Graphic Lit: An interview with Brian K. Vaughn

Comic books have been very good to Brian K. Vaughn.

More specifically, one comic book, “Y: The Last Man,” has been exceedingly good to him.

“Y” has what is known in entertainment industry parlance as a “great hook.” In the near future, a mysterious plague wipes out every male mammal on planet Earth, except for one guy, a young amateur escape artist named Yorick.

For the past five years, writer Vaughn and artist Pia Guerra have chronicled Yorick’s adventures as he, secret agent 355 and scientist Allison Mann have attempted to find the cause of the plague and perhaps a cure.

The success of that series has led to Vaughn’s star rising not only in comic book circles but in Hollywood as well, including a recent stint as a writer on the TV show “Lost.”

Now the series comes to a finale with the release of issue No. 60. I talked to Vaughn from his home in Los Angeles about bringing the series to a close:

Q: How does it feel to be wrapping up Y? I imagine you have some mixed emotions.
A: Very much so. It’s weird. As I was writing the final issue it was half-relief — “Oh my god I’ve been working on this for years and years and am eager to reach the conclusion” — and also kind of a quiet dread of “Wow, I will truly miss getting to write these characters every single month.” I’m still conflicted about it.

Q: Is it fair to say Y made your reputation as a writer? It seems like it brought you a certain national attention.

A: Very much so. In fact, I don’t think I’d be working on Lost if Damon Lindelhoff weren’t a fan of Y. It’s opened up doors. I wouldn’t have met Joss Whedon if it hadn’t been for Y. Anything good that’s happened over the last five or six years has been because Y has opened that door.

Q: What was the impetus for that series?

A: I guess I’d been really eager to talk about gender. It’s always a topic that fascinated me. In comics, if people talked about gender, which was pretty rare, it was in the context of “Should Catwoman’s boobs be smaller?” or “Should she be called the Invisible Woman instead of the Invisible Girl?”

I thought there was probably a way to raise the level of dialogue about gender. I thought it was a pretty good, high concept hook. A fun, sci-fi way to talk about something that fascinates me.

Q: Did you have the whole story planned out from the beginning? I know you wanted it to be self-contained.

A: Yeah, I knew the final sentence of the final panel of the final page from the time we started working. At the very beginning Pia Guerra and I the co-creator, took side trips along the way, we made unexpected discoveries about the characters, came up with new ideas. For the most part, the destination has always been the same. We always knew where we were getting.

Q: Tell me a little bit about those unexpected destinations. What surprises or changes came to you while working on the series?

A: Definitely Pia’s involvement made the book better at every stage. She and I talked pretty frequently and along the way she would make suggestions, sometimes huge, sweeping ones. Sometimes just an offhand comment. We were talking once and she said “It’s very cool that Yorick is an escape artist. The perfect villain for an escape artist would be a master of bondage.” I thought that was funny and brilliant in a way and came the impetus for “Safeword” which was a real watermark for the book in exploring what makes Yorick Yorick. That’s just one of many examples.

Q: You talked about gender being an important issue, but I was wondering what other themes you either came across or wanted to explore in the series.

A: Well, I never like to explain the book. I always say people’s interpretations are more important than my intent. So there are definitely a lot of things that I wanted to explore but I’m always more interested in other people’s interpretations.

I suppose in broad strokes escape and what that means to individuals is a really important part of the story.

Q: Well reading the last couple of issues it does seem like death or rather confronting death seems to be an issue in the series.

A: Any series whose first issue opens with the death of three billion people, death is probably going to play a large part in things, so yes, that is very much the case.

Q: What challenged you, as far as setting up that scenario? What sort of research, if any, did you have to do?

A: Yeah, it was a bottomless amount of research because if I didn’t treat it with a great degree of seriousness and realism that this concept can pretty quickly descend into “late night Cinemax movie” and so I wanted to think about every level of society. How would this affect transportation? How would it affect agriculture? How would it affect politics and military endeavors? So I wanted to look at every aspect of my life and then, circling the lives of others, ask if you removed men from the equation how would things change? And oftentimes more importantly how would things not change. So yes, there was a great deal of research.

Q: You mentioned Pia Guerra. Artistically, what do you think she brought to the series?

