Saga : Volume One

Winner of the 2013 Hugo award for Best Graphic Story!

Imagining that Juliet came from Star War and Romeo from Grimm's Fairy Tales might get close to nailing the genre mashup delight of this interplanetary romance. The high-tech Landfall Coalition runs an endless war with the magic-making folks from Wreath, a moon of Landfall. When dark-skinned Landfallian soldier Alana (who has wings) is assigned to guard Wreathean prisoner Marko (who has horns), they swap the chains of captivity for chains of love and escape together to birth their daughter. So now everyone wants them dead: the Landfallians, the Wreathian High Command, and more, including the Robot Kingdom's Prince Robot IV, the humanoid spidery creature known as The Stalk, and a morally flexible human known as The Will. The far-fetched world building paired with marvelous characterisation and an underlying theme of parenthood under fire elevate this above your average space opera. Vaughan's plotting and dialog are top notch, and so is Staples's inventive painted art.