When Wildstorm’s Ex-Machina ends, it won’t just mark the culmination of one of the best series in the industry. When the last page turns, that will be it in terms of Brian K. Vaughan’s contributions to the world of comics for the foreseeable future.
Often regaled as one of the freshest voices in comics and long considered one of the top talents as well, we’ve seen the Eisner Award winning creator’s comic book contributions dwindle down to practically nothing in recent years. In a time where the writers he worked up the ranks with are taking on more and more and new scribes are crashing the scene on a semi-regular basis, the man colloquially known as BKV by his fans has seemingly disappeared.
Whatever happened to the writer of tomorrow, and when will we see him next? Let’s take a look at his career to date, and perhaps from that we can figure out when and where we’ll see Vaughan again.
Brian K. Vaughan started his career like many others: by doing something else and sort of falling into it naturally thanks to a love of comics and special circumstances. While studying film at NYU, Vaughan got involved with a project Marvel put together called the “Stanhattan Project.” Basically, Marvel was fishing for eager young writers and in the process they found Vaughan.
From there his career started slowly, picking up scripting jobs like Ka-zar Annual ’97 and Cable #43 in 1997 (he only wrote dialogue, not the story on most of these early gigs) but not getting his first real exposure until he started up a new volume of Swamp Thing for DC/Vertigo in 2000. While that series was canceled after 20 issues and he was only getting a little spot work from DC proper and Marvel, it was still a watershed moment for him.
After all, it was the first time he wrote for Vertigo Comics, the future home of his first (and biggest) success in the industry: Y the Last Man.
Taking the Leap
With Swamp Thing itself suffering a rather quick death in is hands, Vaughan’s future with Vertigo was uncertain. Thankfully not all was as it seemed. As Vaughan said in an interview with the now defunct MoviePoopshot.com:
“To Vertigo’s credit, it was at the time when SWAMP THING was right about to get shit canned. I sort of tanked one of their franchises, so they didn’t have to pursue anything else with me. But I think they liked my writing and they saw there was something there and they asked me if I had any other ideas.”
Y the Last Man was the idea that came out of that, and what an idea it was. It followed a young man named Yorick Brown and his pet capuchin monkey Ampersand as they dealt with an unknown event that killed every male mammal on the planet besides themselves simultaneously on one fateful day. In the hands of a lesser writer, it could have easily been trite fluff or even pornographic (come on, you know while reading it you thought “wow, Yorick could totally sleep with any woman he wanted to!”). Vaughan managed to not only make it a beautifully emotional story, but an often hilarious and thoughtful one that explored the effect of this event on the socio-economic infrastructure of the world.
Vaughan collaborated with artist Pia Guerra on this title, as they co-created this dystopic world and the characters that populated it. Over 60 issues, these two crafted one of the most critically acclaimed comics of the past couple decades and one that drew admirers ranging from your average comic shop denizen to best selling writer Stephen King (who said it was nothing less than the greatest comic ever made).
The burgeoning sales and roaring buzz of the title quickly made Vaughan a must-read creator, and paved the way for Vaughan to create his next two beloved works: Marvel’s Runaways and Wildstorm’s Ex-Machina.
Continued belowRiding High
By the time 2006 had come around, BKV was at the top of the comics’ world. While other creators like Brian Michael Bendis and Geoff Johns may have been outselling him, it was arguable that Vaughan’s work was drawing more mainstream esteem and attention than even that prodigious duo. Runaways, Ex-Machina, and especially Y were earning him praise from fans everywhere, along with truckloads of critical awards.
In 2005 alone, Vaughan won both the Best Writer Eisner as well as the Best New Series (with Tony Harris) award for Ex-Machina. In 2006 he earned five Eisner nominations and Wizard Magazine’s unequivocal title of “Comic’s Best Writer.” Heady praise, yet an honor he had earned in many people’s eyes.
Unlike other writers, Vaughan never seemed overly interested in writing characters that he had no created. Save a 20 issue run on Ultimate X-Men, he didn’t really touch anything besides his own creations from 2004 to 2007 save the intermittent single issue. As Karen Berger and Heidi McDonald advised him before (paraphrased by Vaughan himself):
“We really like your voice, but it seems like you’d be better suited for your own creation rather than trying to write existing characters.”
