Saints (2025 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Though Saints debuted concurrently with Gene Luen Yang's Boxers in 2013, it is considered by many to be a sequel and not just a continuation of the story. Consulting with both Google and Amazon, Saints is a sequel. I felt like it was a sequel. To call Saints the second volume of the story is wrong because that book actually retells many of the events that occurred in Boxers from a different point of view. The story ends right where Boxers ends with the destruction of the Hanlin Academy Library and the fall of the rebelling Boxers. 

I fact my biggest complaint about this award winning work is that there isn't a third volume that tells of what happened after the Boxer Rebellion ended. Boxers is from the perspective of a Chinese villager wanting to free his land from foreign invaders. Saints is from the perspective of a native who finds the family that they always wanted in the foreign bureaucrats' sponsored Catholic Church. I would have liked a third book from the perspective of the victorious 'foreign devils' after repelling the rebellion.

Saints is the story of Vibiana. In the Chinese language, the word for the number four sounds almost like the Chinese word for death. Being the fourth child in her family, Vibiana is considered a pariah. It also doesn't help that  she was born on the fourth day of the fourth month. Her grandfather also blames her for the death of her father, the elder man's son, and names her 'Four-Girl'. The mistreatment causes Vibiana to rebel, making a horrifying scowl at everyone she meets. When taken to a local acupuncturist, she finds friendship and warmth from the man and his wife who teach her the scriptures. Soon the Four-Girl gets baptized by the local Catholic missionaries and is rechristened Vibiana.

Vibiana proclaims her new faith to her family. In response, she was severely beaten for her conversion to Christianity. Vibiana runs away with the missionaries who have been ordered to congregate behind the protective ramparts of the capitol city of Peking.

Working in the orphanage, Vibiana meets a young convert who is in training to become a monk. Love seems to be in bloom between her and the boy. However, when the horde of Boxers lead by volume one's protagonist Bao, arrives at the city gate, the relative safety Peking's defenses offers appears seemingly in doubt. 

Inspired by visions of the French Catholic hero, Joan of Arc, Vibiana decides to quickly learn about kung-fu from her paramour, seemingly inspired to save her new family from the heathen Boxers. Only in a strange twist fate, Vibiana's new found faith in God will result in saving the life of the most unlikely of all people involved in the uprising; an enemy that readers of both volumes had thought was long deceased. 

Boxers, along with Saints was nominated for a number of awards. It won the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best young adult literature as well as well as being named one of School Library Journal's best books of the year. Boxers & Saints has remained in print by publisher First Second, with several editions including a a 2-volume boxed set and a deluxe size compendium of both books in a single paperback edition.

Completing this review completes Task #4 (A Graphic Novel Sequel) of the 2025 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.