Comic Book / Saga

"This is an original fantasy book with no superheroes, two non-white leads and an opening chapter featuring graphic robot sex. I thought we might be cancelled by our third issue."

— Brian K. Vaughan

An intergalactic ongoing series from Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples described as Romeo and Juliet meets Star Wars meets Game of Thrones.

Far off in space, the large planet of Landfall is populated by people sporting (slightly functional) wings of various kinds. The moon of Landfall is called Wreath and is populated by people with various kinds of animal horns. The two races have been waging war for so long that the fight between the 'wings and horns' is just a fact of life. The wings have advanced technology while the horns wield magic — making the whole thing just a little more complicated and brutal.

The actual plot starts when a POW Wreath soldier named Marko gets into a relationship with his guard, Alana. They then escape, breaking out of jail and deserting, respectively, and get married. While hiding out on another planet called Cleave, Alana gives birth to a halfbreed child possessing both wings and horns, whom they name Hazel. As the new parents rush to escape Cleave alive both factions become aware of the union and seek to kill the parents and possess their child.

Completely unrelated to Romancing Saga.

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Saga contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Prince Robot IV's father doesn't care that he's trying to start a family and settle down after surviving a hellish campaign. His demanding orders are the driving force in his son's life.
  • Barr and Klara for Marko. Marko’s parents occasionally beating him throughout his child is heavily implied to be the root of his complicated feelings about violence.
  • Potentially Prince Robot IV towards Squire. In a fit of rage, IV chokes Squire once, but this is right before IV dies, so we don’t know if it would have become a regular occurrence
• Accidental Misnaming: Ghus calls Petrichor "Pedragor"
• Action Dad/Action Mom: Marko and Alana for Hazel. Barr and Klara for Marko. Gwen and The Will for Sophie.
• Actual Pacifist:
  • Marko is strictly bound to a code of nonviolence and keeps his ancestral sword chained to its scabbard. This is zig-zagged, as he occasionally breaks or reaffirms his commitment, with varying results.
  • D. Oswald Heist, who is even more committed to his ideals than Marko.
• Alien Blood:
  • People of the Robot Kingdom of course have bright blue blood. They're Blue Bloods, too.
  • The Greys have green blood.
• Aliens Speaking English: Most of them apart from the people of Wreath speaking Esperanto, known in-universe as "Blue". It becomes awkward to handwave as Translation Convention because letters of the Latin alphabet are mentioned and there's a pun on "Hope" being both a person's name and a word in its own right.
• All Gravity Is the Same: Landfall is orbited by a moon and dwarf planet; all three have humanoids of similar size and strength. If Landfall is the largest planet in the galaxy, its gravity should be multiple times our own and significantly more than its moons.
• Ambiguously Human: Sophie, The Will and a few other characters appear to be human, but neither the word "human" nor the planet Earth are ever mentioned.
• Anti-Hero:
  • The baby, of all people. When Lying Cat is sucked into space when the Will finally tracks down our heroes, it goes on a gleeful spiel about how she's okay with civilian casualties, as long as the objective is completed.
  • Marko is pacifistic, eloquent, dashing, and principled. He’s also a one-time wife beater with a bloodlust that he doesn’t get under control until his final moments
  • Alana is creative, funny, brave, and fiercely loyal. She’s also dropped bombs on innocent civilians and has a thirst for adventure that is clearly screwing up her kids.
• Anti-Villain: Several characters — not surprising in a story about the moral ambiguity of war.
  • Prince Robot IV and Gwendolyn seem like decent people apart from being charged with killing Alana and Marko and kidnapping their child. The former is a guilt-ridden, PTSD-afflicted soldier thrown around by politics that force him to commit to war, and is a parent himself.
  • The Will is be perfectly willing to kill whomever he's paid to, including children, but he'll go to great lengths to save a child Sex Slave.
  • Dengo the robot janitor is brutal, but motivated by the loss of a loved one to a disease that could have been treated if their family hadn't been too poor to afford health insurance.
• Anyone Can Die: Brian Vaughan does not hold back on killing off characters:
  • The Stalk in Issue 5.
  • Barr, Marko's father, in Issue 11.
  • D. Oswald Heist, the cycloptic author, in Issue 17.
  • Princess Robot in issue 20.
  • Yuma in issue 28.
  • The Brand in issue 29.
  • Dengo in issue 30.
  • Izabel in issue 38.
  • Sweet Boy, Kurti, Jabara, their entire family, and Alana's unborn baby in issue 42.
  • Doff in issue 51.
  • Prince Robot IV in issue 53.
  • Marko in issue 54.
  • the Treehouse in issue 60.
  • Ginnny and her family in issue 62.
  • Sophie AKA Slave Girl in issue 65.
• Armchair Military: Since Wreath is Landfall's major satellite, both sides realized early on that one world couldn't destroy the other without knocking themselves out of orbit. So the fighting was outsourced to the rest of the galaxy with the populations of Landfall and Wreath insulated from experiencing or even caring about the war.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: While the headlines of Jetsam's The Suns newspaper is written in English, the article text is Hebrew. The letters in each word are written in reverse order so that they read left to right, and the sentences don't mean anything intelligible when the words are translated.

