SAGA & SPECTATORS updates from BKV
Plus, some cool stuff I saw while in NYC!
Hi, can you recommend any dining options in JFK’s Terminal 5?
Brian here, writing this rare midweek missive while traveling home from a whirlwind visit to NYC, where I was meeting an old pal to talk about a new comic.
Sorry for the annoying tease, and apologies to the friends I didn’t have time to see on this brief trip, but I’ll be back in support of Spectators later this year.
Anyway, when I wasn’t over-imbibing with the Comics Elite, I tried to drink in some culture, including director Patrick Marber’s excellent staging of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.
Fun to watch comedian Bill Burr more than hold his own with legends of stage and screen. And salesman Richard Roma’s opening pitch hits harder than ever in 2025.
The next day, I checked out Future Pastime, an incredible new exhibit of the paintings of Syd Mead, who you probably know from his work on Blade Runner, TRON and Aliens.
I had no idea that Mead (who died in 2019) was openly gay years before Stonewall, and this show is a celebration of his “profoundly queer vision of the future.” Runs until May 21st, and I can’t recommend it enough.
Meanwhile, over at The Met, the new John Singer Sargent exhibit is also a barnburner. I’d never seen this jaw-dropping oil painting, Fumée d’Ambre Gris (Smoke of Ambergris), inspired by the artist’s trip to Morocco:
Finally, a comic creator chum encouraged me to check out Poster House, a small NYC museum “dedicated to presenting the impact, culture, and design of posters,” and I was blown away (apocalyptic pun!) by their current exhibit, Fallout: Atoms for War & Peace.
Inspiring stuff, New York City. You still got it.
Right, enough of Travels with Baldy.
Let’s get to the real reason you subscribed to this newsletter: PLUGS!
Online retailers will start shipping Saga Volume 12 in a few weeks, but you can pick up a copy at your local comic shop TODAY.
Fiona Staples reached some dizzying new heights with this arc, a story about how hard it is to make friends. For you process nerds, our intrepid letterer/designer Fonografiks even included some of Fiona’s thumbnail layouts (which I like more than many published comics) in the back of this latest collection.
Fiona and I are already hard at work on new issues, so stay tuned to Exploding Giraffe (or my dumb Instagram) for updates about when to expect Chapter 73.
But I’m afraid the next Deluxe Hardcover of Saga (collecting Volumes 10-12) probably won’t be out until this time next year, so please don’t deny yourself the pleasure of finding out what Hazel and co. have been up to while waiting for Book 4 to arrive.
And hey, while you’re picking up Volume 12 from your friendly neighborhood retailer tonight, please don’t forget to also reserve your copy of Spectators!
Our hardcover graphic novel will be in stores this September, but the book’s FOC (“final order cutoff,” when publishers finalize the initial print runs on all their comics) is this coming Monday, May 2nd, so this is your last chance to ask your favorite shop to save you a copy!
Co-creator Niko Henrichon, Fonografiks, and everyone behind the scenes at Image Comics have been working their asses off getting Spectators ready for publication, and I’m so absurdly happy with how it’s turned out.
Over the decades, my collaborators and I have released comics and graphic novels in all sorts of formats, and I’ve learned that many readers are extremely particular about the shape and size of their books (Tom King once yelled at me because The Private Eye doesn’t fit on his shelves right).
It made me realize that there are probably many prose readers out there who’ve never sampled comics simply because most collections are shaped—to their eyes, anyway—more like magazines or coloring books or whatever.
With that in mind, the Spectators team and I wanted to release a true graphic novel that was also roughly the same height, width, and depth (and even cover price) as the latest blockbuster from an author like Stephen King.
So this thick, 350-page hardcover of Spectators will be bigger than the “digest-sized” editions of Saga, but a little smaller (less tall?) than conventional trades, which I think makes it the Goldilocks-perfect size for Val and Sam’s story: large enough to enjoy every detail of Niko’s glorious full-color artwork, but also convenient enough to carry on a cross-country flight (and discretely read without offending whoever’s in the next seat).
It’ll even have a classy dust jacket!
Here’s your first look at what you might find hidden underneath, the “case wrap” that Fonografiks has designed using one of Niko’s magnificent spreads.
Gorgeous, no?
Having now proofed this edition several times, I can confirm that taking in three years’ worth of Niko’s hard labor in a single sitting is wild… but I think it makes for a totally unique reading experience, one that I’m irrationally optimistic will appeal to lots of adult readers out there who might not (yet) know how much they love our medium.
I hope we’ll have enough copies at launch that everyone who wants a hard copy of Spectators will be able to find one, but the only way to GUARANTEE you’ll get your hands on a first printing is to pre-order one today, thanks very much again.
A recent review of the latest issue of Saga noted:
I also thought it was interesting how shifting alliances in the Saga-verse reflect the current political scene in the world, and wonder if this was something that Brian K. Vaughan always had planned, and the timing is coincidental, or if world events have shaped this current storyline. As always, Fiona Staples is brilliant, and the issue shines.
Much obliged! And agreed about Fiona.
But yeah, without spoiling any developments for those of you who aren’t yet caught up, those “shifting alliances” have been in the works for several years.
I’m no Nostradamus, despite what some folks have been generous/paranoid enough to say about We Stand On Guard, my Image miniseries with the great Steve Skroce about Canadian freedom fighters resisting a future invasion by the United States of America.
Ditto with the aforementioned irregularly shaped collection of The Private Eye with artist Marcos Martín.
Over at Politico, Professor of Law Aziz Z. Huq wrote:
In Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin’s The Private Eye, a different plague sweeps over America: Information security breaks and all private data becomes public.
Vaughan and Martin’s story is brought to mind by recent news of quantum computing breakthroughs, first in China and then by Google stateside. Realizing a practicable quantum computer might well render obsolete many of the cryptographic protections used to shield personal and corporate data today: Those little padlocks you see beside URLs? They would, overnight, become a fiction.
Consider then what might follow if the decisive breakthrough in quantum computing, the one that rendered it a practical reality for states and large firms, is made in China’s Tsinghua University in late 2025. Imagine it is weaponized in an ongoing trade war to strip away many of the privacy protections of Americans’ personal data. Vaughan and Martin’s brilliant tale depends on a world in which trust has evaporated. They suggest individuals and nations alike pursue a fearful isolation in its absence. Like all great science fiction, it resonates not because of the leaps of imagination taken. It resonates because it is so close to home.
See, I’m too dense to even understand what most of that means.
But when so much contemporary pop culture is about updating characters and ideas from the 20th century, maybe the simple act of trying to create anything vaguely “new” occasionally results in work that feels not just relevant, but prescient?
I dunno, but I’m grateful that a few of my past collaborations (all available at that same comic shop you’re about to visit!) might still have something to say about our surreal modern world, if not our unknowable future.
Speaking of which, I’m actually finishing this very dispatch back in Los Angeles, after I fell asleep and time-traveled three hours into the past. Nice to be home.
Niko and I will probably bother you again in a few weeks with an update about some other stuff we’ve been up to, as well as where you might be able to get your copy of Spectators signed by one or both of us later this year.
For now, thanks so much for still allowing us into your inbox, and I hope you get to have your favorite thing for lunch tomorrow.
Bye,
BKV