Comic Hero
Brian K. Vaughan writes for DC, Marvel, and TV's 'Lost,' but still identifies with the foibles of Pe
Brian K. Vaughan has a knack for balancing science-fiction themes with all-too-human characters, in both the hit comic books he's dreamed up for DC and Marvel, as well as on TV's Lost, which he joined last season as a writer with the fancy title of executive story editor. It's a good time to have such a sensibility, as Hollywood continues to mine the sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero genres for astonishing stories with mass appeal.
"Story" is the operative word, the Cleveland native emphasizes over lunch on a recent sunny Saturday. "Story trumps all," he says - a truism that mainstream television and movie producers have lately been relearning. "I love combining the human drama with, 'There's a fuckin' smoke monster!' I couldn't do just one or the other."
No wonder his name is on so many of my current popcult faves, some of which are bona-fide hot properties. His DC/Vertigo series Y: The Last Man, cocreated with artist Pia Guerra, will conclude after two more issues, and he just finished his draft of the movie script for New Line. The company also recently received his draft screenplay of another monthly book, Ex Machina (cocreated with artist Tony Harris and published by DC's Wildstorm subsidiary), about New York City mayor Mitchell Hundred, formerly the world's only superhero, who can talk to and control machines.
Last year's six-part Dark Horse miniseries The Escapists was Vaughan's take on the Escapist, the hero from Michael Chabon's beloved, Pulitzer-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. And the critically acclaimed, award-winning writer also delved into current events with Pride of Baghdad, a wrenching graphic novel based on the real-world story of four lions who escaped the Baghdad Zoo after a 2003 U.S. bombing.
Vaughan also wrote the current arc of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, the comic-book continuation of Joss Whedon's groundbreaking TV show, published by Dark Horse. (Ironically or something, Whedon is now writing Marvel's Runaways, Vaughan and artist Adrian Alphona's tale of teen superheroes who are the offspring of supervillains.)
The 31-year-old, who lives in West Hollywood with his wife and a wiener dog named Hamburger, comes across as a sensitive, thoughtful fellow. But don't be fooled. He just killed one of my favorite characters from Y, the saga of amateur escape artist Yorick Brown and his monkey Ampersand, the only males to survive a plague that wiped out all other Y-chromosome possessors, leaving them alone in a postapocalyptic world full of women. (Which is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.) And, judging by the simian-throttling depicted on the next issue's cover, Vaughan is bent on severing, or at least fraying, all of Yorick's lifelines. Bastard.
"Kill your darlings, that's the rule," he says mildly, sipping his diet soda. "I guess I take for granted how much I kill my characters off. Sorry."
This is all the more alarming because Vaughan's four-issue Buffy tale involves his favorite character (and mine), Faith, the erstwhile rogue Slayer. She's not technically Vaughan's character but Whedon's. Still, that's not much comfort, given the latter's own propensity for offing his creations.
Vaughan met Whedon some years ago at a San Diego Comic-Con. "I gave him a copy of Y and told him how important his writing is to me," he says, "and later he wrote a really nice letter saying he loved Runaways." The mutual geek love isn't surprising, as both enjoy busting clichés, Whedon with his whole tiny-blonde-girl- as-superhero thing and Vaughan with such convention-resisting elements as not putting the Runaways in costumes. A few years ago, Vaughan says, Whedon asked if he'd be interested in writing direct-to-DVD movies about characters like Faith. Vaughan, who studied film at NYU and broke into writing comics through a Marvel-sponsored program at the school, had never even penned a spec script. "But [Whedon] said, 'You can write well in one visual medium; you'll be able to do it in another.'"
The movies never happened, but Season Eight did, and Vaughan jumped at this chance to write Faith, as well as another of his faves, Slayer-trainer Rupert Giles, who presents like a bland, middle-aged English librarian but has a wicked black-magic past. Predictably, enquiring fans already want to know about any potential Giles/Faith shipping (short for the fanspeak "relationshipping," i.e., a romantic hookup).
Vaughan laughs. "Oh, good lord, no. There will be no Giles/Faith shipping. He identifies with her, and they have some respect for each other, but there's no smooching in their future." He won't object, however, if fan-fiction writers see it differently. "I think it's awesome that characters get to have lives outside of the canon. So, the dirtier, the better."
Faith and Giles appeal to Vaughan because they're interesting satellite characters who don't have "the burden of the protagonist," like Buffy or Jack, the doctor who leads the castaways on Lost's mysterious island. "People who make the wrong decisions are more fun to write than people who more often than not make the right decisions," he says, adding that he's drawn to "the fuck-ups" in Lost as well.
"Desmond, time-traveling dude, is great to write, and Hurley is good. Sawyer is fun - anyone except Jack, who is a great character, but he's the super-masculine hero in charge of all these people's lives. I can't plug into that."
With such programs as Heroes and Smallville employing comics writers like DC and Marvel veteran Jeph Loeb, and Whedon taking his small-screen properties to comics - in November, he'll launch a miniseries continuing his Buffy spinoff show, Angel, on indie imprint IDW - the two mediums are becoming ever more intertwined. Still, Vaughan figured his lack of TV experience would be a barrier when he was approached by Lost cocreator and executive producer Damon Lindelof, a comics fan and Y enthusiast. (Both are also represented by CAA.) It wasn't, but the writing process was different, and harder. He's already good at juggling legions of characters, and collaborating creatively with artists has always been key to his work. But, he says, "writing comics is just being alone in a room, with very little human interaction. Now I'm in a room writing the story with 10 other people."
Vaughan thinks this challenge has made him a better writer, and he enjoys doing TV and film, but he prefers comics. During his decade in funnybooks, he's written just about every major DC and Marvel character, from Batman to the X-Men. Although he'd rather write his own stories, he has a special soft spot for Peter Parker and his alter ego, Spider-Man.
"The fact that he has allergies, and girl problems are more insurmountable than the villains he fights, meant a lot to me," Vaughan says. In fact, he notes, there's a lot of Peter Parker in Yorick Brown, whose naïve bravado and goofy sense of humor make him an endearingly, yes, human hero.
But Yorick also contains aspects of the younger Brian K. Vaughan, who as a teen dabbled in escape-artistry and was all of 24 when he got the idea for Y. He often includes self-referential bits in his work - this issue of Buffy mentions "the great bearded wizard of Northampton" (a.k.a. Alan Moore, Vaughan's main comics inspiration), and the "Catch-22" episode of Lost not only cited one of his favorite books in the title but also had some characters discussing superheroes.
In November the tables will be turned on Vaughan, when Dark Horse publishes his Escapists miniseries in a hardcover collection. An introduction by Chabon provides a final, dazzling meta-twist on a tale that's all about the meta. It features "a character from Kavalier and Clay, who's at a convention for old-timer comics creators in the 1980s, and inspires a young Brian Vaughan to become a comic book writer," says Vaughan with a big, geeky grin. "It's the most surreal experience to read my favorite novelist writing me into the canon of his world. It's awesome."
Published: 09/20/2007
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