Brian K. Vaughan - Career

Career

Vaughan's first credit was for Marvel Comics' Tales From the Age of Apocalypse #2 (December 1996). He would eventually write for some of the highest-profile characters at Marvel, including X-Men, Spider-Man and Captain America. He would also write Batman and Green Lantern for DC Comics, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight for Dark Horse Comics.

From 2002 to 2008, Vaughan, who came to prefer writing his own characters, wrote the creator-owned monthly series Y: The Last Man, a post-apocalyptic science fiction series about the only man to survive the apparent simultaneous death of every male mammal on Earth. The series was published in sixty issues by Vertigo and collected in a series of ten paperback volumes (and later a series of five hardcover "Deluxe" volumes). The series received Eisner Awards in 2005 and 2008, and numerous other nominations. The film rights to the series were acquired by New Line Cinema. Vaughan wrote his own screenplay for the project, though it was reported in March 2012 that Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia were in final negotiations to write their own version.

In 2006, Vaughan published the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad, which centers on a group of lions who escape from an Iraqi zoo after the start of the Iraq War. IGN named it the Best Original Graphic Novel of 2006, calling it a "modern classic", and lauding it for combining a tale of survival and family with a powerful analogy of war, and praising Vaughan for representing various viewpoints through the different lion characters.

From 2004 to 2010 Vaughan wrote another creator-owned series, Ex Machina, a political thriller that depicts the life of Mitchell Hundred, a former superhero known as the Great Machine who, in the wake of his heroism during the September 11, 2001 attacks, is elected Mayor of New York City. The story is set during Hundred's term in office, and interwoven with flashbacks to his past as the Great Machine. Through this, the series explores both the political situations Hundred finds himself in, and the mysteries surrounding his superpowers. New Line Cinema purchased the film rights to the series in July 2005, and commissioned Vaughan to write one of the two commissioned scripts, which he was reported to be working on in 2007. Following the conclusion of Ex Machina in 2010, Vaughan reiterated his previous statement that he would concentrate on creator-owned work, saying, "I realized when I turned in this final Ex Machina script that it would be the first time I wasn't under some kind of deadline at Marvel or DC since 1996. That's a huge chunk of my life to spend with those characters. I love them, and I still read Marvel and DC's superhero books. I just think I'm better when I'm working on my own creations. When there are so many talented creators out there who are better at that stuff than me, I should leave those characters to them. I should do what I'm fortunate enough to be in the position to do, which is to create more new stuff."

Vaughan was a writer, executive story editor and producer for seasons 3 to 5 on the ABC TV series Lost, a job he earned on the basis of his work on Y: The Last Man, of which Lost co-creator and executive producer Damon Lindelof was an ardent fan. Lindelof showed that book to series show runner, executive producer Carlton Cuse. Lindelof relates, "And I told him, 'We need a guy like this on the show, but I don't think he'd ever do it. I don't think he even works in L.A.' And the next thing we knew, he was on the show." He began his stint on the series as executive story editor with the episode "The Man from Tallahassee", which premiered in March 2007. Vaughan continued as story editor on several episodes until he began writing episodes, beginning with the episode "Catch-22", which Vaughan co-wrote with Jeff Pinker, and premiered in April that year. He would write a total of 12 episodes, the last of which was the April 2009 episode "Dead Is Dead". He was first credited as a producer with the fourth season premiere "The Beginning of the End", eventually acting as producer on a total of 29 episodes. He was also a co-producer on Lost: Missing Pieces, a spinoff Internet short film series produced during the hiatus between the show's third and fourth seasons.

In November 2011 Steven Spielberg selected Vaughan to adapt the Stephen King novel Under the Dome into a television series for Showtime, which is Vaughan's first television work since Lost.

On March 14, 2012, Image Comics published the first issue of Vaughan and Fiona Staples' epic space opera/fantasy series, Saga, which he conceived to be a concept strictly relegated to comics, and not adapted to other media. Although Vaughan was a child when he first conceived of the ideas for the book—which owes its inspiration to Star Wars—it was not until his wife became pregnant with his second daughter that he began to write the series, which harbors parenthood as an underlying theme. The series depicts two aliens from warring races trying to survive with their newborn daughter. The book is Vaughan's first publication for Image Comics, and represents the first time he has employed third-person narration in his comics writing. The first issue sold out of its first printing ahead of its March 14 release date, with a second printing ordered for April 11, the same release date for issue #2. It received positive reviews from MTV, Ain't it Cool News, Comic Book Resources and iFanboy.