A: I think she’s unparalleled at acting in terms of artists working today that a lot of other artists can give you flashy splash pages which I think Pia in the most recent issue did that as well and she’s done that often. But what very few artist can give you is if you just have a few pages of talking heads and not have every head look the same. That her facial expressions are so magnificent that it really makes my dialogue better. Working in television now you can tell when the difference between a great actor delivering your dialogue and a bad actor. And a bad actor will kill it, just like a bad artist will. First and foremost her performances are unparalleled. Beyond that I think it’s the accessibility of her storytelling. People don’t know how difficult it is to make a comic that you can give to your mom or dad or someone’s who’s never read comics beyond the Sunday funny pages and be able to follow it perfectly. Her storytelling and layouts are so inviting and so accessible that I really attribute that to how successful the book has been to reaching out to a mainstream audience.

Q: You mentioned writing for TV. What are some of the differences as far as working on Lost versus writing for comics?

A: The biggest difference is with writing for comics I’m entirely alone. It’s just me, man versus himself. I’m sitting alone in a room coming up with all of this stuff by myself. I’ve got no one to turn to when things go wrong. I also don’t have anyone to yell at me and say “Your ideas are terrible,” which doesn’t happen too often at Lost, but more often than in comics. TV is much more collaborative. It’s sitting in a room with six to eight other human beings and coming up with a story as a group. There are many advantages over writing alone and there are some disadvantages but they’re two totally different meetings. Even though they’re both forms of visual storytelling. And I think if you’re good at one it certainly helps you with the other. But the learning curve has certainly been pretty steep. It’s very different. I’m grateful I get to do both. I love getting to work at Lost during the day and then coming home and weekends and still work on my comics. I love having both of those outlets.

Q: Looking back over Y, what are you proudest of? Is there a particular series or storyline or even just something you feel the book said that hadn’t been said before?

A: I guess I’m a believer in that most things probably have been said before so I hope that if anything I said it in a new way. But honestly, I am really most proud of the final issue. I do think the book, like any monthly journey, has its ups and downs, but I think as artists and creators Pia and I just got better as the months went on. I think the book did as well, culminating in what I think is our best issue, the finale. It’s probably what I’m most proud of anything I’ve ever written.

Q: Now, you’re going to be wrapping up Ex Machina soon too, right?

A: Well, not too soon. I’m about to start writing what will be the beginning of our final year. That will be our final 12 issues or so and that will come out over the next 16 months. So we’ve got a ways to go. It’s not quite done. We’re coming into the home stretch I guess. Issue 50 will be the final issue.

Q: What do you have planned next?

A: I want to wait for the final issue of Y to come out and then just take a breather for a least a day would be nice. After that I have several ideas for new creator-owned things. I’ve gotten a lot of nice offers to work on existing Marvel and DC characters, but I’ve had a stretch of 10 great years getting to work on them and I really feel an obligation to keep creating new things. So it’s just a matter of deciding which one I want to pursue most. I think it will be more along the lines of something like Pride of Baghdad. It will be a creator owned graphic novel before I embark on another ongoing series like Y.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about that sense of obligation you talk about? I wonder if that has something to do with comics where creator’s rights has always been an issue and ownership has always been a tricky thing.

A: I think it’s tricky in any medium, but it’s not so much the sense of ownership, though I do think that’s important. For me it’s more the sense of originality. I grew up revering Stan Lee and he is still a hero of mine and I think such an important pioneer for our medium and our industry. But I think I’ve come to realize the best way to honor Stan Lee if you love Stan Lee is not to write the best Spider-Man story ever, or the best FF story, but maybe to contribute more new things, just like he did when he came to comics, he didn’t say “There’s a Superman story I’m aching to do” or “I can’t wait to get my hands on Batman.” He really was bursting with new ideas and I think if our medium is to grow and evolve we need more new ideas.

Q: Do you see that happening in comics now? It seems like there are a lot of people out right now who are saying what they really want to do is write Iron Man.

A: That’s always been true. And first of all, I don’t mean to sound like a superhero snob. Iron Man and Spider-Man are about as good as they’ve ever been. But I love that Bendis, as well as working on Spider-Man, is doing stuff like Powers that is truly his own. I think there’s always going to be those books taking the most shelf space in stores, but I don’t think there’s ever been a period of diverse works being published by more people. The fact that you can read about Acme Novelty Library in the mainstream press ... There’s probably never been a time where there’s been more stuff. It might not be at the forefront of the sales charts, but I think if you’re willing to go digging for it, there’s more great, original stuff being published now than there has been at any other time since the conception of comic books.

Q: One of the things that is great about Y, especially in that it’s serialized fiction, you do a really good job creating cliffhangers, leaving the reader wanting more at the end of each issue, creating new mysteries. I think that’s very hard to do and still maintain an interest in the characters. And not come off as a cheap ploy. How do you do that? Is that a conscious effort on your part?

