Image via Complex Original
It's weird to say this now, but I first came to Brian K. Vaughan's work through Lost. During college, I had fallen off reading comics and a friend of mine pointed out that the guy who wrote "The Shape of Things to Come" (one of the show's best episodes) had a series called Y: The Last Man. Fast forward six years and I've devoured all of Vaughan's creator-owned work, from his story about a New York mayor who can communicate with machines (Ex Machina) to his pay-what-you-want dystopian detective story (The Private Eye).
Still, nothing quite compares to the phenomenon that is Saga.
Since its debut in 2012, Vaughan's ongoing collaboration with artist Fiona Staples has been a critical and commercial smash, regarded by virtually every comic book fan as an instant classic and quite possibly the best comic of 2010s. A space opera set amidst an interplanetary battle, the story focuses on Alana and Marko, who fall in love despite seemingly insurmountable differences ("star-crossed" has never been so literal).
Still, the true appeal of Vaughan's story is not its scope, or humor, or even Staples' gorgeously-rendered images (though it has all those things and more), but the deceptively deep relationship between its two heroes. "I could use this as a vehicle to talk about the fears and joys of parenthood," say Vaughan, who wanted to find a way of relaying his own experiences as a new father. "I think people think being a parent isn't dramatic—that there’s no conflict," he says. "But if you have kids of your own, everybody knows it’s the most dramatic time of your life and there’s unending conflict."
I caught up with Vaughan to talk the book's beginnings, his creative partnership with Staples, and whether or not he'll return to writing film or TV. Be advised: Some light spoilers are scattered throughout.
Nathan Reese is a News Editor at Complex. He's on Twitter. The Saga Deluxe Edition Volume 1 is out now from Image Comics.
Let's start at the beginning, since the Deluxe Edition Volume 1 just dropped. How'd you first come up with the idea for Saga?
Well, my wife and I had our first child, and I guess I was eager to address that as a writer in some way. But I learned pretty quickly that there’s nothing more boring in the universe than hearing stories about other people’s children. So if I was going to write about this in some way, I would have to Trojan horse it inside something more exciting. The universe that Saga takes place is a fanciful, sci-fi fantasy, space opera world that I’ve been imagining ever since I was a kid. I never thought I would tell a story set in that world, but then I realized you could tell a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-style story with just two parents who are just sort of background plays in this much larger, epic war.
The description I hear the most often is that Saga is Romeo and Juliet set in space. But I think once you get to know Alana and Marko, their relationship’s deeper, more troubling, and—weirdly—more realistic than that.
Yeah, yeah definitely! That was always the goal. [There is] that Romeo and Juliet aspect of the story—that they’re from two sides of a never ending conflict. But Romeo and Juliet are also idiotic teenagers who do something incredibly stupid and kill themselves at the end of the story. I thought it would be interesting to start with two people who are adults and not idiotic teenagers. Instead of killing themselves, they have lots of hot sex [Laughs]. But then the result of that sex is a baby. I think that’s usually, in most fiction, where the story ends. Books or movies are about the formation of the heterosexual couple, and then, like, maybe at the end you hear "Oh, she’s pregnant" or the very last coda if they have a baby. It’s never the start of the story. So yeah, I wanted to start right there. I thought that it would be really interesting to talk about new parents.
Much of your work—not just Saga—has dealt with upending gender stereotypes and conventional social dynamics. Why is representing different types of relationship dynamics important to you?
I’m never a huge fan of "escapist fiction." I don’t even really know what that means. I like fiction that is immersive, that you feel like you are completely inside of it. I like my life—I’m not looking to escape it. I guess I’m always looking for stories that make me a better person or help me to understand the world a little bit better. So even when I’m doing something set in a crazy, far out universe, I want it to look and feel in some ways recognizable to our own lives. I think it’s trying to be truthful and writing about the people in my life, instead of writing about archetypes or other’s people’s characters.
The political landscape you've built isn't the standard good vs. evil dynamic you see in a lot of sci-fi either.
Bringing new children into the world when we’re a world that’s constantly at war. I’m endlessly fascinated by Saudi Arabia and the United States relationship with this monarchy and in how in some ways they are staunchest allies and they are also our enemies. It was just incredibly complex and I like sort of taking that idea of kings and princes, which are always popping up in fantasy stories, but perhaps treating it with the complexity of a real monarchy and real-world complications.
Speaking of keeping it real, characters that are injured or killed and they stay dead. I'm not pointing fingers, but that's pretty unusual in comics as well.
Definitely. Some characters more than others, but yeah I think especially having been weaned on Marvel and DC comics. And having written for them. Death is always an illusion. Whenever you’re working for a major corporation, that’s just the way it is. I think that a lot of the fiction we’ve grown up with, now death doesn’t mean as much to us because we know that character’s probably going to come back, because that actor is so popular that people are going to want to see Wolverine again. But I like fiction.
