As MC writer Walt Richardson said in his review of “Saga” #1 yesterday, the greatest gift writer Brian K. Vaughan has is his handle on characterization. He’s arguably the best writer today at making characters feel three-dimensional and fully realized – like real people – and it’s something that shows up prominently throughout his work.
Today on Countdown, I’m going to highlight BKV’s ten greatest character creations on the day of the release of “Saga.” While this list will assuredly change as we move further and further into this new world Vaughan and Staples’ have created, I thought it’d be a good idea to look back right before we start looking to the future of Vaughan as a comic writer.
You can find that list after the jump, and spoilers for those who haven’t read BKV’s books yet. If you haven’t, shame on you.
10. The Will and his Lying Cat
Alright, it might be a little early to say this, but holy crap, I LOVE The Will and his Lying Cat from “Saga.” Yeah, they only appear on like…6 or 8 pages, but man, every second they’re on the page is amazing. Can’t wait to see more of them.
9. Chase Stein
One of the original Runaways, Chase is the oldest and the one that got the proverbial short end of the stick when it came to talents at first (although the Fistigons are pretty badass). He’s a wild card, especially for BKV. You look through the list of characters that Vaughan has created throughout his career, and Chase is arguably the most pure id of the lot. In fact, compared to the rest of the Runaways (besides maybe Molly), he’s wildly unpredictable which makes him stand out all the more. Deep down though, he’s a guy who cares a lot for his surrogate family, and when the unthinkable happens to Gert, it hurts us just because it hurts him.
8. The Hood
You could make a pretty easy argument that The Hood is BKV’s most well known character. The guy who started out as a hood who couldn’t get anything right until he found a cloak that gave him supernatural powers (and then found out he was his own worst enemy, literally) became a major villain, as he became a right hand man for Norman Osborn and organized the criminal underworld in a way that you rarely see in Marvel comics. That may be what he’s most well known for, but I prefer to think of him as the Parker Robbins that BKV and Kyle Hotz created, a normal guy with extraordinary pressure on him, trying to do the right thing but always seeming to fail.
7. Kremlin
“Ex-Machina” was a title with a sprawling cast of characters that touched both on the very realistic and the very fantastic. Somewhere in-between was Kremlin, lead Mitchell Hundred’s mentor, right hand man, enemy and truest friend (all at different times and at the same time). He was a hugely important character for the series in terms of the way everything was shaped, but more than that, he was an impossibly huge source of entertainment for yours truly, with his fervent belief in communism, obsession with Hundred’s need to be The Great Machine and general bizarre nature. He’s like the Launchpad McQuack to Mitch’s Scrooge McDuck, except communist and secretly conspiring against him. Okay, not a perfect analogy, but I like it.
6. Gertrude Yorkes
One of the harshest things BKV ever did to us as readers was killing Gert in “Runaways.” Sure, it was a natural thing to happen and it was an incredible dramatic moment, but good god, why her?! She was supposed to lead the Avengers! Her and Chase and Old Lace were supposed to live happily ever after! The thing that you can derive from all of this is that I cared enough about the character for it to impact me years later. Gert was a great character. She was tough, she was independent, she was smart, she was funny and she’s a perfect example of how great at writing young characters and female characters BKV is. It’s just a shame she had to die.
Continued belowIn short, BKV is a jerk.
5. Mitchell Hundred
Mitchell Hundred was an omnipresent force in “Ex-Machina.” He was a fascinating lead, with infinite levels of depth and a fierce sense of direction no matter how hazy things got for him. The book very much was the tale of his life, and how he went from being a civil engineer to a superhero to a civil servant to something much more (and somehow less). If he was even slightly less of a character, this book wouldn’t work. But as the backbone of the dramatic narrative in it, Mitchell Hundred stood tall, no matter what demon, pope or communist amusement park employee was trying to take him down.
4. Molly Hayes
Oh Molly. The enduring legacy character of the Runaways. The heart and fun that lives inside them. They rarely appear anymore (save an awesome appearance in “Avengers Academy!”) but Molly does from time to time, and that’s because she’s a gem of a character. She’s childish, sweet and very real feeling, while being a powerhouse in the body of a little girl wearing an array of animal hats. Characters like her are a big part of the reason why it’s a shame characters in comics never really age. I want to see her become a hero. I want to see her grown up. Alas…
3. Agent 355
It takes a special kind of woman to be able to get Yorick Brown’s obscure pop culture references and to be able to beat up a cadre of apocalypse toughened women. But that’s the magic of Agent 355, a character who drove the last man on Earth to a life of celibacy and loneliness by the sheer merit of her death and life. Her death was one of the saddest moments I’ve ever read in comics, but it least it wasn’t wasted as a narrative trick. It was a legitimate story beat, and one that haunted readers of “Y the Last Man” forevermore.
2. Ampersand
This. This is the saddest death in comic history in my book. Good god. His death and Yorick’s reaction in the final issue of “Y” took me to pieces as a human being. But what does it say about Vaughan as a creator that he was able to make the death of a capuchin monkey the saddest moment in any comic I’ve ever read? In fact, besides the last issue, my favorite issue of “Y” was issue #42, the all Ampersand issue. It featured one of my all-time favorite sections in any comic ever. I’ll break it down because I want to.
The section found Ampersand picking things out of Yorick’s hair and eating it, because, according to Yorick, Ampersand “loves him best.” Dr. Mann corrects him and said that Yorick is just imbuing his own feelings on the animal, and that he doesn’t really feel love. Cut to the future, as Ampersand is on a nest of eggs in the middle of the ocean. One of the eggs begins to crack as a Seagull comes crashing towards Amp to protect its eggs. The egg is revealed to be Yorick’s crying face, which Ampersand grabs and staunchly protects from the gull. This little moment said so much about the character, and about the depth of relationship between the two, that it broke my heart a whole lot. An amazing moment for an amazing character. Sigh…now I want to read that issue again.
1. Yorick Brown
What else can be said about Yorick? He’s the last man, and quite possibly the most well-developed and realistic feeling character I’ve seen in comics, or, in a lot of ways, all of fiction. “Y the Last Man” isn’t my official favorite comic (that falls to “Preacher”), but Yorick is undoubtedly my favorite character. He’s someone that, even though he is an amateur magician negotiating the global wipeout of the male gender, is eminently relatable. Who can’t see themselves in this book when they read it? Who doesn’t want to see themselves in Yorick, a man who fights for love and for what is right and everything that he values?
The guy is a class act, and he’s the foundation of everything that works in this incredible series. What else is there to say? How about this…if Alana or Marko from “Saga” are half the characters Yorick and 355 were, we’re in for one hell of a ride.