• Bandage Mummy: One is sitting in the audience and heckling the Open Circuit actors.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: Marko emphasizes his total pacifism in the first few issues, but pulls his sword when his family is threatened at the end of #3. He gives it up permanently afterward, recommitting himself.
• Battle Couple: Alana and Marko, and Marko's parents, Barr and Klara. The Will and The Stalk seem to have been one in the past.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension:
  • The Will and Gwendolyn. The Will denies it, but Lying Cat knows better.
  • Marko and Alana, occasionally. Alana implies Hazel was conceived from an argument turned screw.
• Berserk Button:
  • Alana getting shot is what sets off Marko's Unstoppable Rage against a squad of Landfall soldiers in issue 6. He doesn't stop until she steps in.
  • Prince Robot IV, whenever anyone threatens his wife or unborn child or makes light of the horrific experiences he and his platoon suffered at Threshold None. During a brief interrogation with a belligerent Wreathen PoW, his facial-screen goes into static and he almost puts the prisoner through a steel bulkhead.
  • Cops seem to be becoming one for Squire, who blames them for the treehouse being burned down at the end of issue 60.
• Bestiality Is Depraved:
  • Among Sextillion's many, many options for carnal pleasure are "a wide variety of livestock". Apparently, Lying Cat would have had a grand time if she'd been allowed in.
  • Sort of subverted by Marko and Alana’s relationship, with members of either’s race regarding the other as an “animal”. How much this is a hyperbolic use of the term vs an actual accusation of bestiality is not always clear.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Marko is noted for his mild personality and aversion to violence. However, he's also prone to going into an Unstoppable Rage, which is why he's become so reluctant to kill. We see him enter his bloody frenzy early in the series, and several characters mention him flipping out during a combat mission. The worst part (for him) is that he admits that he likes how it feels when he's fighting in this state.
  • Squire’s age, trauma induced muteness, and attachment to Alana make him seem mild mannered and kind, but he shows a trouble lack of concern over taking the life of a lying cat.
• Bile Fascination: In-universe, some people watch The Circuit for this reason.
• Bilingual Bonus: Wreath's blue moonspeak? Esperanto.

• Bullet Holes and Revelations:
  • Doff tackles Ianthe, and a gun goes off. Doff is revealed to be fatally shot.
  • Upsher tackles Ianthe, and a gun goes off. Ianthe is revealed to be fatally shot.
• Casual Kink: Briefly Played for Drama. In the heat of the moment, Alana begs Marko to spank her butt while they're having sex. Marko isn't taken aback by the request, but he can't bring himself to do it. As we find out, it's because he's troubled by his own penchant for violence, and still has baggage over being beaten by his father as a child.
• Cast of Snowflakes: The extremely wide variety of character designs even among the humanoid species ensures that all the characters look completely unique, even without going into some of the weirder aliens in the series. Even the Robots, who all have televisions for heads, manage to look unique.
• Cephalothorax: The attendants on Sextillion are giant human heads with human legs wearing fishnets.
• The Chain of Harm: At the core of Marko's pacifistic beliefs is the idea that violence begets violence, and that inflicting harm upon others invites harm unto oneself. The belief, sadly, proves true time and again. To name one example, Prince Robot killing The Stalk leads to The Will going to Sextillion and killing several employees there while rescuing Sophie, which leads to the widow of one of his victims, Ianthe, hunting him down, which leads to Ianthe learning of Sophie’s existence and bringing The Will as muscle to capture her, which leads to the Will finally getting his chance to kill Marko and Prince Robot Iv.
• Chekhov's Gunman: At least two.
  • Yuma is formally introduced when Alana goes to work for the Circuit, but she's seen as a portrait in Heist's home several issues earlier.
  • The March kicks off the war for Phang, but first appears dozens of issues earlier as an interrupted video call to freelancer HQ complaining that it's being shorted on a job.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Depending on who's talking the series occasionally falls into this. More often than not it comes from the potty-mouthed Alana.
  K-Fabe: FUCKING KILL THIS KILLER FUCK.
• Cool Ship: The trees of the Rocketship Forest are spacecraft. Granted you can't drive it, just ride it (it is, however, open to suggestions, if it likes you).
• Country Matters: The series certainly isn't shy about using the term for dramatic effect.
  D. Oswald Heist: You stupid cunts here to take back my advance?
• Creepy Good: The Endwife, an anthropomorphic wolf woman who lives in a Gothic house in the middle of nowhere and greets Marko and family with blood on her hands from her last operation. Despite her offputting appearance, she is nothing but helpful to the heroes.
• Cycle of Revenge: The main Aesop of the series seems to be that thoughtless violence will inevitably lead to reprisal against the person inflicting it. It may take years and years, to the point that the parties in question don't even remember why you're angry, but the bill always comes due.
• Decapitation Presentation: A time-delayed version. Following the three-year Time Skip in Issue 55, The Will meets with Gwendolyn and offers her a present: Marko's skull. She's quite happy to see it.
