below!

On Deviant and elsewhere:

Saga By Christeeeny

Father and Daughter by Kare Nissen

Alana, Marko, and Izabel by Jimmy Booth and Kaira Groehler.

In Cosplay (because I can’t find anything on etsy)

Prince Robot IV at NYCC

Inkblot Blunder as Izabel

Kaitlyn
Staff- Writer
@deadrabbit92