This is the point of reading fiction—to prepare us for our own mortality, and that we’re going to lose people that we love. I take death very seriously. If somebody dies in a comic, they’re not going to be resurrected, that’s not the kind of story we’re telling. It’s hard, but it’s also a war comic. And it’s a war comic in the same way I suppose that Casablanca is a war movie. The war is in the background, but it’s about these very deep, personal relationships between people. But regardless, there’s still a war going on and that means people are going to die, and they’re going to die pretty often. It is hard. Harder sometimes for Fiona [Staples], especially, because she puts so much love and care into designing these characters. She’s like, really, The Stalk, you’re going to off her after I put so much work into this!
At least you saved Lying Cat—that was a close call.
That was the one time where I sent Fiona the script and she was like, "Yup, I’m not gonna draw that. Sorry that you’re a monster, I’m not gonna kill off Lying Cat." I had to reassure her that a kitty has nine lives.
Speaking of Fiona, what’s the process like between you two? How much of your script determines her character designs?
It’s been the happiest working relationship of my life. I think we have very different personalities and outlooks, but we’re on the same page when it comes to this book. It’s a really trusting relationship. Before we start each arch, we talk about what themes do we want to explore. I always ask Fiona if there’s stuff that she hated drawing or stuff she’d like to draw more of. We talk kind of generally about story directions. But she’s always like I don’t want any spoilers. I don’t want to know who lives or dies this arc. I want to sort of read your script like a reader and take that energy from what I’ve read and that shock and surprise, and pour it into the pages. She doesn’t like to know plot details, but she’s really important for everything else. The visual look of the book is entirely her. I’m very trusting and I will give her only the barest sketches. At the beginning, I said Marko is a guy with horns and a sword and Alana is a woman with a ray gun and wings and just please do your best to make them beautiful, fully formed, three-dimensional characters, which she does. I try to give her all the information that she needs, also the complete freedom to diverge from it and make these characters her own.
Has there ever been a time when you were particularly shocked when she came up with something?
The first issue is the biggest one. It’s hard to beat that. And we talked about it in the very first pages of that issue, how an idea becomes real, that Hazel, the baby, is narrating from the future. And about how ideas are fragile things, and sometimes it takes two parents to pull it out of the ether and make it real. I’d come to this idea that the comic was really going to fail. It’s got naked TV-headed robots and a talking cat, and it’s just kind of for no one. If I had written it as a book it would have been a spectacular failure, but to see those pages start to come in... She took it so seriously and made it so concrete that every issue has been a joy since then, but nothing has hit as hard as that first time seeing those pages come in and think "Oh my god, this idea is actually gonna work." Alana’s first line is “Am I shitting? It feels like I’m shitting.” And that is the process of coming up with an idea. I cannot tell if I just shit my pants or if I have made a beautiful baby. It turned out to be a baby when I got her pages.
That’s a beautiful analogy for making art. [Laughs.]
I don’t know if it’s beautiful, but an accurate one for me.
Now that you’re 24 issues in, do you sort of have an endgame in mind? Maybe you've always known where you were headed.
I’ve always known. I don’t like to start a story until I know what the last panel of the last page is going to be. I’ve always known how it’s going to end, but I didn’t know how long we’d have to get there. I wanted this to be my longest story that I’ve ever told. Longer than Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina combined. It’s called Saga, so you can’t do it as a miniseries. But yeah, with the first arc being as successful as it was, I think we got the sense that we could tell the story for a very long time and get to do all the things that we want to do. We’ve always had a detailed road map, but I think we’ve already, in 24 issues, taken side journeys that we didn’t expect to take, or let characters that spoke to us pull us in a different direction. But we’re still headed in the same general direction we’ve always wanted to go.
I was at New York Comic Con this year, and just I was walking around the floor there were so many people there for your signing, or even dressed up as Alana and Marko. Is it still weird for you to see your characters resonating like that with people?
Oh yeah. It’s one thing for them to resonate, but when a Prince Robot with a working TV screen comes up to shake your hand, yeah, it is totally surreal. It’s been unbelievable. But this is born out of—I think I was frustrated working in film and television and sort of bumping up against the “here’s what I can’t do” in television, because maybe it’s too expensive to do this kind of spectacle or “here’s what I can’t do in film” where it’s tough to do R-rated, complex ideas for grown-ups. I was just like, I’m going to take all of my frustrations about what I can’t do in these other two forms of media and just pour it into comics and that hopefully readers will appreciate that.
I think our success... primarily it’s Fiona. People just respond so well to her artwork and it’s just so engaging. I think secondly they appreciate that it feels like it’s a comic—that’s not just trying to get optioned. That it’s a comic first and foremost and a comic that loves the medium. I think that’s why it’s been successful so far, but I don’t know.