• Dem Bones: "Bone bugs," as Izabel calls them, animate bone marrow of long-dead creatures to create skeletal constructs.
• Dirty Coward: Alana's friend Yuma sells out the family out of fear for her own life. She tries to make up for it later.
• A Dog Named "Dog": The Will's "partner" is a lying cat named Lying Cat. It's not clear whether all lying cats are referred to by this generic name, or if The Will's cat is unusual.
• Dying Dream: When Marko is dying, he thinks about a day on the beach with Hazel.
• Emotional Powers: The fulmo spell is powered by doubt, meaning it's easier to cast if you aren't sure you can do it.

• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • The Will is still obviously carrying a torch for The Stalk, he's kind to Slave Girl, and there are hints that he and Gwendolyn might be interested in each other. And when his sister The Brand shows up at his bedside, she looks utterly heartbroken to see him in that condition.
  • Prince Robot IV is prone to casual evil like his random execution of The Stalk, but he clearly loves his wife and newborn child.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When The Will kills an alien child sex trafficker. Hazel notes in her narration that he's a monster, but some monsters are worse than others.
  • The government of Wreath may have hired assassins to hunt down and kill Alana and Marko, but they made sure to specify that Hazel is not to be harmed, and even The Stalk has to back down and mutter "Damn, bitch," to herself when Alana herself holds Hazel at gunpoint just to keep The Stalk away. Landfall and Prince Robot IV however, not so much.
  • The Brand has surprisingly high standards for a Freelancer, preferring to accomplish her contracts without killing. When hired to suppress Doff and Upsher's story about Alana, The Brand opts to dose the reporters with a selective silencing potion rather than simply assassinating them. She cites their stories in support of the Freelancers' Union strike as her justification for doing so.
• Expy:
  • Visually at least, Izabel appears to be modelled on Molly Hayes.
  • Marko and Alana both visually resemble and have a similar relationship to Yorick and 355.
  • This isn't the first time we've seen a family of robots with computer screens showing metaphorical representations of emotions for faces.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • The folks of Landfall and Wreath sure do hate the heck out of each other. Prince Robot IV even notes that the whole war has been going on for so long it's now just self-perpetuating: lacking any purpose beyond avenging the latest development, which avenged a previous development, and so on.
  • In the first issue, Landfall soldiers become violently angry just from hearing someone from Wreath speak the Landfall language.
• Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The endless, self-perpetuating war between Wreath and Landfall over a relatively small pot of land brings to mind Real Life conflicts between Ireland and the UK over Northern Ireland, or Israel and Palestine over Gaza that have spilled over into international hostilities.
• Fantastic Slur: "Moony" is a very common one for the people of Wreath. "Goat-head" is another one. People from Landfall get various unflattering permutations on the word "feathered", and Alana gets called a "housefly". The Robot Kingdom has "machine head," "drone," and "blueblood" - although the latter is literal and might just be an inoffensive nickname. “Drone” is used by all non robots to refer to all robots, but is apparently also used by commoner robots to refer exclusively to the robot nobility.
• First-Episode Twist: The first issue makes it clear that Hazel will survive the series, her narration suggests that at least one member of her immediate family might not. In issue 54, Marko is killed by the Will.

• Flipping the Bird: Izabel throws one after her illusion frightens off the cultists on the Timesuck planet.
• Flying Seafood Special;
  • The Will and Gwendolyn hunt flying sharks while stranded on a planet.
  • The Mustached kingfish is a mostly harmless flying stingray found on Jetsam.
• Forced Sleep: Barr and Quain have both done this to Alana.
• Forcefield Door: The prison on Cleave has ones that only guards can pass through, not prisoners. Later Alana explains that Landfall's shield technology blocks Wreathen magic-users but also disrupts Robot Kingdom denizens.
• Foreshadowing: Hazel's narration refers to future events on occasion, such as mentioning a boy who broke her heart while the story's still about her as a baby. Sometimes she's more subtle about it, such as mentioning that she and her family are commoners in a panel showing Dengo's TV face displaying an angry skull. A few issues later, Dengo starts carving his way through the galaxy, motivated by the plight of Robot Kingdom's commoners.
• Forever War: It's been going on so long it's an ingrained part of both cultures.
• Fourth Wall Psych: One issue opens with a full-page spread of a shirtless Marko looking straight at the "audience" and saying "Please don't stop reading." The next page reveals that he's talking to Alana, who is reading her romance novel aloud to him.
• Futuristic Pyramid: Ianthe's apartment is inside a transparent pyramid on the front/top of her Living Ship.
• Genki Girl:
  • Izabel is pretty excitable and pleasant for a ghost of a kid who stepped on a landmine.
  • Prince Robot IV's attaché during his trip to the prison complex is jarringly enthusiastic about everything.
  • The mouse medic who treated Prince Robot IV at Threshold None is also cheery, frank and talkative - even mildly flirtatious - until she dies graphically and gruesomely in a gas-attack because no one bothered to give her a mask.