A: At first it wasn’t really. I guess that had always been my instinct as a writer. I’ve always seen those monthly issues, much as I love collections and I’m grateful for anyone who picks them up, I really love monthly comics and I love serialized storytelling, something with a beginning, middle and end in a monthly dose. It feels like when you get to that end it has to be crescendo. You have to end on the right note. Leaving the reader wanting more is always felt natural to me. I guess I was surprised initially when people singled out the cliffhangers of the book. It wasn’t something that I set out to do. I think like all writers when you hear something over and over again you start to worry that you’re going to be pigeon holed as cliffhanger guy. That was part of the desire to challenge myself with stuff like “Pride of Baghdad” — do something that was self-contained and didn’t have the benefit of cliffhangers to propel the story forward. But I love a good cliffhanger.

Q: I don’t mean to make it sound like the series is a pulp novel

A: And I wouldn’t mind if you did. I have no problem with those conventions. But it’s interesting. Having worked in “Lost” now I’ve been given this vocabulary that I didn’t have before. We sometimes talk about “schmuck-bait.” Schmuck-bait is if you have a cliffhanger at a commercial break where you put your lead actor in jeopardy — he has a gun on him. We call it schmuck-bait because only the schmucks in the audience are going to believe that guy is going to get shot. That’s not a great cliffhanger. A great cliffhanger is trying to find something that’s emotionally resonant to the character. I think I’ve probably been guilty of schmuck-bait a lot, whereas a guy like Joss Whedon has done in Astonishing X-Men a lot of really meaningful character-based cliffhangers. I’ve really learned at his feet.

Q: Do you follow any of the reaction to the series? Do you have any sense of the reader reaction?

A: I’m pretty neurotic, so I follow obsessively. But I’ve never let that dictate in any way the book’s direction. I think early on with this two part comedy and tragedy story where Paul Chadwick, our first guest artist came in, we just took a break from the main story to talk about this troop of female actors and playwrights. And I would say about 90 percent of people despised it. “Enough of this and can we please get back to the story.” It was always one of my favorite stories and it’s always nice to meet people at conventions who say “that was always my favorite.” They’re few and far between, but I like that. It’s a danger to cleve to that 90 percent every month at the expense of that 10 percent. I only ever try to write the stories for myself.

Q: I was thinking of that specifically, and I’m going to try to phrase this carefully, because with the death of one of your major characters recently I was curious as to the reaction you got from that because that was pretty traumatic I imagine for devoted readers.

A: You would not be able to publish most of the emails that I received. A string of “f you,” “I hate you,” “you suck.” And that feels good, because if I hadn’t gotten that reaction it would have meant that we totally failed. You want people to be so invested in these characters that they hate you for doing anything to them. I feel the same way. I share their pain.

Q: But at the same time, because they have been so invested, you don’t want it to come off as a cheap emotional ploy.

A: It’s always a danger. But you run that risk in a 90 minute movie of “oh, that death was meant to be shocking.” I think our readers have enough faith in us to know we didn’t start something up for five years just to pull the rug out from under you.

Copyright The Patriot-News, 2007

Graphic Lit: An interview with Brian Wood

Most of writer Brian Wood’s comics tend to take place either in the present day (“Local”) or in the near future (“DMZ”), so it’s a little surprising to see his latest work take place in the distant past.

The Viking past, to be specific, since his new monthly series, “Northlanders,” trades urban landscapes for longboats and swords as Wood and artist Davide Gianfelice introduce us to Sven, a twentysomething warrior who’s come home from Constantinople to reclaim his inheritance and overthrow his evil and corrupt uncle.

I chatted with Wood over e-mail about his new series. Here’s what he had to say:

Q: Why Vikings? What attracted you to the subject matter?

A: The book's all about societal change, about the old versus the new. The first millennium, where this first story takes place, is the tipping point for Europe, where the Dark Ages gave way to rapid globalization, such as it was. When Christianity really began to take off, replacing the old pagan religions. Where new ship technology opened up trade and exploration and colonization. New societies were formed, like the Normans, and the east literally collided with the west. I can't think of anything more ripe for a writer to work with.

All that coupled with a childhood fascination for Vikings and for that part of the world (Scotland, Iceland, etc) is what made me go outside my comfort zone and pitch this book.

Q: In the first issue Sven seems to be following a classic hero's journey. To what extent will you be playing with mythological elements of Viking culture?

