Brian-K.-Vaughan

On the first day of Baltimore Comic-Con Dr. Christy Blanch, moderator extraordinaire and comic book author in her own right, led a panel spotlighting Brian K Vaughan’s work. Of course, the panel covered Saga, but it also covered Paper Girls, We Stand On Guard, and Private Eye. Brian revealed that Paper Girls has been picked up by Amazon and spoke of how it came from his experiences growing up and how strange it was that we had kids delivering newspapers to adults so early in the morning. He also touched on his stance on Digital Rights Management (I prefer the term Digital Restrictions Management) and why Panel Syndicate chose to provide books without it. There was also a neat conversation on how Fiona Staples was the one who asked if Alana and Marko had to be Caucasian, helping BKV realize how we often just default to Caucasian if we’re not actively thinking about it. ...

This panel did a great job of explaining a lot of the ins and outs of breaking into comics. The biggest takeaways included: Everyone has a very different story about how they were able to break in. Don’t try to copy anyone else’s story, because it’s all about the opportunities available when you try. Make sure to take chances with people you don’t know. If you’re both unknowns, perhaps you can end up coming up together. Most people think of breaking in as getting a job with Marvel or DC, but there are a multitude of ways to break in, including self-published or web comics - some of which have higher numbers than traditional comics. And many more insights…. https://youtu.be/KmmzZHd4JFE ...

Saga resumes today and, combined with the Humble Bundle sale which included Volumes 1 and 2, I think it’s as good a point as any to examine what Brian K Vaughan is saying with Saga as it moves into its next phase in which our narrator is a toddler. After all, Y: The Last Man, Vaughan’s previous original story, is no more about a world in which one man is left alive than The Walking Dead is about zombies. In fact, I’m behind on The Walking Dead, but at the point at which I’ve stopped, no one knows why it happened and Kirkman seems in no rush to tell us, if at all. Similarly, Y: The Last Man left the reason behind the deaths up to the reader.

The Private Eye, Brian K Vaughan’s indie comic book, is two things at once. It’s primarily a noir private investigator story - a broad who may not be all she seems comes into a PI’s office and hires him for a case that goes deeper than you thought it would at first. But, much like Saga, which could be described as a story about being parents in the middle of a war zone, it’s also a science fiction story. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the best science fiction shines a light on the present; this takes many forms. The form used in The Private Eye is the of extrapolating of the present to some future conclusion to show where things might end up if we continue on this path. With The Private Eye, Vaughan takes a look at what might happen if we continue to live our lives in the cloud. Since my other job involves technology, I’m constantly reading the tech press and people on there are always predicting a day of reckoning when we’ve given so much away that we lose all control of our lives. The first issue arrived just a month or two before Edward Snowden decided to do a huge dump of top secret National Security Agency documents, and so the comic has an entirely different feel to it as though we are even closer to the future depicted in The Private Eye than we thought. Of course, the self-sharing to places like Facebook and Twitter that form the premise of The Private Eye are more insidious than any nebulous government agency. You have no control whether or not you are observed by the government, but you are indeed in control of whether or not you post those drunk photos to Facebook. The future of The Private Eye takes place when people currently in their 20s and 30s are represented by PI’s grandfather. Here’s how PI retells the story to Gramps:

Very few superheroes are lucky enough to be invulnerable like Superman or have a healing factor like Wolverine, so what happens when they get hurt on the job? Even heroes with good healthcare in their civilian lives may have trouble explaining away gunshot wounds and regular concussions when their insurance company gets curious. Then there are all the heroes whose vigilante career keeps them from having a stable nine to five with healthcare in the first place. So what’s the answer? In the Marvel Universe, the answer is to go to the Night Nurse. ...

It could be argued that in recent decades, Wolverine has been the face of Marvel. The only character that gets more exposure is Spider-Man. If you go to the comic store today and look at the shelves you’ll find Wolverine, Savage Wolverine, Wolverine Max, and Wolverine and the X-Men, not to mention that he is a featured member in several other Avengers and X-Men books. This weekend he also gets the honor of appearing for the sixth time in the movie theater. ...

http://youtu.be/PczIkmgDcZM Dan is back for a Comic POW! Battle! Join us as we decide which is the better issue - Chew #31 or Saga Chapter Nine! Below are all the images used in the video: Daredevil #22 Chew #31 Chew #31 - Funeral scene Chew - Space Cakes FF Vol 2 #3 Saga #9 - Confused Saga #9 - Lying Cat Saga #9 - Lying Cat eats Saga #9 - Mama Sun Saga #9 - Messing Up Lightning Spell Saga #9 - My Partner Just Got Back from Sick Leave Saga #9 - Not Confused Saga #9 - Stalk is back Saga #9 - The Will and Slave Girl Saga #9 - The Will and Gwendolyn Saga Giant Balls Monster Yancy Street Gang and Ms Thing Yancy Street Gang

Dan and I take some time to discuss our top picks from the 2012’s Comics of the Year. http://youtu.be/Uifp0tTlYxA Top Marvel Book: right at the beginning Top DC Books: 7:20 Top Creator-Owned Book 12:40 sec Top Marvel Arc 19:14 Top DC Arc 23:46 Top Creator-Owned Arc 27:49 Best Old Comic 31:35 Biggest Surprise 40:14