• Government Conspiracy: Both the Landfall Coalition and Wreath High Command want Alana and Marko dead, and their daughter Hazel taken into their custody, and that's just one conspiracy the two are in on! Both governments also colluded to destroy Phang, using a magic weapon from Wreath that was deployed by Landfall's forces against a Timesuck. When Sir Robot learns about this conspiracy, he tells the story to Upsher and Doff, attracting the attention of Landfall's Secret Intelligence, who "pursuade" the reporters' boss to spike the story.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Prince Robot IV's wife feels the war is, at this point, a battle of two equally "good" groups, since neither side can claim any moral high ground.
• The Greys: The Will and The Stalk are shown fighting a gang of them in one of his memories on Inathe's magic VCR.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: Both the higher-ups on Landfall and Wreath are deeply concerned by Hazel's existence, but in terms that imply utter disgust. Both sides also claim that hybrid children are genetically non-viable, despite the fact that Hazel is healthy and normal. It's not clear if this is just propaganda or if the fact that most other hybrids are conceived by war-rape is part of the problem.
• Head Crushing: Though The Will is very much a villain, there are lines he will not cross, as he demonstrates during his visit to the planet of Sextillion, where he crushes the head of a little girl's pimp to a pulp with his bare hands after finding out just how young she is.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest:
  • Barr says that a cleric told him that his illness is in the "spell resistant final stage".
  • Marko tells Gwendolyn that healing magic only works on other people from Wreath, meaning that she can't use it on The Will.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Dengo is killed by Prince Robot IV shortly after deciding to help Alana and Marko.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • central to the premise. Marko and Alana were both jingoistic soldiers before they realized how stupid and pointless the Wreath/Landfall war.
  • Prince Robot IV joins forces with the family, first as part of an uneasy alliance, and then as a more honest ally. He's still an asshole and prone to disagreeing with the family, though.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Barr saves the life of his family with a difficult magic spell, knowing full well that his ailing heart probably can't take the strain. He was, sadly, correct. He also knew that he had less than a month to live anyways.
  • Yuma, in order to save the ship.
• Heteronormative Crusader: Doff and Upsher come from a planet that has institutionalized homophobia, forcing them to go off-world in order to remain together.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Will's Lying Cat points out when people are lying. That means fooling The Will is nigh-impossible. Unfortunately for him, the Cat also has a tendency to point out when The Will himself is lying (for instance, when he claims to Gwendolyn that he's going to need more money to hunt down Marko and Alana).
• Horned Humanoid: Marko and the other inhabitants of Wreath all have some sort of horn or horns on their heads, inspired by a wide range of real and mythical animals. Marko has ram's horns, while Petrichior has small antlers. Being half-Wreathen, Hazel has a very small set of horns, in addition to wings like Alana.
• Humanoid Abomination: A newborn Timesuck looks like a baby that dwarfs planets, can take out an entire armada and even destroy planets.
• Interspecies Romance: A central theme of the series,
  • The higher-ups ain't happy about Marko and Alana. There are also numerous other couples, almost-couples, and ex-couples throughout the series: The Will and The Stalk, Heist and Yuma, The Will and Gwendolyn, Klara and Heist, Prince Robot and Petrichor...
  • Heist's novel tells the story of a romance between a rock monster and the quarry owner's daughter. He wrote it as political propaganda, and Alana's adoration of the novel brought her and Marko together.
• Intrepid Reporter: Doff and Upsher, a couple of tabloid reporters who are following the rumors of Hazel's birth because more respectable sources dismiss it entirely and assume it's all rumors. Despite their tabloid journalist status, they manage to score interviews with Alana's old commander (who's in the middle of an active war zone) and Special Agent Gale (who, naturally, denies the rumors entirely).
• Invisible Monsters: Dread Naughts are invisible until the day they die.
• Knight of Cerebus: The March, whose first action is to kill Izabel.
• Laid-Back Koala: Following a three-year Time Skip, Alana is partnered with a laid-back and spacy koala-alien named Bombazine, who's drawn to look like a schlub. Subverted when a pirate they meet implies he was once someone VERY dangerous.
• Lampshade Hanging: Despite their entire heads being television screens, Robots can still kiss, drink, eat and perform fellatio. When a Robot dies before he can have a last drink, The March laments that they didn't get to see how their kind ingests food.
• Language of Magic: Blue Language/Esperanto.
• Laser Blade: Sextillion enforcers invoke the trope when The Will points what seems to be a sword handle without a sword at them, asking him if he's going to kill them with his "faggy laser sword". The Will promptly shuts them up by impaling one of them without even leaving the spot he was standing at - it's not a sword, it's a retractable lance.
• Last of His Kind: There's only one male dragon left.
• Lazy Dragon:When Gwendolyn, Sophia, and Lying Cat travel to the planet Demimonde in search of dragon spunk (long story), they find the aforementioned last male dragon not just constantly lounging, but auto-fellating.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Ghüs and Prince Robot IV sometimes bicker like this, as first seen when they try to figure out what to do when Marko and Yuma overdose on drugs.
