Today, we look back to 10 years ago, when we first introduced to the fascinating world of Saga by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan.

This is "Look Back," where every four weeks of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each spotlight will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first spotlight of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week (we look at weeks broadly, so if a month has either five Sundays or five Saturdays, it counts as having a fifth week) looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

We go back to March 2012 for "Chapter One" in Saga #1 by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan, the start of their long-running, award-winning series.

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THE OPENING FEW PAGES THAT PRACTICALLY DEFINED SAGA

The beginning of any work should obviously try to both grip you as a reader and give you a strong sense of what the work you are about to read will be about. In comics, I think the opening is likely even more important than a novel, where you have a bit more time to lure your reader in (since you have a whole page full of text). What strikes me about Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan's Saga is just how perfect the opening to their great series is. Read on to see what I mean...

It is striking just how expertly this opening scene explains to us what this series is all about. Besides Staples' excellent artwork and striking sense of design, these pages tell us that this is a comic book that stars fantastical characters but characters that are ground in the same sort of reality that we all live in. This is not a comic about a miraculous science fiction world. It is about a miraculous science fiction where the wonders of the world are contrasted against the ever preset grit of everyday life. This is an unvarnished comic book.

Childbirth is depicted as it actually is, not some pasteurized version of the event.

While this approach is admirable in and of itself, it would mean nothing if Vaughan and Staples did not create compelling characters that we'd like to follow through this unvarnished fantasy world. Luckily, that's just what they do, and you can tell that right from the opening pages, as Alana and Marko are clearly two interesting characters who also just as clearly care a lot for each other. Their bond makes the journey we go on work.

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THE SUPPORTING CAST THAT MADE SAGA STAND OUT RIGHT AWAY

Of course, it is not just their journey that we are seeing. Slowly but surely, Vaughan and Staples populate this world with a variety of fascinating characters. Most notable are the the bounty hunters hunting down the couple and their child (Alana and Marko are a sort of intergalactic Romeo and Juliet, one is from a moon and one is from that moon's planet. Their people have been at war for many, many years) and the robot prince who is tasked with their capture, as well, in an official governmental capacity.

The Robot Prince is a tragic character, forced by "honor" to pursue Marko and Alana...

Some of the most striking aspects of the series come from the bounty hunter known as The Will, who is accompanied by a Lying Cat, a cat who can tell if you are lying. The Will is not a good man, but he is also driven by a certain code of honor...

I've long been an admirer of Staples' prodigious talents (I believe I've spotlighted her here before) and she is absolutely destroying this series. Her designs are excellent, her character work is sublime and she is an amazing storyteller. Vaughan sure is lucky to be working with her.

The story is narrated by Hazel, the baby in the series, as she tells her story from the future and Vaughan uses this plot device very well, as he allows certain hints to drop here and there about future stories.

The reveal that, at the time of this story, that Hazel is a "normal" girl is a fascinating twist, although one we'll eventually see whether it is true or not. In any event, this was a brilliant over-sized debut issue that started a wonderful and award-winning comic book series. We're lucky that after a long hiatus, it is now back on the shelves again, as good as ever.

If you folks have any suggestions for March (or any other later months) 2012, 1997, 1972 and 1947 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.

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