Sage: The Person Actually Running the Room

Sage: The Person Actually Running the Room The mayor threatening to fire Sage is one of those scenes where somebody has badly misjudged who they're talking to. He's furious about a public-relations disaster, throwing things around his office and treating his chief of staff like she exists to clean up his mess. Then she starts lifting him and the furniture off the floor. Up to that point, Sage's place in Goddess Inc. looks like a pretty sensible way for a goddess to live among people. She works inside the city government. In the first issue, Landon's company is announcing a deal to put solar panels on schools and government buildings across Los Angeles, and he thanks her for helping make it happen. She's doing something with her position rather than sitting around waiting for somebody to build her a temple. She also spots the trouble Venus is creating early. She watches Venus approach Landon, warns Gregor that she's gathering allies, and wants them to get ahead of it. There is a practical streak to her. While other members of this family are being flattered, seduced or pulled into old grudges, Sage is looking at what the next move is going to be. Then the scene with Mayor Breckenridge shows just how ugly that practicality can become. He tells her to get the situation under control or he'll replace her. Sage takes that personally enough to float him outside the window. She tells him he's only in charge because she allows it. And she already has a story ready for what it will look like if he falls: his affairs, embezzlement and backroom deals finally became too much for him. That's not simply a goddess reminding an arrogant man to be polite. She's threatening to kill him and explain it away as suicide. He agrees to do whatever she wants, and when he asks what she is, she tells him she's the woman who will save his career. I like that the book lets this be uncomfortable. Breckenridge isn't presented as an innocent, admirable politician. That doesn't make Sage dangling him out of a window a harmless workplace correction. She has more than supernatural power here. She understands the institution, the man's weaknesses and the story people could be made to believe afterward. The floating itself is one of the places where the fantasy is very clear. If an ordinary person is suspended outside a building, something has to support their weight. In this scene there isn't a harness or a surface under him. Sage controls his movement through a visible supernatural effect, along with the objects in the office. You can describe the physical problem that would need solving without pretending the comic has given us a scientific explanation for telekinesis. She's still on the side trying to stop Venus. In the final confrontation she fights Ivy, helps keep Landon from rushing back to Venus, and then gets a bewildered mortal woman out of the wreckage. That last moment is much gentler than what she did to the mayor. She puts an arm around the woman and tells her they'll get her home. Those two scenes leave me with a more interesting character than a simple voice of reason. Sage can protect somebody who has been caught in this mess, and she can also decide a man should obey her because she has the power to drop him out of a building. Living among humans hasn't stopped her from treating some of them as people she gets to rule. She doesn't need a throne to do that. An office in city government works just fine.