• Living Lie Detector: Lying Cat, like every other member of her species, can detect lies and will automatically say "Lying" when someone does so in her presence.
• Living Ship:
  • The family quickly acquires a space-faring tree from Rocketship Forest that becomes their primary residence.
  • Ianthe's spaceship is a giant jellyfish.
  • The Stalk’s ship, later commandeered by Prince Robot IV, is built from the remains of a dragon.
• A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: As to hammer the point home, the only (apparently) straight up humans we've seen are The Will, Sophie, and The Brand.
• Magic Versus Science: The people of Landfall use high technology, and those of Wreath use magic. They seem pretty evenly matched.
• The Magic Versus Technology War: Saga focuses on the natives of the science-using planet Landfall at war with its magic-using moon Wreath.
• Magitek: Very liberally sprinkled throughout each issue thus far.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: An in-universe example. D. Oswald Heist, the author of Alana's favorite book that changed her life, considers it hackwork that he wrote to pay the bills. Subverted in that he's lying in an effort to mislead IV.
• Male Frontal Nudity: Several male characters are shown with completely visible genitals. In an aversion to Non-Humans Lack Attributes, things like a giant troll-like creature and robot also have explicitly drawn genitalia.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Alana and Marko's relationship. The higher-ups on both sides are not happy about it, and are outright disgusted that they've had a child.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Alana is foul-mouthed, pragmatic and trigger happy; Marko is nurturing, idealistic and romantic. Also applicable to Klara — a sharp tempered, no-nonsense Mama Bear — and her husband Barr, who is much calmer, level headed and knows his way around a spinning wheel.
• Mass Teleportation: "Hopscotch" can teleport a spaceship interstellar distances, and it can even be done when the ship is on the surface of a planet.
• Meaningful Name: "Jetsam" is a maritime term for ocean debris, as in "flotsam and jetsam." The planet Jetsam is an ocean world full of amphibious people.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Prince Robot IV's people.
• Meet Cute: Hazel invokes this when narrating how her parents met, the scene in question is Alana pistol whipping Marko in a prison cell.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: The Circuit lets you interact with people in other galaxies through virtual reality and they only seem to use it for watching soap opera-style plays.
• Multiboobage;
  • The Back-Alley Doctor they go to for an abortion is an anthropomorphic coyote with six exposed, saggy breasts.
  • One of the demons in The Calligrapher book that Marko's writing also has six boobs.
• Murder, Inc.: The Freelancers, overlapping with Weird Trade Union occasionally for comedy. In a lot of ways, they represent a power in and of themselves to equal (or at least be considered in the same breath as) the warring races and their allies, except that they're neutral, accepting contracts from both sides at their own discretion.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Just as Marko has the Will dead to rights, he calms down and decides to spare him. Unfortunately, the Will uses the opportunity to stab him in the back.
• Non-Human Head: There's an entire race of people with televisions for heads.
• No Ontological Inertia: The Embargon spell that The Brand uses to stop the Doff and Upsher talking can be reversed if the caster is hung until dead.
• Off with His Head!: How The Will kills Prince/Sir Robot, tearing his TV monitor clear off his shoulders.
• One-Product Planet: Sextillion's is prostitution and Pervious' is abortions.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Two are bandits on Pervious. The mother looks pretty standard but her half human son has a normal horse body and head with the top half of a human body growing out of the horse's back.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Live on Demimonde but are nearly extinct. The mares urinate on their victims, which will cause family members to attack them and the bulls have better hearing than the females. Also, the females appear to be giant salamanders, while the males are typical giant lizards.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: Are they ever.
• Papa Wolf/Mama Bear: A running theme throughout the entire series.
  • Marko breaks his vow of pacifism and single-handedly destroys an entire squad of heavily armed, power-armoured Landfall soldiers with his sword alone, defending Hazel and avenging what he thought was Alana's "death".
  • Alana makes it very clear she would rather see Hazel dead by her own hand than alive in the hands of monsters.
  • Prince Robot IV shoots The Stalk dead the split-second he thinks she's about to pull a weapon. As he does so, a rattle appears on his monitor, implying that his thought process was that he had to be alive to raise his future child at all costs. He would later hunt down and kill Dengo as retribution for killing his wife and abducting his son, whom he would be fiercely protective of from that point onward.
  • The Will in what counts as a Pet the Dog moment, is more than prepared to kill dozens of Sextillion gangsters and risk his own death in order to save Slave Girl, whom he so far seems to have 'adopted' until he can find her a home.
  • Marko's parents sold their house in order to get the magical tools that would allow them to find Marko.
  • D. Oswald Heist is an unusual non-violent version. When his son committed suicide as a result of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Heist risked his own career and safety to write a subversive anti-war novel aimed against the two most powerful — and most dangerous — powers in the galaxy, the Landfallians and the Wreathens.
• Painting the Medium:
  • The "Blue" language is written in blue text, possibly implying some type of magical synesthesia to those hearing it, making them perceive the sounds as blue.
  • Dialogue spoken by robots is written in a Courier-like font, bringing to mind word processors.