A: No mythology in this book. Well, brief references to it here and there, but I'm treating it as I feel is the realistic way, like a superstition, not an all-encompassing thing. It's not like Thor where our hero wanders the land having a flowery conversation with the gods. Life was hard back then and people had to be more concerned with where their next meal was coming from than a whimsical folk religion. At least that's how I'm approaching it in "Northlanders."

Q: In the course of your research did you discover anything that either changed your impression of viking culture?

A: Oh, yeah, dozens of things. I did an excess of research and as a result have really more ideas than I could ever use. All of it just broadened my appreciation for this culture, and one thing that always comes back to mind is about the violent conquest and colonization they did. It wasn't about a ideology or religion or bigotry. They did what they did out of a simple and powerful need for land and food, just to survive. And once they had that land, they happily assimilated themselves into the native culture in order to keep the land peacefully. There's a certain pragmatism to that I can respect, especially considering what followed the Viking Age — the Crusades.

Q: I understand you plan on introducing different characters and storylines as the series continues. What made you decide to take this interesting tack with the comic and how did you decide upon which story would be first?

A: Sven really epitomizes the whole point of the series, which is to show this part of the world in flux, just as it was in real life, with Vikings as the engine of change. Europe was modernizing pretty rapidly, in large part because of the Norse and their technologies opening up new lands, new trade routes, new colonies.

Sven is the perfect example of a globalized sort of man, such as they were in 980 AD, who's rejected the old and is fully embracing this new world, new way of thinking, rejecting the old folky religions. His homeland, which is thrust back upon him, is the classic small town backwater, a relic of the dark ages. For that reason I wanted his story to introduce the series.

I've been writing self-contained fiction like this since 2003, when I created "Demo," which was a series of completely disconnected stories. There were no common story threads or characters. It was a fantastic experiment that really paid off, so I did it again in 2005 with "Local," which was nearly the same format but with a single recurring character.

"Northlanders" is an enlarged version of the "Demo" format, but instead of one-issue stories, they are eight-issue stories, completely self-contained from each other. I found I really like writing this way, that it keeps the book fresh and interesting, and that I can make it work.

Graphic Lit: Iraq satires

While comics are by no means immune to the influence of current events, few have dared to tread upon delicate subjects such as, for example, the Iraq war.

Until now. Recently, a number of books have come out offering satirical takes on the war. Here's a run-down on three of them:

"Army@Love Vol. 1: The Hot Zone Club"
by Rick Veitch and Gary Erskine, Vertigo, 128 pages, $9.99.

In this new series, the Army, faced with dwindling recruitment and an entrenched war in "Afbaghistan," hires marketing men from the business world to solve the problem.

Their solution? Pitch the war as the ultimate experience for adrenaline junkies, a thrill ride where men and women looking for kicks can engage in orgies on and off the battlefield. Even the mentally handicapped get the chance to serve, though they don't get to use a cell phone.

While a satire of callous Americans getting their thrills at the expense of hapless Third World residents has its merits, I'm not entirely sure the depiction matches the situation on the other side of the globe right now.

The satire also can be too obvious and forced at times. (A band that performs for the troops is called Paco Lypsinc. Ho ho).

But if some of the broader jokes fall flat, Veitch has a rich and varied cast to draw upon here, and the soap opera elements -- particularly dealing with the spouses stuck on the home front -- are smart and engaging, suggesting that the series has the potential to be much richer than the sort of one-note satire you might initially expect.

Veitch's work ("Brat Pack," "The Maximortal") has always dealt cynically with how greed and selfishness tend to undermine our better natures. With "Army@Love" he's seemingly created the means to explore that theme in a variety of ways.

"Special Forces"
by Kyle Baker, Image, 32 pages, $2.99 per issue.

Like Veitch, Baker has been involved in comics for a long time. And like, Veitch, he has often displayed a gift for biting humor and satire.

"Special Forces" doesn't so much parody the Iraq war as it does modern action comics. More specifically, modern action comics by Frank Miller (author of "300" and Sin City").

Baker nails Miller's clipped, tough-guy monologues and love for overly dramatic, cheesecake poses perfectly.

The plot, meanwhile, mirrors "Army@Love's" to a degree: desperate for recruits, the military enlists anyone it can find, including a severely autistic boy and a teen-age female troublemaker who can't seem to be bothered to wear body armor.

The first issue varies widely in tone from farcical to melodramatic, and thus it's hard to be sure where Baker's going with this. Still, he's rarely faltered before and the notion of using the war to make fun of Miller's oeuvre is too delicious a concept to ignore.

