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| Monday, June 11, 2007 03:50 PM |
| Brian K. Vaughn |
 by Fëanor |
At a certain auction not so long ago I picked up a big chunk of this guy's comic book work, in trade form, and signed by him. Pretty sweet! I don't love all of his stuff, but he's always got at least some good bits and creative concepts, and anyway, who puts out great stuff all the time? Nobody, that's who. Even Alan Moore writes a crappy, boring book every once in a while.
(If you didn't know, Vaughn is also lead story editor on Lost. Which just underlines the lots-of-love/little-bit-of-hate relationship I have with his work.)
One of the books I got is a volume of Y: The Last Man. This is a series that I had read the first trade collection of a while back when I was getting piles of graphic novels out of the library. I wasn't blown away by it, and I wasn't blown away by this collection, either. It held my attention to the end, and it certainly has an amazing premise (that being that all males on Earth - with at least two notable exceptions - are killed by a plague). There's also a great sense of humor, pretty good dialogue, etc. But there's something about this story that doesn't grab me. Or maybe that leaves me so disturbed, I don't really want to continue reading. I'm not sure which. Either way, not my favorite.
Also, although I liked Vaughn's Ultimate X-Men collection, again I was not blown away. It's good stuff, keeps you reading, but it's not anywhere near as Earth-shatteringly good and clever as Morrison's run on New X-Men. Plus, Dazzler? Seriously. Why can't we get rid of that character?
What I do like - very, very much - is Ex Machina, which I have two volumes of, and which was put out by Wildstorm Entertainment (which is owned by DC, but puts out stuff that takes place outside of the DCU). This is a book set in our own universe, in our own time, but with one crucial difference: there's one real superhero with real superpowers running around. He lives in New York City and has the ability to talk to all machines, making them do what he wants, thanks to his contact with what was apparently some kind of alien device under the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a cool power, and he has a jet pack and stuff. But - and this is the really interesting part - it's not really about his superhero days. Sure, it flashes back to those times every once in a while, but it mostly focuses on his political career. That's right, he retires from superherodom to run for Mayor, and he wins in a landslide, mostly thanks to his actions as a hero during 9/11.
So it ends up being a fascinating mix of superhero stuff, action scenes, sci-fi elements, and political intrigue, strategy, and philosophy. It's like West Wing, if West Wing were set in NYC instead of Washington, D.C., and Martin Sheen were younger and had alien superpowers. It's pretty brilliant, and very hard to put down. I'm definitely going to search out the other trades, if there are any. |
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