  • Izabel's speech is written in red text. As a ghostly "Horror," it's possible that her voice sounds different from those of living people.
• The Paralyzer: Alana has a Heartbreaker, a small pistol that isn't lethal, just paralyzing. Marko describes the effect as what it felt like when his dog died, so it seems to not so much stun as overwhelm the target with emotions (sadness, judging by the name and the effect as described), leaving them temporarily incapable of taking any effective action. It's later stated that a shot from it would probably kill Hazel, so presumably there's also some kind of physiological effect. It does nothing against robots.
• Parents as People: One of Hazel's narrations says it's tough for children to accept that their creators aren't gods but regular people who will always disappoint you.
• Percussive Prevention: Yuma knocks Ghüs out with a fire extinguisher to stop him getting killed while fixing the fuel leak.
• Plant Aliens: Yuma.
• Playing with Fire: The Constables, who are sentient, humanoid flames in police uniforms.
• Pleasure Planet: Sextillion, where you can copulate with any man, woman, alien, or livestock you can think of.
• Plot Armor: Hazel's narration mentions that she lives to old age, so she's basically the only character we know will survive the events of the series. Everyone else is fair game.
• Professional Killer: The Will, The Stalk, The Brand, and the March. The name used in the series is "Freelancers," a reference to the lance-like weapon that most of them carry.
• Punch-Clock Villain: This trope sums up the Freelancers perfectly. Accept a contract, kill your target, take the check and leave. Nothing personal, Just Business.
• Punny Name: Mama Sun is an actual mama-san - a term used in Japan and east Asia to refer to a woman in a position of authority, especially one in charge of a geisha house or bar.
• Ramming Always Works: Alana insists on ramming the heartseeker missile The Will fires at their ship because it won't explode until it has flown a certain distance from The Will's ship.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Alana is in the red as she is more aggressive and gruff while Marko is in the blue as he is more timid, sensitive, and seeks to end situations in a nonviolent and peaceful way
  • Also, Prince Robot IV is in the red due to his angered state and preference in making unorthodox and sometimes reckless decisions while seal-like alien Ghüs is in the blue as he tries to be more reasonable and is more willing to be nice to others and cheer them up whenever they feel down.
• Redemption Equals Death: Yuma dies fixing a fuel leak, but saves Prince Robot, Marko and Ghüs.
• Reinforce Field: Both Barr and Gwendoline have used magic to hold damaged spaceships together, in Barr's case this is what finished him off.
• Religion is Magic: Wreath's chief magic users are called clerics.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Quain plays this straight. Originally averted with the Robot Kingdom having crocodile servants who seemed nice enough.
• The Reveal:
  • Issue 12 is an entire issue dedicated to Prince Robot IV interrogating author D. Oswald Heist about his book and if he knows where Marko, Alana, and Hazel are. Cue the very last page, where Marko, Alana, Hazel, and Klara are all in the very same house as Heist and IV, and have been there for a week.
  • In Issue 15, The Will's visions of The Stalk, encouraging him to settle down and start a new life, are actually a hallucination brought on by parasites in the planet's indigenous flora and fauna that make their hosts violently want to stay put.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Prince Robot IV's entire race. In addition to having sex and bearing children, there's also a case of Prince Robot IV using a toilet. And having erectile dysfunction. When we see one of them torn in half at the waist, he has normal-looking (if blue) guts coming out.
• Robot Republic: The Robot Kingdom.
• Rock Monster: Oswald wrote a romance novel about one of these dating a quarry owner's daughter.
• Rule of Drama: The horned humanoids and winged humanoids are locked in endless proxy war in the first place because their homeworlds are orbiting each other (and because their governments profit from it). Neither faction can afford to destroy the other's world because they'd go spinning into space. A reader can think of plenty of ways to sterilize a world without destroying it, but then there'd be no story. Possibly because the tech/magic defenses both places have are good enough that anything that could penetrate them and still do the job would affect the other as well.
• Saint-Bernard Rescue: Inverted with The Brand's pet, Sweet Boy, which resembles a Saint-Bernard complete with a barrel around his neck, but the barrel is full of poison and he shoots tranquilizer darts from his nostrils.
• Science Fantasy: The series has science fiction elements of advanced technology, robots and space travel alongside magic, ghosts, dragons, intelligent trees and other supernatural staples.
• Seashell Bra: An amphibian girl from Jetsam is wearing one in the audience of the circuit.
• See the Invisible: Squire can see Dread Naughts' internal organs.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: Julep, from The Revolution. Predictably, she dies. (Between issues, apparently.)
• Sentimental Sacrifice: Marko begins the series carrying his ancestral blade. He offers it as a sacrifice to the last tree in the Rocketship Forest to persuade it to allow his family onboard. The tree is apparently impressed.
• Series Continuity Error: A minor one. The first issue specifies that Wreath is Landfall's only satellite but it's said later on that they're both orbited by the Robot Kingdom.
