I love watching famous fanboys geek out over each other, and I was treated to a heaping serving of it when I attended the midnight launch event for Brian K. Vaughan’s latest creator-owned comic, Saga, at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles. The free event was packed despite starting at 11PM and began with a Q & A between Vaughan and his former boss on Lost, Damon Lindelof, followed by a midnight signing.
Lindelof could not stop gushing over Vaughan, and told the story of how, when he first met BKV all he did was gush over how great Y: The Last Man was for 10 minutes, causing Vaughan to “run away.” Later, when the Lost creative team was pursuing hiring Vaughan for the show, what should’ve been a job interview for Vaughan ended up being another opportunity for Lindelof to gush about Y: The Last Man for ten minutes.
Vaughan and Lindelof discussed the genesis of Saga, much of which is covered in Tim Callahan’s fabulous review and interview. Then Lindelof asked about the one element in the story that is bound to throw just about everyone who reads it for a loop.
Robot sex.
You see, there are these robots….who are having sex.
Apparently, it wasn’t until his wife pointed it out to him that Vaughan realized that he apparently has a fascination with robots that can have sex (the pleasure robots in Y: The Last Man, Victor in Runaways…); a fascination he fully embraces in Saga.
When Lindelof asked him if he has the ending to Saga planned, “because fans hate it if you don’t have everything planned out,” Vaughan half-joked, “Yeah, cause it’s so irresponsible not to have every single part of your story planned out from the beginning!” For Saga, as he did with Y: The Last Man, he knows what he wants the last page to be, but he’s leaving plenty of room for him and his artist, the fantastic Fiona Staples, to play between now and then. If things diverge from a certain path, it’s because they’re supposed to. Though Lindelof did reveal that when Vaughan came in to meet about writing for Lost, and he asked “So, what is the Island?” the response was, “What do you think The Island is? I mean, we know, but just out of curiosity, what do you think?” Heh.
They discussed the fact that Vaughan tends to write about things that “scare and confuse” him, like women (Y: The Last Man), politics (Ex Machina), and now parenthood (Saga). They shared stories about meeting Stephen King (Lindelof’s was better and involved the fact that Stephen King apparently buys lottery scratch-off tickets). And Vaughan talked about the fact that, after doing such heavy research for past books, he was thrilled to take a break from research and simply make stuff up for this story.
During the signing, I obviously got to say hello to BKV (I’d met him once before), and he was as kind and genuinely interested in conversation as always. I also managed to meet Lindelof, whom I’d never met before. Those meetings provided me with the following spoils:
Yes, the Lost DVD says “Teresa! We have to go baaaaaack!”
This was a great event and a rare opportunity to watch two geek creators fanboy it up over each other! It was also a wonderful introduction to what I can tell you is a beautiful, passionate, adventurous book.
Saga is on sale today! You can try it out by reading an excerpt here.
Teresa Jusino has chosen Brian K. Vaughan as her constant. She can be heard on the popular Doctor Who podcast, 2 Minute Time Lord, participating in a roundtable on Series 6.1, and at the end of last year she was selected as one of the Top 11 Geek Girls of 2011 at the Geek To Me blog at Chicago Redeye. Her “feminist brown person” take on pop culture has been featured on websites like ChinaShopMag.com, PinkRaygun.com, Newsarama, and PopMatters.com. Her fiction has appeared in the sci-fi literary magazine, Crossed Genres; she is the editor of Beginning of Line, the Caprica fan fiction site; and her essay “Why Joss is More Important Than His ‘Verse” is included in Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon By the Women Who Love Them, which is on sale now wherever books are sold! 2012 will see Teresa’s work in an upcoming non-fiction sci-fi anthology. Get Twitterpated with Teresa, “like” her on Facebook, or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.
