SPECTATORS - Part 131 (and new SAGA!)
Win a signed copy of this week's SAGA 70!
Well, how are you managing your stress/existential dread this week?
Brian here, and I’ve been self-soothing with my usual blend of writing, spectating and Empress Gin. This past weekend, I knocked back a few at Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of Here, which I’ll just say was a fascinating experiment… and a great excuse to reread Richard McGuire’s Here, one of the ten greatest graphic novels ever created.
Speaking of the smug superiority of comics over all other visual media, check out these red hot, NSFW new pages of Spectators from my brilliant and innovative collaborators, artist/co-creator Niko Henrichon and letterer/man of mystery Fonografiks.
If you were brought here by our intriguing ad in the back of Saga (stay tuned for a preview of this week’s new issue!), WELCOME. You can get caught up on all of our previous installments for free via our Archives (where you can also find my personal answers to the 2024 Saga Reader Survey), OR you can join your fellow generous paid subscribers in The Tower and read all 300+ pages of Spectators so far in one convenient download.
Away we go…
To be continued next week.
For now, we promised to give away a few copies of the new digest-sized collection of Saga, a series that was just named one of “The Most Iconic Speculative Fiction Books of the 21st Century” by the kind folks over at Tor Books’ Reactor.
That first digest collection has been on comic store shelves for a couple of weeks now, but will be available EVERYWHERE starting this Tuesday, November 5th, when absolutely nothing else will be going on in the world, so swing by your favorite indie bookstore tomorrow.
Anyway, our semi-fictional intern Genesis the Exploded Giraffe randomly selected a few non-fictional commenters from last week’s chat about our various Halloween plans, starting with reader Matt R.:
Our youngest boy turned 9 on 10/25 and will be trick-or-treating with neighborhood friends sans his parents walking 20 yards behind them. It’s a parent “last” that I’m actually excited about because I’ve never got to stay home and greet treaters at my door! Celebrating this new “first” with full-sized Reeses’s Cups, Snickers and Kit Kats!
Congrats on the major milestone, Matt.
Next up, Jason G. wrote:
While my daughter T or Ts as Mara from Progressive, I will be dutifully walking our 2-year-old deaf Pitty-Huskie mutt Krypto (guess who he looks like?) around the neighborhood so he can get energy out and see all the fun costumes.
Today is our 1-year adoptaversary with him, and if you want a great pup, trust the wonderful folks at Marley’s Mutts and @Pawsitivechange, the dogs are trained with inmates to help develop social skills and work skills!
Very cool, thanks, Jason.
Finally, Jesse shamed us all by sharing:
I’m a volunteer with the Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild, so I’m getting all gussied up in pirate apparel and swabbing the deck of the tall ship Gazela at Penn’s Landing. Yo ho ho!
Damn, volunteering on Halloween? All I did was eat my weight in Nerds Gummy Clusters.
You Tower types are the coolest, and I hope you enjoy your swag. We’ll be giving away more signed comics all month, so it’s not too late to join your fellow giraffes…
While we’re on the subject, along with all of those swell contests, membership in The Tower also unlocks the last THREE YEARS’ worth of our exclusive bonus content, like some of these early gems:
Your responses to those 2025 Time Capsule questions (asked back in 2022) are pretty wild.
In our first year, Exploding Giraffe actually published TWICE a week (instead of our current Monday mega-posts), so there’s a ton of fun early stuff to discover in those dusty Archives.
I’ll be removing my old scripts and stuff from the gossamer World Wide Web not long after we complete Spectators later this year, so if there’s something you’d like to read, download it now before it disappears back into the BKVault.
🚨BREAKING TEE-RELATED NEWS!🚨
Please be advised, you don’t have much time left to pick up exclusive shirts and prints featuring Fiona Staples’ delicious cover to Chapter 69 from The Official Saga Threadless Shop…
…because later this week, that design will be retired, replaced by NEW limited edition merch showcasing Fiona’s haunting artwork from Saga Chapter 70, in comic stores THIS WEDNESDAY:
I’m so grateful for all of the readers who are discovering Saga in its various new formats… but my favorite way to experience our story is still with old-school monthly issues, so I appreciated this quote from Arcane Comics co-owner and manager Kenshi Toll in a recent interview about his store for The Seattle Times:
“We’ve certainly sold probably 500 copies” of the first volume of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ adult sci-fi space epic Saga, Toll says. That graphic novel has been a perennial Arcane bestseller “forever and always.”
“But I think what keeps the readership engaged is still that single issue,” he says. Shoppers faithfully return to the store every Wednesday when new issues are released to pick up their subscriptions and peruse the racks.
500 copies! Thanks so much to everyone at Arcane Comics, and I hope this week’s new issue does all right for you.
I also prefer to read my comics in print (he types into the service he uses to release his latest digital comic), but for those of you who aren’t lucky enough to live near multiple world-class comic shops, CNN just did a tech review that unexpectedly discussed how Saga looks on a new tablet:
The Kindle Colorsoft also makes comic books such as Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga look better. While I will tell you to not expect the color accuracy and boldness you get in the excellent iPad Mini, I’m still enamored by how an illustration of an adorable horned child appears on this E Ink display.
Hmm, if you say so, Cable News Network.
I think I’ll stick with my delightful-smelling print issues, and I’ve got a few comps of Chapter 70 to give away this week.
If you’d like to be automatically entered in a random drawing to win a signed copy, please just let us know, one more time: What’s the last great comic (or graphic novel, comic strip, manga, etc.) you discovered, and in what format did you read it?
I’m working on my final “Favorite Comics of the Year” post, so I hope you’ll let me know about anything great I may have missed. And it doesn’t have to have been released this year! I’m still discovering great comics that came out decades ago.
Finally today, here’s your exclusive sneak peek at the first TWO pages of interior art and story from this week’s new Saga by Fiona and Fonografiks, just for you loyal members of The Tower.
Remember, if you hate even minor spoilers, feel free to skip this small bonus, and Niko and I will see you back here next Monday evening for more free Spectators, cool?
Everyone else, strap in…
SPOILER SPACE!!!!!
I MEAN IT, MINOR SPOILERS BELOW!!!!
IS YOUR SOUL TRULY PREPARED?!?!
Oh, wait, that’s just a badass political sign created by artist Elizabeth McKee, who also happens to be my astoundingly talented mother-in-law!
Sorry it’s not available for purchase. Please don’t steal that one from her yard.
Right, where was I…?