• Sexual Karma: Marko and Alana are shown to have healthy libidos and a pleasantly kinky sex life, even continuing to have sex while Alana is pregnant. By contrast, Prince Robot IV is first introduced as he fails to get it up while having sex with his wife, and he blows several months having emotionally empty sex with prostitutes on Sextillion after being shot by Heist. The Will, meanwhile, also travels to Sextillion on Wreath High Command's tab, only to be bored out of his wits with its offerings until someone made the fatal mistake of trying to sell him an underaged Sex Slave. Lampshaded by Oswald Heist, who explains that the title of his book The Opposite of War actually refers to sex; the pacifist Marko and Alana have a loving sex life, which the more hawkish characters don't.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Often averted. In the first issue alone, there is an explicit sex scene between two Robots. Alana and Marko's sex lives are also shown regularly.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: The other major theme of the series. Marko and Alana's defection were both motivated by the trauma they'd experienced on the battlefield, and this provides much of Prince Robot's Freudian Excuse. Even Ghus says he did things he's not proud of in the Forever War.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: The War for Phang kicks off with Izabel being destroyed by the March.
• Small Universe After All: Alana suggests running away to another galaxy because she heard that draft dodgers have been offered sanctuary.

• Soap Within a Show: The Circuit is a weird mix of soap opera and professional wrestling show featuring pirates and superheroes, which people watch in virtual reality as a stage play. People in the audience can heckle the performance, and the actors can see the audience.
• Sociopathic Soldier: Both sides have their fair share of these. At one point Alana and Marko run across a squad of trigger-happy Landfall soldiers with the phrases "wings of death" and "born to kill" scribbled on their helmets.
• Sophisticated as Hell: The Robot Kingdom is modelled after English nobility, so when Prince Robot IV's in a temper he gets to say things like "Now be a dear and fuck the fuck off."
  Prince Robot IV: Belay that fuckery.
• Space Opera: Planet hopping, alien civilizations, space war, intrigue, romance.
• Space Western: Pervious has a cowboy theme.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Freelancers have names in the format of "The <Word>." Notable in that "The" is always capitalized and is part of the name, as in, "Good luck, The Will". Her being called "The Stalk" also gives Marko pause and makes Alana immediately realize she's a Freelancer when they first encounter The Stalk. Other known Freelancers include The Import, The March, The Fluke, and The Brand.
• Stealth Pun: Patents are guarded by literal trolls.
• Stylistic Suck: D. Oswald Heist's novel "A Nighttime Smoke" is an outwardly bad romance story about a rich woman and a rock monster. The novel actually is a subversion of many tropes tailored to deliver an anti-war message: two people who should be monstrous to each other but wind up as lovers. The author disguised it as a drab romance novel he wrote to make a quick buck to hide its true nature from the authorities.
• Subspace Ansible:
  • They have audio and visual phones that communicate instantly over interstellar distances.
  • The Circuit shows virtual reality plays over what are implied to be intergalactic distances.

• Take That!: Issue 17, "Because the only journalists that deserve killing are sports writers."
• Talking Poo: They don't talk but microbes on Pervious cause any shit to turn into Dung People who resemble the people who shat them.
• Temporary Bulk Change: The Will piles on the pounds after awakening from his coma and discovering that his sister The Brand has died. He later loses the weight after spending an undisclosed amount of time as Ianthe's prisoner.
• Thinking Up Portals: Magical helmets called Crash Helms let you do this.
• Time Skip:
  • At the end of issue 18. About two years, give or take.
  • Another one at the end of issue 30.
• Translator Microbes:
  • Marko and Alana have rings that were enchanted with a translator spell. Gwendolyn has a pendant that does the same thing. They're actually a matched set.
  • One of the centaur bandits has a translation app on his phone.
• Trauma Conga Line: Good lord almighty, the hits just don't stop coming for Hazel's family! First, Marko's father dies saving his family. Then the family meets their personal hero, D. Oswald Heist, who is killed when Prince Robot IV and Gwendolyn show up. Then Alana gets hooked on drugs shortly before Dengo abducts Hazel, Alana, and Marko's mother. Then Hazel and Marko's mother are imprisoned on Landfall until Marko breaks them out. Then the family settles for a time on Phang, but Izabel is destroyed, and the whole of Phang is destroyed by a Timesuck and a conspiracy by both Landfall and Wreath, killing all of the new friends Hazel and company made. At around the same time, Alana was pregnant with a second child, but said child becomes stillborn while escaping the Timesuck and must be aborted. Then the family travels to Jetsam, where The Will finally catches up to them and kills both Prince Robot IV and Marko.
• Tree Vessel: The rocketships forest produces organically grown rocketships that seem to remain alive even after they blast off.
• TV Head Robot: Robots all have televisions for heads, which are usually blank but will occasionally reveal their thoughts. When they're recalling a memory or dreaming, their screen will show what they're thinking. When they're feeling strong emotion, they will show a metaphorical image of their emotion, such as a lighting bolt for anger or a rose for love. Each robot has a unique style of television that sometimes implies their rank. Prince Robot IV has a sleek and rounded set, King Robot has a massive widescreen, the peasant Dengo has an old-fashioned set with knobs, and a pair of robot soldiers have monitors with monochrome green displays ala the Apple ][. Queen Robot also has a very old-fashioned set, so the modernity of the design does not always follow class lines.
