Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staplesis a modern comics classic – and a symbol of sales success long before Absolute Batman. Launching in 2012, the twisting, cliffhanger-driven SF story was an immediate critical and sales success, giving us Lying Cat, star-crossed lovers Alana and Marco, and the complicated heroine, Hazel.
Although Vaughan’s famed dialog and pacing were the first draw, Staples’ stunning character designs and imaginative storytelling quickly won its own acclaim – inspiring cosplay and fan art.
The book came out on a startlingly regular schedule for the first four years – proving a reliable release schedule could be achieved without sacrificing quality. Along the way it picked up boatloads of Eisners, Harveys and even Hugos. Saga was a book that people raced to the store to pick up – myself included – just as God intended.
The book went on hiatus in 2018, coming back after four years, in 2022. Since then it’s come out fairly regularly, with planned gaps for trade releases, but the last issue, #72, came out in March 2025, and updates have been vague since then. At last year’s NYCC, Vaughan announced the latest collection for this past April and more plans, as reported here at The Beat:
The announcement came during Vaughan and Henrichon’s panel about their new book, Spectators (read our review). Specifically, Vaughan shared that next year will see the release of a fourth Saga hardcover, which will collect three smaller six-issue trades, vols. 10 – 12, which is essentially all of the issues since the series mid-point hiatus.
In addition, artist Fiona Staples is hard at work on new Sagacomics that should publish next year, Vaughan said.
“This next arc is pretty wild,” Vaughan said.
Since then, there’s been a dearth of Saga news, until this week, when Vaughan wrote in his newsletter:
I know that readers are rightly impatient for any kind of Saga update. I wrote our next issue way back in the summer of 2025 and I firmly believed we’d be back on stands by now, but that’s obviously not the case.
I completely understand and sympathize with folks who are fed up with this latest wait and have dropped/forgotten about/eternally cursed our series. But the situation is hard and complex, and not entirely mine to discuss, so I appreciate whatever grace you might be able to extend to our small creative family. We will share more with you as soon as we can.
That soon was a few days later on the @saga_comics Instagram, from Staples:
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Fiona here, reaching out to you from under my rock to wholeheartedly apologize for our series going AWOL. Our release schedule has been slow and inconsistent for the past several years and that’s entirely on me.
I’ve spent the greater part of my career working only on Saga, from my 20s into my 40s. Partway through I made the decision to start a family, and to take on another large project. Some people would be able to do all of these things easily. Not me, unfortunately. I found myself overextended and suffering from burnout that I could not recover from.
However, I’ve been taking concrete steps to better my mental health and make improvements to my workflow. I’m drawing new issues of Saga now, and I’m working hard to get us back to a more consistent schedule for the final third of our series. One issue is complete and I have several scripts from Brian lined up—I’ll share more info as I complete more work.
Thank you for getting this far with us… this book means the world to me.
There’s a lot to unpack here but the most important message is: Fiona Staples, take care of yourself, take care of your family, and make sure making comics is a healthy activity for you.
“From my 20s into my 40s” – BAM! Fourteen years! A lot of Saga fans must have read that phrase and winced….I know I did.
Fourteen years in, Saga’s announced final issue will be #108, 36 issues away, and it will probably take more than three years. Suffice to say that a 17-20 year run on any single comic book is a huge undertaking and a mighty achievement.
Even when it launched, Saga was an outlier in the modern comics world. Hardly any artist stays on a book for more than a year, let alone 14 years. Its initial six year run of mostly monthly issues was in itself a stunning achievement.
With even the last of those six years selling around 35,000 copies and the collections hitting around 25K for each volume, it was also proof that you could make a decent living off a successful comic book series. With making a living making comics such a precarious thing, it was an inspiration for creators as well as a classic story that new readers continued to discover.
But all that comes at a cost, as Staples’ statement and the current hiatus show.
And you know what? It’s okay to acknowledge that cost and prioritize mental and physical health. Old timer comics artists of the 20th century were chained to their drawing board, but expected to make a decent living if they draw a monthly book – or two if you knew the shortcuts. Today’s comics readers don’t accept shortcuts, and comics artists have more ways to make money, and don’t accept or expect lengthy assignments. Meanwhile page rates have been stagnant for 20 years, so they need to find other ways to make money.
Vaughan and Staples commitment to 108 issues of high quality comics is a wonderful, beautiful thing, and I’m sure they will finish the story, at a healthy pace, and then people can enjoy the whole thing for years to come.
Finally, what is the extra project Staples picked up? It’s believed to be an adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles. A Narnia fan site lists the release date as <a href="https://comicvibe.com/all-new-fortnite-sprites-available-after-september-24-update/” title=”All New Fortnite Sprites Available After September 24 Update”>September 2027, but we’ll see. I think it’s also perfectly fine for Staples to take on a different project to stretch and stay fresh and engaged.
It would be great to be able to get a Saga comic every month for the next three years, but if that doesn’t happen, Saga is still awesome, just like BKV and Fiona Staples.
