My Top Rack: Alana
I know a while back Dustin already did an article on a character from Saga but I’m just going to add to the list of bad ass females from that series. I just want to say thank you Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples for creating a character like Alana. Females are overwhelmingly underrepresented in the comic world, there’s been so many times that I’ve read comics with literally one sentence from a female character (ahem Batman comics) and as a female that’s pretty fucking disheartening that there is a lack of strong women that I can be like “yea her, I want to be like her.” But then Vaughan and Staples conceive Alana, who is one of the lead characters in Saga. She is from a planet known as Landfall and was drafted into the war. Alana forms and acts upon her own opinions, despite her homeland being at war with Wreath, she frees Marko (a foot solider from Wreath) from prison knowing that he will die if she doesn’t. She has compassion, complexity, depth, strength, and an actual fucking personality that many characters lack. Alana believes in the value of humanity all the while fighting for survival for her and her family. Come on, she’s fighting with a gun in one hand and her baby in the other, doesn’t that define bad ass? I’m really excited to see a character like Alana and I hope that she becomes a beacon of hope that other writers will incorporate strong females in their work. So I guess what I’m trying to say is Alana FTW.