I think that people point to it as an entry point for readers who may not have picked up a comic as well. Just for me, my girlfriend had never really read comic books before, she’s a huge fan of the book now, along with Matt Fraction's Sex Criminals. It seems like women are a big reason why Saga has blown up like it has.
It was definitely intentional, and it was my dream that that would happen. When Pia Guerra and I started Y: The Last Man that was our impulse: Let’s make a comic book for people who don’t yet know that they love comics. I think for a lot of people it’s kind of an intimidating art form to get into. Even if you’ve been reading comics your whole life, you take it for granted sometimes. It’s hard to just open up this page of panels—you don’t know how to read it. With Y: The Last Man we were like, let’s think about it so that if you’ve only ever read Calvin and Hobbes in your daily paper growing up, you will be able to read this comic. And I think with Saga we tried to hone that even more.
When I wrote it I was reading nothing but children’s books to my kids. I was like, "Oh, everyone is familiar with these stories." They just don’t use caption boxes to put text in. The text kind of playfully interacts with the pictures. What can I steal from children’s literature to make it even more accessible to people? So that’s been the goal. We know it’s not the comic that everyone will love, but it’s at least a comic that everyone can at least make it through an issue of, clearly, and know what’s going on, and decide whether or not they want to be back for more.
Now that you’re focused almost entirely on comic books and you’ve stepped away from television, do you think that you would ever go back to TV or movies?
Never say never, but it’s such a joy to be working in comics. I’m so happy doing it, and I love to collaborate, but I like to collaborate with one or two other people. Collaborating with a thousand people becomes really difficult. I think if I can be successful at it, so I’d like to concentrate on comics and maybe do some new books for Image starting next year. I love film and TV—I watch so much of it—but there are so many people who are better at it than I am. If I can find a way to do what I do in comics, or something closer to it, in film and television, maybe. But for right now, I just get to tell exactly the stories I want to tell with zero interference, reaching exactly the right audience.
How much of that freedom has to do with the relationship you have now with Image? How have Creator Owned books changed the way you write?
They’re the best publisher I have a worked for. I guess the big thing is that they are a publisher. They are not an entertainment corporation so they don’t pick up books thinking, "Oh, this is going to make a great film or TV show." They take 0 percent of film and TV rights. They don’t care. They only do well if the comic book does well, so they are a true publisher. Which is a really rare to nonexistent, I think, in the medium right now. They’re great. They leave you alone completely and they get your back when you want to do books that have controversial, weird sex in them, or whatever. They don’t care. They just want you to do the book that you want to do. I have never had that kind of freedom, so I hope to work for them for the rest of my career.
And you’re still doing The Private Eye, which is a different model entirely—but also a success. Do you think that the pay-what-you-want method is a viable sort of viable way to distribute comics?
I do! And I didn’t think so. This is entirely the idea of Marcos Martin, who is my artist and collaborator. He came up with this idea for panelsyndicate.com, our site. He said, "Look, comics used to be a cheap medium for the masses and it’s now become a really expensive hobby for rich people. And that’s kind of a shame. Is there a way that we could reach the largest audience possible and charge them the least amount of money?" He was like, "What if we just charged them nothing, leave it up to them, and just do a pure pay what you want model?" And I was like, "Didn’t Radiohead try that? I don’t even think they did it again after that, so how are we going to have any luck?" But yeah, it has really worked.
I do think that digital is the future. The future is not quite here yet, and print is still incredibly viable and the fact that comic stores are still doing well is great. And I always want to do paper comics that go to brick and mortar retailers, but digital is amazing and it’s for people who maybe don't have a comic book store within 50 miles of them. Or have never set foot in one. If they’ve got an iPad or a laptop, they can read and enjoy this. It’s a way to reach an entirely new audience. As much as I love Image, I think as soon as Marcos and I finish up The Private Eye, which is this 10-issue mystery series, we’re going to do something else new through there [also]. I’m really relieved and amazed that it seems to have worked.
Last, I was wondering who else are you really excited about right now working in comics? Who's on your pull list?
Oh boy. That’s a loaded question! Garth Ennis, who’s kind of my hero. He has the best ear for dialogue and is just a totally fearless, confident writer. I love all of his stuff. On the totally other end of the spectrum, there is an autobiographical cartoonist named Julia Wertz. She did a book calledFarty Party and Drinking at the Movies and she’s amazing, just hilarious. I’ve never read anyone like her. Matt Fraction, who’s doing incredible stuff. I love his Hawkeye run andSex Criminals is terrific. They’re just a couple off the top of my head.
I read so much—I probably read more comics than I do anything else. It just feels like a particularly good time to be creating right now, that anything is possible and everyone is firing on all cylinders. It just feels like the business is good. It’s just a sad legacy of creators knocking down their creations or not being able to profit fairly from them. It’s really been a sea change within the last decade I think, that people are really now owning and controlling their work. You can see the difference in the kind of quality of art being made.