That was back before Y had debuted, and it only became truer as his career went on. You look at his main three series and you notice creations that feature robust casts, filled with three dimensional individuals that had their own personalities and plots that brought out the pathos of each of their situations. Vaughan is a writer who realized that just because something was based in a world where a man could talk to electronic equipment, or that all of the men of the world save one could die sporadically, or that your parents really could be super villains, doesn’t mean the events that transpire cannot be grounded in realism and connect with the reader on a true emotional level.
As he told AfterElton.com:
“I was weaned on Marvel and DC, but soon graduated to the sophisticated stories of British writers like Alan Moore, who showed that super-heroes could work as powerful metaphors for the human condition, not just adolescent power fantasies.”
That influence showed greatly throughout the runs he had on all three of those titles, along with his work on the critically adored Vertigo graphic novel Pride of Baghdad. Sure it’s not capes and tights, but that title worked brilliantly as an allegory for Vaughan’s personal point-of-view about the situation in Iraq through a look at the true story of four lions who escaped from a zoo in Baghdad.
To up the ante even more, shortly after Pride had wrapped up Vaughan joined the writing staff for cultural phenomenon and serialized TV series Lost. This was his first real taste of Hollywood, and he quickly made an impact. His debut episode “Confirmed Dead” that he co-wrote with Drew Goddard was well received from fans and critics alike, and many found him to be a creative boon to the show.
This was arguably the peak of his popularity. Lost was going full strength, Y the Last Man and his work on Runaways had just come to critically lauded and fan loved conclusions, and Ex-Machina was hitting its home stretch. Throw in the fact that he and Guerra won the Eisner for Best Series for the last year of Y the Last Man and that all three of his biggest titles had been optioned to be movies, and you have a man at the peak of the industry and moving quickly into the world of Hollywood.
And like that…he was gone…
Going forward, fans of Vaughan started to notice something missing. Besides a Wolverine mini-series named Logan for Marvel with Eduardo Risso (100 Bullets) and the occasional issue of Ex-Machina, no one was seeing anything in terms of comic work. Not only that, but there was nothing on the horizon either.
Then in July of 2009, Vaughan left Lost “for greener pastures” according to series co-creator Damon Lindelof.
Continued belowWhat those greener pastures could be, fans don’t really know. His spin on Arthurian legend Roundtable was optioned by Paramount as well as highly touted on the Hollywood Black List (a list compiled by executives to decide what the most well liked, unproduced screenplays are), but that has been in developmental limbo for a couple years. Nothing much is happening in terms of his other films, as Y the Last Man is the furthest along by it’s been in a holding pattern while director DJ Caruso pursues other ventures.
In an interview with About.com way back in early 2008, Vaughan said:
“I’ve actually been developing a few new things. One is a movie, one is a prose novel, one is a television thing, and one is a graphic novel… really more like three graphic novels. They’re all in various stages of development, and some may never see the light of day, but I’m really excited about all of them.”
Nothing is really known about those ideas save the movie most likely being Roundtable. This all begs the question, where in the world is Brian K. Vaughan and when can we expect more work from this beloved comic creator?
I’d make guesses, but that’d be in poor taste and I’d most likely be wrong. However, at Emerald City ComiCon Brandon and I spoke briefly with Y co-creator Guerra about Vaughan. She said that he had been focusing on his personal life recently (he and his wife did just have a child, after all) and that he was looking for an artist to work with for a comic project in the future. Exciting news assuredly, but nothing is concrete until we see an announcement of any sort.
Fairly soon the clock strikes midnight for BKV fans. Ex-Machina‘s finale is just around the corner and then the future is foggy at best. For the man who has everything when it comes to writing ability, it will be decidedly different to not have any original material coming from him. I had actually stopped reading comics until Y the Last Man brought me back in cheerfully, quickly reminding me of how great they can be thanks to a writer named Brian K. Vaughan. Here’s hoping he remembers soon as well.