"Shooting War"
by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman, Grand Central Publishing, 192 pages, $21.99.

Originally published as a Web comic, "Shooting War," like "Army," is set in the near future, and follows the adventures of a celebrity blogger who finds himself covering the increasingly worsening war for a big TV news organization.

Unfortunately, Goldman's art frequently comes off as awkward and seems incapable of displaying any subtlety of emotion. The satire also comes off as awkward, not to mention ham-fisted and obvious.

Ultimately, "Shooting War" isn't nearly as revealing and penetrating as it likes to think it is. The war has been badly bungled. Big media care more about ratings than conveying the truth. That's not exactly breaking news.

The Patriot-News, 2007

Graphic Lit: A Vertigo round-up

The past year saw the debut of several new titles from DC’s Vertigo imprint. In fact, most of them have already had their initial issues collected in handy trade paperbacks. Will any of these series grab hold of the comics-reading public the way “Sandman” and “Preacher” did? Let’s take a look.

“DMZ: On the Ground”
by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli
128 pages, $9.99.

Wood indulges in his love for both New York City and politics in this new series, which imagines the U.S. torn apart by civil war, with the Big Apple operating as ground zero.

Into this war-torn city comes Matty Roth, an aspiring photojournalist who quickly ends up behind enemy lines lost and alone. Making wine out of sour grapes, however, he settles in and begins reporting on the devastation and conflict he sees.

The series starts awkwardly, with lots of ham-fistedness and cliched characters, but once Roth digs in his heels things improve considerably. If the “DMZ” matures, and there’s no reason to suggest it won’t, this could be Vertigo’s strongest and most interesting series in quite awhile.

“Loveless: A Kin of Homecoming”
by Brian Azzarello and Marcelo Frusin
128 pages, $9.99.

Having had great success with the crime genre in “100 Bullets,” Azzarello tries his hand at Westerns with this ongoing series, about a former Confederate soldier who returns to his home town, finding very little in the way of a warm welcome.

Azzarello’s ability to create strong, iconic characters seems to have deserted him here. Even worse, the constant use of flashback to explain the back story is awkward and confusing. As nice as it is to see DC try to bring back the Western, I don’t think they’re going to succeed with this outing.

“Testament: Akedah”
by Douglas Rushkoff and Liam Sharp
118 pages, $9.99.

In “Testament,” futurist pundit Rushkoff explores our relationship with the Bible, suggesting there are more parallels between the ancient world and our own than we might think. Here, for example, an Abraham-type character must decide between sacrificing his son to the Big Brother-styled military or rebelling against his employers. Meanwhile, a trio of supreme beings look on and attempt to influence the proceedings.

Unfortunately, Rushkoff seems more interested in pushing his metaphors (some of which seem awfully forced) than in creating interesting characters or covering up plot holes. Sharp’s art is nice and I like the way he shows the gods’ influence by having them “guide” characters around the edges of the panels, but that’s about all I have to recommend.

“The Exterminators: Bug Brothers”
by Simon Oliver and Tony Moore
128 pages, $9.99.

It’s the Orkin man versus mutated cockroaches in this horror-tinged thriller, as a group of eccentric exterminators, find themselves up against some dangerous bugs, and bump up against some rather repellent people as well.

This is the sort of thing filmmaker David Cronenberg used to do, only much better. Not that “The Exterminators” is awful; it’s just more gross than scary and takes far too long to develop its plot. This first volume is all set up, with little payoff beyond getting to see an army of roaches tear apart the occasional deserving victim. For some, that last sentence might be enough of a recommendation.

“American Virgin: Head”
by Steven T. Seagle, Becky Cloonan and Jim Rugg
112 pages, $9.99.

Boasting one of the more interesting premises of the year, “Virgin” follows the exploits of youth minister and chastity advocate Adam Chamberlain. When his beloved betrothed, a Peace Corps volunteer, is killed by terrorists in Africa, Chamberlain heads to Mozambique to retrieve her body and in the process begins to doubt his cherished beliefs about god and sex.

Obviously Seagle’s goal is to explore the contradictions found in fundamentalist religious dogma, suggesting not too subtly that what one holds to be the undeniable truth is actually dependent upon his or her own permeable cultural values.

The problem is the book veers too wildly between parody and drama to sustain that sort of meaningful analysis. There are too many moments that ring false, as when Chamberlain chastises African boys for being naked.

Cloonan’s artwork is really lovely though, and probably the best thing going for the series so far. Perhaps if Seagle can find a consistent tone, the writing will equal the art.


Copyright The Patriot-News, 2006