While at Wondercon I developed two new supercrushes, a technical term for wankishly adoring somebody from afar. My first supercrush is on Brian K. Vaughan, whose work I've just started reading in Y the Last Man (I'm about to start reading *Runaways *too). After listening to Vaughan talk about his work yesterday afternoon with a room full of adoring fans, I can even forgive him for writing for Lost, one of the worst shows on television. He charmed everyone from doting dorks with opinions about his most obscure work, to feminists and vets of the Iraq war. Read below the fold for some choice Vaughn quotes of the day . . .
On writing for Lost: "The best part about writing for *Lost *is that I work with a team, and I'm forced to show them my work. Before, it was me writing alone without pants, coming up with profoundly retarded ideas."
On writing powerful female characters: "I'm a feminist and I write about people I know -- I happen to prefer the company of women. I was asked this question before when I was with [Y the Last Man artist and co-creator] Pia Guerra, and I think people expected us to have stereotypical gender roles. But Pia said, 'I'm not a feminist' and I said I was. Pia likes to draw motorcycles smashing through windows, and I like people sitting around quietly talking."
On writing mainstream and indie comics: "There's no difference between writing Y or Dr. Strange. I'm not dumbing it down for Marvel."
On Joss Whedon taking over writing duties on Runaways: "Joss is amazing and he's influenced my own work a lot. But it's like George Clooney joining the cast of Scrubs. It's cool, it's great -- but why would you want to do it?"
On Watchmen: "It's not a love letter to comics. It's a death threat."
On comic book fans: "We tend to be a self-loathing bunch who are afraid to read comics in public. But these days, we all seem cooler and comics are better than they've ever been. This is the golden age of comics."
On what he's doing next, Vaughn joked, "It's off to TV now -- screw you people." What are Vaughan's new projects for reals? He's cooking up a new indie comic book, and just turned in the second draft of a screenplay for Y the Last Man.
In case you were wondering, my other new supercrush is Ian Brill, who impressed me with his encyclopedic pop culture references, infatuation with Star Trek, and a willingness to listen to me rant for five minutes about Herman Melville's novel Pierre, which I've also written about here.
Photo by Scott Beale.
