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Hungry
For Heroes: An Interview with Brian K. Vaughan, Ex Machina
by Scott Thill
Brian Vaughan's
recent comics like Ex Machina and Y: The Last Man stick out like sore
thumbs. They're filled with characters whose minds are filled with ideas,
and who spend the majority of page time talking about them. In other words,
you won't find an exploding building in every panel, nor a heroic savior
with all the answers. But you will find potent interrogations of sexuality,
politics, art and other Big Ideas that send lesser beings off to grad
school. It makes you wonder if it's an accident that the up-and-coming
comic whiz's name is an anagram for "brain.' Stranger things have
happened.
Morphizm: How
did you get involved with comics?
Brian Vaughan: I was a film and dramatic writing major at NYU,
and had an interest in comics but no real idea about how to break into
the industry. I was lucky that a bunch of Marvel editors started an informal
class called The Stan-Hattan Project.
Morphizm: For
Stan Lee.
BV: Yeah, and this was around the mid-90s, when Marvel was really
incestuous. Every writer was a former editor who was a former intern and
onward; they were really cannibalizing themselves. And I guess they wanted
to look outward at younger writers who were classically trained, teach
them the bizarre world of comics, and perhaps get them involved in the
whole thing. So those editors liked some of the sample scripts that I
had written, which helped me get my foot in the door. From there, I just
clawed my way upward.
Morphizm: How
did you eventually end up at DC?
BV: I had already written a couple of Marvel books at the time
and heard there was an opening for Swamp Thing over at Vertigo,
DC's adult line, which is where I wanted to end up anyway. But even if
you have a couple of books under your belt, it's still hard to get in
at Vertigo, especially if you have the stink of too much superhero on
you. But I lobbied hard, wrote a huge proposal, jumped through a lot of
hoops and was lucky enough to get a shot at Swamp Thing -- before
I ran it into the ground, that is.
Morphizm: Ex
Machina seems to spend less time on heroics, even though you do have
superhero in there. It feels more interested in the background tensions,
conflicts and anxieties that go into being a superhero, rather than straight-up
action.
BV: I think that's definitely true. A character in Y: The Last
Man talks about how even MLK cheated on his wife, so everyone has
flaws.
Morphizm: Right,
which is why, for lack of a better term, I describe your comics as "talkies,"
because they seem to put a premium on human dialogue and interaction.
BV: Well, thank you, but calling my work "talkies" is as much a
compliment for me as it is an insult for my artists, who would much rather
draw motorcycles crashing through windows or something like that. And
I sure hope my books are visually engaging even though they're heavy on
the talking. There's been a lot of talk recently about comics being about
wide-screen action, and I just think that's something the movies do better.
Comics are a much better medium for capturing those intimate, personal
moments, because we let the reader control the pacing and write them more
or less alone.
Morphizm: How
do you settle on what issues your characters' raise, especially since
many of them are pretty big issues?
BV: Well, they're not always big issues; sometimes they're purely
mundane. I try not to impose great lines that I overhear at parties or
controversial ideas. I know that it's probably wonky writer-talk to say
"Listen to your characters," but that's what I try to do. I know my characters
pretty well at this point, and I want to portray them accurately. I don't
want to simply make them mouthpieces for whatever I want to talk about.
Morphizm: In
the course of very few installments of Ex Machina you touch upon
political corruption, censorship, alternative sexuality and much more.
Not exactly party talk.
BV: Well, I was in New York during Guiliani's administration, a
time where New Yorkers more or less hated him, and watched him go from
a pariah to a hero almost overnight.
Morphizm: Do
you find it disingenous for politicians to play up that heroic aspect,
especially since some of them have never seen combat, to manipulate public
opinion and get their policies implemented?
BV: Is it unfair? No, it's politics. Everything is fair in politics.
If it works, more power to you. This is a democracy. It only works as
much as we allow it to. So I don't begrudge anyone their methods, no matter
how much I disagree with them. It is a by-any-means-necessary kind of
environment. I guess I have enough faith in the Constitution to believe
that these things are usually self-correcting.
Morphizm: Do
you feel that American culture has steeped itself too deeply into its
media, to the point that the real world is still able to kick down the
door and wake them up?
BV: I don't think America has ever been too interested in reality.
That's really not a new phenomenon; there were plenty of distractions
before reality television. No, that's always the way it's going to be.
I have a lot of relatives who work in government, and what I've learned
from them is that what you think you know as reality often is not. Fiction
like Ex Machina is more interested in pursuing notions of truth
than notions of reality. And I think you can find truth in fake, bullshit
shows like Survivor or whatever. There are always going to be dumb
people and there are always going to be smart people. Let's just hope
the smart ones have greater numbers.
Morphizm: Women
play a large role in your work.
BV: It's something I get asked about a lot, and many in the past
have criticized comic books writers for being unable to develop believable
female characters. But when I was writing Swamp Thing, no one ever
asked me if it was hard to write from the perspective of a goddamn talking
vegetable. Women are just people, and I have had the good fortune of having
a lot of strong women in my life -- from my mother to my sister to my
wife to my friends and onward. So I have a lot of poeple pounding on me
to do right by them. They make up over half the planet; it seems bizarre
to not have them represented to large degree in my books.
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