• Unstoppable Rage: Marko is prone to getting them. Soldiers discuss him losing his mind and wiping out a squad of enemies single-handedly in a past battle. We see this in action in issue 5, after Alana is shot in the shoulder by a Landfallian soldier.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • The series is littered with it! There's Prince Robot IV's people, the Robot Kingdom, who are metallic humanoids with TVs for heads; The Stalk, a chalk-white woman with eight red eyes whose bare humanoid torso is armless while her spider-like lower body has eight limbs with opposable clawed thumbs; the unnerving and distinctly nonsexy inhabitants of Sextillion; and on, and on, and on...
  • Sextillion gives a rather hilarious example - after walking around the city and witnessing things like a massive orgy of Landfallians, a dinosaur toy with a gigantic dildo dick, and something which seems to be a cross between a naked woman and a centipede, The Will complains that everything he's seen so far feels "too safe". Of course, this is the same guy who was once romantically involved with said nightmarish spider-person with eight eyes and no arms.
• Unusual User Interface: The controls on the HMS Skyscraper involve you putting your hands on some kind of gel pad.
• Vagina Dentata: The monster that tries to eat Squire on Jetsam has multiple rows of teeth.
• Vicious Cycle: Marko's pacifistic nature is, in part, rooted in a belief that violence begets violence: that bringing harm upon others, even when necessary, invites harm upon him and his family. Tragically, this proves true time and again, not only for Marko, but for everyone else. Many of the earliest acts of violence, including Robot IV's killing The Stalk and The Will killing a mook on Sextillion, eventually lead to The Will finding and killing Marko.
• Visual Pun: Marko's rather aggressive mother wields, appropriately enough, a battle-axe. Isabel even calls her that out at one point.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Gwendolyn vomits when she sees an illusion of her ex and Oswald drunkenly vomits over Hazel's head the first time he meets the main characters.
• Vulgar Humor: Between TV Head Robot sex and... well, everything on Sextillion, Vaughan and Staples pack in plenty of gleefully disgusting awfulness.
• Wagon Train to the Stars: Most of the story involves the gang travelling from planet to planet in their Tree Vessel.
• War Is Glorious: Klara seems to hold this view.
• War Is Hell: And for more reasons than just the obvious. The front lines are exactly as horrifying as you'd expect in a galaxy where one side wields roughly modern weapons and the other inventively deadly magic. But both sides realized at some point that they couldn't continue the war on their home turf - destroying Wreath or Landfall would see its opposing celestial body hurled out of orbit and destroyed too. In order to continue the conflict, they outsourced it, dragging every other world into their fight. There are conscripts and enlisted soldiers who just want to finish their service and go home, risking and losing their lives (some only there for the entitlements offered soldiers, like tertiary scholarships); planets whose whole native populations have been wiped out, and nobody knows or cares which side it was; refugees in camps where they're kidnapped by or sold to sex/slave traffickers; thinning resources; orphans, widows and widowers not just from violence but also from mentally-shattered or mutilated veterans committing suicide. It goes on and on. You could sum up Izabel with the trope name: the ghost of a teenage girl, parents rebelling against both occupying forces but personally uninterested in fighting, who stepped on a land mine and found herself stuck defending her planet in death. Her people were wiped out anyway, and she doesn't even know who was responsible.
• Was Too Hard on Him: Barr regrets not having been a better father to Marko. Marko, however, seems to have fond memories of his dad from being a kid.
• Wham Line:
  • Final page of issue 19.
  Future Hazel: This is the story of how my parents split up.
  • Issue 42, at the end of the Wham Episode that is the War for Phang arc, this gut punch happens:
  Marko: Don't try to move, love. Are you hurt?
  Alana: I don't think so, but... our boy. I can't feel him kicking.
• Wham Shot: In Issue 54, Marko with Torso with a View after being shot through the heart by The Will.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Ianthe is the fiancee of one of Mama Sun's mooks that The Will killed early on, and she's bent on revenge.
• Winged Humanoid: All Landfall natives have wings, though the size and shape varies. Most are feathered, but leathery bat wings are also present. Alana has a very small set of wings and spends most of her life believing that she can't fly. Hazel has wings as well, which are larger than her mother's.
• Wizards from Outer Space: Marko and his fellow Wreathens.
• World of Badass: The series is a Galaxy of Badass which is Justified, since they're all living during wartime.
• World Shapes: The planet The Will and Gwendolyn get stranded on is spikey and Demimonde is only half a planet.
• X Meets Y: Has been described as Star Wars meets Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings crossed with Romeo and Juliet.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Quain of the Last Revolution tries to dispose of Dengo once his presence becomes a liabilty to his negotiation with Wreath High Command, but Klara's intervention saves him.
• Your Head Asplode: Pretty much every time someone gets headshot.
• Zebras Are Just Striped Horses: While on the planet Pervious, Alana rides a white, zebra-like animal with orange stripes at the front that fade to grey at the back

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